Custódio Marques’s Failures and Irony in Machado de Assis’s “O Astrólogo”

In Machado de Assis’s short story “O Astrólogo”, the protagonist Custódio Marques epitomizes a type of self-important yet fundamentally misguided individual whose illusions of insight and control generate a deeply ironic, psychologically rich narrative. Through Custódio’s misreadings of others, their lives, and of his surrounding reality, his zeal for gossip and speculation, and his inability to perceive his own domestic reality, Machado de Assis creates a satiric short story rooted in narrative irony, one that critiques both human pretension and the limits of individual perception.

To understand Custódio’s role as anti-hero in this story and the nature of irony in Machado de Assis’s work, it is useful to situate the story within the author’s broader narrative method. Brazilian literary critics observe that Machado’s mature style, particularly in short stories written after the late 1870s, is defined by an intensive use of irony, humor, psychological probing, and a narrative strategy that distances readers from simple realism (Jackson, 2015). Machado’s irony is not merely a rhetorical flourish, one may say; it shapes the structure of his narratives and highlights the discrepancy between characters’ self-perceptions and reality.

Custódio Marques: The Ironical Protagonist

The reader gets to know Custódio when he enters the story as an inspector of weights and measures, a seemingly mundane role, some would say; yet he grandiosely interprets it as a license to scrutinize every aspect of the lives of people around him. From the outset, his confidence in his own interpretive powers marks him as a figure whose self-importance exceeds his actual capability. Through his constant outings after work hours to spy people in his community, he carries rumors and interpretations like evidence of their wrongdoings, if collecting details about others equates to knowing them. In Machado’s design, this mentality is inherently ironic.

Custódio’s missteps begin with his reliance on speculation as truth. He listens to gossip at the botica (drugstore) and treats it as objective evidence of others’ characters, intentions, and plans for illegal acts. Instead of recognizing the epistemological limitations of second-hand information, he presents these stories as firm judgments. In this sense, Custódio embodies what Linda Hutcheon (1994) identifies as a central mechanism of irony: the gap between appearance and reality, where characters interpret events through their own flawed cognitive frameworks rather than objective observation. Machado’s narrative, through its ironic distance, invites the reader to see this gap clearly, from the outside, as an spectator.

Irony in Machado’s work often emerges not only from what happens but from what characters believe they see or understand. In “O Astrólogo”, Custódio believes he has a “sixth sense” for social truth; he imagines he can discern others’ legal or illegal motivations and moral character by spying their movement and trying to overhear people’s conversations. Yet this conviction blinds him to his mistakes and leads him to treat conjecture as knowledge. What Custódio thinks he knows about other people in town is based on his speculative but twisted min         

Custódio’s Major Misjudgments

Custódio makes several key errors revealing his failure to see reality clearly:

1.    Overvaluing Gossip as Evidence

Custódio’s confidence in his so-called “detective work” springs from overheard rumors rather than firm, verifiable facts. He then reanimates these rumors into “truths” about neighbors for example, the judge’s family reputation or potential romantic affairs. Critics of Machado’s irony have noted that such misrepresentation underscores the precariousness of human confidence when based on hearsay rather than empirical solidity (Carvalho da Annunciação, 2022).

2.    Misreading the Judge and Others

Believing he can use supposed secrets to exert social leverage, Custódio confronts the judge with insinuations concerning the judge’s nephew. Yet his assumptions collapse under scrutiny; the judge greets him with amusement or indifference, revealing Custódio’s inability to anticipate how others perceive or manage reputational threats. In essence, he mistook his own interpretative bravado for insight.

3.    Ignoring His Domestic Reality

Perhaps most poignantly in the whole story, Custódio remains blind to his daughter Esperança’s true feelings. He imagines he can arrange her marriage based on status calculations, not emotional truth. When Esperança confesses her love for Gervásio Mendes, Custódio’s earlier strategizing looks foolish. His failure to see what is obvious in his own home highlights the irony of a man who believes he can read the city yet cannot read his own family.

