Near to the Wild Heart opens with a scene of the child Joana playing in the garden, making up poems for her father. Joana's wildness and barely suppressed violence, along with her linguistic creativity, are her most notable features. She is frequently compared to animals: over the course of the book Lispector compares her to a bird, a snake, a wildcat, a horse, and a dog. She commits transgressive acts—as a child she throws a book at an old man's head, for example, and as a married woman she leaves her husband, Otávio, and greets the news of his adultery—he has made another woman, his
In a Grove did not belong in his usual arsenal. This proves, he says, that Tajōmaru was the perpetrator. Tajōmaru was not carrying the dead man's sword, however. The next testimony is from an old woman, who identifies herself as the mother of the missing girl. Her daughter is a beautiful, strong-willed 19-year-old named Masago, married to Kanazawa no Takehiro—a 26-year-old samurai from Wakasa. Her daughter, she says, has never been with a man other than Takehiro. She begs the police to find her daughter. Next, Tajōmaru confesses. He says that he met them on the road in the forest, and upon first