Daytripper

Fiction | Graphic Novel/Book | Adult | Published in 2010

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-10

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary: “32”

The book opens with three brief life stories, written and illustrated as obituaries that 32-year-old protagonist Brás de Oliva Domingos covers for his job at a newspaper. Brás reflects on how strange it is that, even when he is not at his day job writing obituaries, death is still unfolding everywhere. The comic panels foreshadow the violence and murder Brás is about to witness by casting a red glow and tint onto everything.

The story then flashes back to the morning of that same day, as Brás moves through his morning routine. Brás reads a newspaper that details an event to be thrown that evening in honor of his father, acclaimed writer Benedito de Olivas Domingos. Brás loses himself in a melancholy daydream about how his father would have made an excuse not to go or, more likely, forgotten the event was happening to begin with.

His mother calls Brás on his cell phone, calling him her “little miracle” and asking if he is going to the event for his father that night. When he confirms he is going, he informs his mother that his wife Ana is out of town and may not attend. He also turns down his mother’s offer to pick him up before the event. Brás tells his dog, Dante, that he resents the nickname “Little Miracle.”

Brás, feeling agitated, arrives at the newspaper early to spend some time writing his own book. While on the phone with Ana later that day, Brás tells her that he is working on the obituaries for the three people featured on the first page of the chapter. His friend Jorge takes him out for a coffee and teases him about the event that night, which Brás has invited him to. Jorge asks how Brás’s book is going, but Brás is evasive. Instead, he confides in Jorge that when they were younger, he thought he’d write about life, but instead he is writing all about death in the obituaries. Jorge reminds Brás that death, and family, are merely parts of life. Brás returns to his desk later that day to find a happy birthday card from Jorge, letting the reader know that the day of Benedito’s event is also Brás’s birthday.

Before his father’s event, Brás stops for a drink at a bar called “Genaro,” where he befriends the bartender. As he makes small talk, Brás learns that “Genaro,” the name of the bar, is actually the name of the bartender’s father, but the bartender’s name is “Genarinho,” which is a variation on his father’s name. Suddenly, a stranger, who is revealed to be Genarinho’s nephew, attempts to rob the bar, shooting and killing both Genarinho and Brás. The chapter ends with a short obituary using newstype describing Brás’s life, pointing out that, like Shakespeare, both men died on their 32nd birthday.

Chapter 2 Summary: “21”

The reader encounters an image of a dark, dreamy canoe on a choppy ocean surrounded by baskets of flowers. Riding inside of the canoe is a naked woman who appears to be brushing her hair. Brás knows that “Even when he was awake, he would carry his dreams with him. They reminded him of who he is and what he wanted out of life” (35). The woman tells him that when he finds her he must bring her something pretty.

Twenty-one-year-old Brás awakens from the dream while napping on a desert rock, startled by his best friend Jorge. Both men are on their way to visit a beach city called Salvador after a month of traveling around the country together. When they arrive, Brás is annoyed that local people believe he is a tourist from outside Brazil because of his white skin. Jorge points out that, although Brás stands out for being white, they are technically all foreigners in Brazil.

The two go to the beach, and Brás goes swimming in the ocean, surfacing near a number of anchored canoes. He encounters a woman in one of the boats who somewhat resembles the woman from his dream. She asks if he arrived alone, and comments that he seems to be alone and adrift. When Brás informs her that he plans to leave the next day for the next stop on his trip, to a city where he may have a job interview, the woman, Olinda, warns him he may miss something amazing if he keeps perpetually moving on to the next thing.

Jorge calls to Brás from the shore, and he and Olinda join Jorge to walk through the street markets. When Brás tries to ask Olinda what she does, she informs him that what she does is not an indication of who she is. Jorge tells Olinda that Brás had a dream about meeting a woman out in the water the night before, and Olinda says that it likely wasn’t her, but Iemanjá, a water spirit and sea goddess. Her celebration day in Salvador will be held the next day.

Brás confides in Jorge that he doesn’t want to leave Olinda, but he also fears missing his job interview. Jorge counters that he may miss the girl for a job interview. The two men and Olinda watch local people bring offerings to Iemanjá to the beach and fishermen bring them out into the ocean. The hope is that Iemanjá will grant their wishes if they bring her flowers, dolls, food, and other gifts.

Brás asks Olinda what she wished for, and the scene cuts to the two of them having sex, and a woman’s mouth whispering to Brás to “Come and find me. I'm waiting for you” (52). He awakens the next morning in bed with a note from Olinda telling him to find her on the beach. Brás fights his way through the crowds of people celebrating Iemanjá’s celebration day on the beach. A strange man tells Brás he knows where to find her and takes him out on his boat. They bring offerings from the locals out into the water as the sky turns dark.

The chapter ends with Brás’s obituary, which lists him as a drowning victim, noting that while the number of drownings on Iemanjá’s celebration day has increased over the years, so too has the number of children conceived.

Chapter 3 Summary: “28"

Olinda stands on a balcony with her back to the reader. She turns around and tears stream down her face as she cries, “I hate you—you piece of shit!” (60). She fades into a ghostly image in 28-year-old Brás’s apartment as he reminisces on these last words she said to him while sitting alone and smoking a cigarette.