Through these missteps, Custódio embodies the unreliable interpreter of human motives. “The unreliable narration can be the supplement of the unnatural narration, that is, some of the unreliable narrator has the mental problem, or lack the cognitive capability of mind-reading” (Liu, 2014). Machado’s use of irony emphasizes the discrepancy between the protagonist’s self-image and his actual understanding of events.

Irony as Structural and Psychological Strategy

Scholarship on Machado de Assis consistently demonstrates that irony is not decorative but central to his formal organization and psychological realism. Critics argue that Machado uses irony as a mediation device that invites readers to reflect on characters’ limitations and the complexity of social reality (UNESP repository, 2023). This strategy reflects larger modernist tendencies toward self-conscious narration and the questioning of simple realism, anticipating later developments in world literature.

Irony in Machado’s fiction often arises from narrative distance, a gap between what characters believe and what readers can discern through the narrator’s cues along the story’s plot. Custódio’s confidence and eventual exposure fit this pattern: the reader perceives the discrepancies between his self-conception and narrative reality, generating ironic amusement and philosophical reflection.

Moreover, Machado’s imagery, especially the fable about the astrologer who falls into a well while gazing at the heavens, crystallizes this technique. The fable illustrates that attempts to understand others (the “sky” of social dynamics) without attending to immediate reality (one’s “feet”) leads to downfall. Custódio’s adherence to conjecture over concrete domestic truths embodies this moral.

Secondary Characters and Amplification of Irony

Custódio’s failure becomes more pronounced through the reactions and presences of secondary characters. Each contributes to the ironic framework of the story:

• Dona Joana da Purificação, his sister, anchors the domestic sphere but never shares Custódio’s grand interpretive schemes. Her pragmatic presence contrasts starkly with Custódio’s speculative mind, highlighting his skewed priorities.
• Esperança, his daughter, remains emotionally opaque to Custódio, revealing his inability to interpret his own household dynamics. Her genuine feelings, which differ from his projections, underscore the limits of his analytical reach.
• Gervásio Mendes, Esperança’s beloved, serves as both a foil and corrective. His confrontation with Custódio, born of real emotional stakes, exposes the social damage Custódio’s gossip and assumptions can inflict even on his daughter.

These characters deepen the irony by embodying aspects of life that Custódio cannot account for, friendship, love, and authentic internal experience. They become unintended arbiters of reality, navigating truths that Custódio can only misinterpret through his distorted lenses of reality.

Irony and Machado’s Larger Critique

Machado de Assis’s use of irony in “O Astrólogo” aligns with his broader literary aims: to subvert narrative certainties and to critique the assumptions of nineteenth-century society in Brazil. As critics have pointed out, Machado’s irony often exposes the limitations of human knowledge, the futility of social pretense, and the discrepancy between external appearance and internal reality (eNotes.com critical overview, n.d.).

In drawing attention to such limitations, Machado challenges readers to question the reliability of both characters and narrators. Custódio is not merely a comic figure but representative of a type: humans who construct elaborate theories about the world while overlooking the simplest truths of everyday and domestic life.

Toward a Concluding Reflection

Machado de Assis’s “O Astrólogo” ultimately transcends the portrait of an overconfident provincial inspector and becomes a meditation on epistemological arrogance. Custódio Marques is not merely a comic figure undone by gossip; he represents a broader human tendency to confuse observation with understanding and speculation with mastery. His role as a self-appointed “guardian” of social truth collapses under the weight of his own blindness. By attempting to control narratives about others, he fails to perceive the most immediate truths within his own household. Machado’s irony thus operates not only at the level of plot but at the level of cognition itself.

The closing anecdote crystallizes this dynamic with striking clarity. The narrator recounts the story of an astrologer who, “while observing the stars, fell into a well,” prompting an old Thracian woman to remark that if he could not see what was at his feet, how could he presume to interpret the heavens. This classical image, echoing a long philosophical tradition tracing back to Plato’s Theaetetus, functions as a symbolic summation of Custódio’s trajectory. The astrologer’s fall literalizes the danger of speculative abstraction divorced from concrete awareness. In Machado’s hands, the anecdote is not decorative but diagnostic: it identifies the precise flaw that defines Custódio’s character.

