Charley is sent to live in Manaós

Charley is sent to live in Manaós after Dieter concludes that his son is both dishonest about his assault on Caroline and mentally unsound. The relocation is a separation and a limited act of provision: Dieter arranges a small house and monthly support, but cannot restore trust or undo the harm Charley has caused.

The decision to send Charley away

When Dieter tells Charley that he ravished Caroline in the garden and that James Bardawulf struck him after discovering the assault, Charley says he does not remember and that Dieter must be mistaken. Dieter judges that Charley is lying; he also believes Charley’s mind is unsound. He decides that Charley must go, turning a painful family confrontation into a permanent change of setting.

A house in the city of the forest

Dieter uses intermediaries to arrange the purchase of a small house in Lugar da Barra do Rio Negro, also called Manaós. Charley is to receive the house and a modest monthly sum. These provisions mark the limits of Dieter’s response: he can secure his son’s material circumstances, but not offer reconciliation or continued life within the family household.

The destination carries an irony. Dieter had once predicted that Charley would become a man of the trees, and now sends him to Manaós, described as the city of the forest, where tropical trees await him. Yet this imagined affinity does not excuse Charley’s violence or resolve the family’s rupture; it frames the relocation as both a practical removal and a return to the world Dieter had associated with his son’s future.

Separation and aftermath

The move places Charley at a distance from Dieter and the family, while leaving him with a house and financial support rather than abandoning him without provision. The arrangement is therefore neither reconciliation nor simple expulsion. It preserves a minimal paternal obligation even as Dieter decides that Charley cannot remain with them.

In Amazonia, Charley sees himself as nothing and his actions as nothing, but vividly remembers raping Caroline without regret. The move has changed his location, not his accountability or his response to what he did. Manaós becomes the setting for a stark contrast between Dieter’s hope that Charley might be a man of the trees and Charley’s failure to feel remorse for the harm that prompted his removal.

Significance

The relocation links family consequence to the novel’s recurring forest imagery without treating the forest as a cure. Dieter’s earlier prediction gives the destination a measure of foreboding, but the actual result is not moral renewal: Charley’s vivid memory and lack of regret persist. The small house and monthly payment make Dieter’s care tangible, while the decision that his son must go makes their estrangement equally clear.