The comic cuts to Brás as he attends an event where his father Benedito is speaking. He gives a speech about how everyone is in a desert city seeking love. Both father and son go to dinner afterwards. Brás asks his father if he truly believes what he said on stage. Benedito tells his son that when he met Brás’s mother, he told her he wanted to write their grand romance, while she told him she wanted him to live it. He urges his son to focus on the individual moments that make life and love great, the ones he won’t forget and that will make difficult times more bearable.

Brás flashes back to his final argument with Olinda. She tells him she wasted seven years of her life with him, but he counters that she wasted those years herself and made the choice to be with him. Rather than pursue her dream of a musical career, she stayed at home supporting his work as an obituary writer. He claims this is not his fault, but she tells him she’d rather have nothing than be mediocre. Olinda calls their relationship a dream that turned into a nightmare, telling Brás he has to wake up.

At work, Jorge teases Brás that he has died of a broken heart. Brás, depressed, tells him he can’t move out of the apartment he shared with Olinda, yet everything reminds him of her. Jorge takes him to an art gallery show by Shlomo Lerner to cheer him up. The artwork on display appears to be all of the same woman, multiple “Lolas.” Brás asks himself if he should find someone else or if he should try to revisit and rework his relationship with Olinda.

Flashing forward one year, Brás is drinking coffee in a coffee shop. Still feeling sad and lonely, he finds himself more and more addicted to caffeine. He notices a beautiful woman behind the food counter at the cafe and locks eyes with her. After leaving the cafe, he realizes, too late, that he felt enormously happy locking eyes with her, and that he must speak to this woman. Berating himself, he asks himself why he left without talking to her. He runs after her, convinced she is his soulmate, but is hit by a truck. His mini-obituary says that he was, like everyone, “finding his way in the desert, looking for that oasis we like to call…’love’” (80).

Chapters 1-3 Analysis

The first third of Daytripper sets the tone for the overall non-linear narrative. Rather than use a chronological structure, Moon and Bá jump from one age to another to convey an emotional journey, one that does not fully conform to age or life experience, and therefore cannot be told in a straightforward manner.

The reader is often tuned in to Brás’s mood and memories through color. His more violent and scary moments, such as the armed robbery, turn red and dark, while dream and nightmare sequences tend to use darker hues like black and green. This is meant to subtly point out how Brás himself views these times in his life, and the emotions he may or may not be able to acknowledge. The art style throughout is hyper-realistic and detailed, although the transition pages between chapters use looser, watercolor-like backgrounds with minimal detail and a mixture of images from Brás’s life. This change in style is significant because it calls attention to which moments Brás remembers with vivid detail and which he cannot recall as easily, or that bleed together over time.

Each chapter focuses on a particular age and era in Brás’s life, in which he learns a lesson about life, love, and the moments that give our lives meaning. The focus in the beginning of the book is his young adulthood, spanning his early twenties and early thirties, as he struggles to find purpose in his life and career. Despite attempts by his father, mother, Olinda, and Jorge to persuade him otherwise, Brás is certain that he must find meaning by traveling and writing an acclaimed book like his father. His hubris and focus cost him his relationships and forces him to think critically about what moments will actually define his life.

Brás’s day job as an obituary writer is meant to explain his intense fixation on both life and death. His constant awareness of the lives and deaths of others—and what they are remembered for—clouds his understanding of how to live in the moment. Each chapter ends with a short obituary for Brás at this particular time in his life. These mini-obituaries are meant to serve a dual purpose: (1) to sum up what his life would have amounted to had he died that day in one of the many random and tragic accidents life throws his way, and (2) to call attention to a part of Brás’s understanding of himself and others that has ended. The reader is not meant to read these mini-obituaries as literal. For example, in the first chapter, Brás dies during an armed robbery before attending an event honoring his father. His mini-obituary focuses on his relationship to his father and the fear that he cannot live up to his father’s illustrious career, drawing a comparison to Shakespeare. This “death” also occurs on his 32nd birthday, meaning it is the end of a specific era for Brás, defined by aimlessness and creative struggle.

While the book’s title is never fully explained, Brás and Jorge’s good-natured exchanges about who is an “alien,” “gringo,” or “tourist” hint that perhaps all human beings are daytrippers—tourists on this earth meant to stay for a short time, who hopefully leave the world a better place than how they found it.

In addition, the reader is also clued in to racial and colonial undertones in the first section of the book as well. Brás is White and has more power and freedom than both Jorge and Olinda, who are people of color. Although it is not explicitly stated, Brazil is, like many other former colonies, a result of stolen land and the oppression or murder of Indigenous people. Jorge points this out in a gentle way multiple times—he and Brás (but Brás especially) are passing strangers in this life and on this particular land. The siren-like image of Iemanjá, a goddess from the Candomblé religion (a mixture of African, Indigenous, and Roman Catholic beliefs), beckons to Brás to provide her a beautiful offering, but he believes this call is a sign he is meant to be with Olinda, the Salvadoran woman he meets that day. Instead, Brás finds himself drowning in his wish for the two of them to be together. This wish, in which he loves the idea of Olinda rather than the actual woman, will become especially significant in the second chapter, when it is revealed that they date for seven years before their turbulent break-up.