What Makes Iracema and Martim Human

"Iracema is more strongly attached to Martim than he is to her. Martim's inability to maintain his interest in Iracema soon sends her into a fatal decline from unrequited love."  Naomi Lindstrom (Foreword to Iracema, xvii.)

          Iracema and Martim's love story is pretty fantastic, verging on cliche. However, I think that the psychological realism of their story allows the reader to suspend their disbelief. Though tragic, Iracema and Martim's actions are not only believable, but consistent with Viktor Frankl's "will-to-meaning" theory.

Martim is dissatisfaction results in Iracema's abandonment 

             According to Frankl, an individual's primary motivational force is to find a purpose in life. Frankl suggests that one of the ways we can discover meaning in life is by experiencing or encountering someone. For Iracema, encountering Martim gave her life meaning. The subsequent failure of that relationship causes her to lose that essential what gave her life meaning and helped her feel fulfilled. Because Iracema does not replace what gave her purpose with something equally fulfilling, Iracema remains empty. The "spiritual" aspect of her being, as Frankl would describe it, starves and leads her to experience symptoms of depression (as manifest by her jealousy, loss of desire to live, and lack of motivation/belief that she can change her situation). Iracema's experience with Martim is consistent with Frankl's description of people who have experienced and then subsequently  lost their sense of meaning. Leave that need unfulfilled leads to a deep sense of loss. Martim's unfulfilled need for a purpose is apparent in his restlessness, "While Iracema frolicked along the beach, the warrior’s eyes turned from her to gaze upon the sea’s immensity."(Jose de Alencar, Iracema, 84) Although he could find happiness and fulfillment in his relationship with Iracema, he seeks fulfillment by other means which leads him to abandon her.

         Both Martim and Iracema demonstrate that man truly desires purpose. Instead of investing her time and efforts into some other cause or even trying to improve things with Martim, Iracema instead becomes depressed and even suicidal. Martim, rather than being satsified in his relationship with his wife, remains discontent, constantly searching for meaning and clinging to things of the past.  However fanciful this story of a beautiful Indian princess seducing a brave European warrior is, however exotic and mystical, there is undeniable humanity in Iracema and Martim. Frankl suggests that it is our spirituality that makes us human. It is the apparent desire for meaning in both of these characters, driven by the spiritual aspect of their individual beings, that makes these characters both believable and their experiences tragic.