Final Reflections

Custódio’s error lies not in curiosity but in disproportion. He seeks to decipher the “stars” of social life (reputation, intrigue, whispered scandal) while neglecting the immediate terrain of emotional reality beneath his own roof. The well into which the astrologer falls is metaphorically the abyss between perception and reality, between interpretive ambition and practical wisdom. By invoking this fable at the conclusion, Machado reframes the entire narrative retrospectively: every rumor Custódio spreads, every insinuation he makes, and every plan he constructs appears as another step toward that unseen well he falls in.

Moreover, the anecdote sharpens the story’s critique of nineteenth-century social pretension. Custódio’s desire to manipulate reputations reflects a culture deeply invested in appearances and hierarchical advantage. Yet Machado exposes how fragile such constructions are when built upon conjecture rather than self-knowledge. The irony is not merely situational but moral: the would-be interpreter of destiny cannot interpret his daughter’s affection; the supposed guardian of order destabilizes the very relationships he hopes to control. In this sense, Custódio embodies what modern theorists of irony identify as the gap between intention and effect, between asserted authority and actual competence.

The Astrologer Anecdote as a Symbol

The astrologer anecdote also universalizes the story’s lesson. While Custódio is a particular figure within a Brazilian provincial context, the closing image elevates his failure into a philosophical warning. The human impulse to read patterns into distant phenomena, whether celestial movements or social whispers, often disguises an avoidance of self-scrutiny. Machado suggests that the most dangerous blindness is not ignorance of distant matters but indifference to proximate truths. Self-confidence, when untethered from humility, becomes a cognitive hazard.

Conclusion

In this expanded frame, “O Astrólogo” emerges as a subtle yet incisive exploration of the limits of human understanding. Machado de Assis does not condemn curiosity or interpretation; rather, he exposes the irony that arises when interpretation becomes vanity. Custódio’s downfall is not tragic in the classical sense, yet it carries a quietly sobering force. The quest for omniscient control over social truth, so confidently pursued by Custódio, is revealed as an illusion. Knowledge without self-awareness collapses into folly, just as the astrologer collapses into the well.

Thus, the final anecdote does more than conclude the narrative; it refracts the entire story through a philosophical lens. The reader is left with a question that extends beyond Custódio: In our own efforts to interpret the “stars” of distant events, ambitions, or reputations, do we neglect what lies directly before us? Machado’s irony lingers precisely because it implicates not only his protagonist but also the interpretive impulses of his audience. The fall of the astrologer is comic, but its resonance is enduring.

San José, Costa Rica

Friday, February 27, 2026

📚 References

Carvalho da Annunciação, V. (2022, October). Advanced ideas, Anachronistic landscapes: The Contradictions of Science in Machado de Assis. University of Cambridge. Dissertation. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/4157f360-ee86-4646-9aa0-b6755535d699/download

eNotes.com. (n.d.). Machado de Assis Criticism. In eNotes.com — analysis of Machado’s use of humor and irony. https://www.enotes.com/topics/joaquim-maria-machado-de-assis/criticism

Hutcheon, L. (1994). Irony’s edge: The theory and politics of irony. Routledge. https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9781134937554_A24929591/preview-9781134937554_A24929591.pdf

Jackson, K. D. (2015). The Literary Modernism of Machado de Assis. In Machado de Assis: A Literary Life. Yale University Press. https://es.scribd.com/document/356614400/K-David-Jackson-Machado-de-Assis-A-Literary-Life-pdf

Liu, X.-y. (2014). Theory of mind and the unreliable narrator. US-China Foreign Language, 12(5), 422–428. David Publishing. https://www.davidpublisher.com/Public/uploads/Contribute/551902e23750a.pdf

Machado de Assis. (1877). O astrólogo. In Contos Fluminenses.

eNotes.com. (n.d.). Machado de Assis Criticism. In eNotes.com — analysis of Machado’s use of humor and irony.

UNESP repository. (2023). Machado de Assis: Style and Authorship — analysis of Machado’s rhetorical use of irony and parody.

Custódio Marques’s Failures and Irony in Machado de Assis’s “O Astrólogo” by Jonathan Acuña