Severino is a migrant: he is like many others, leaving for the coast, fleeing drought, fleeing death. Life in the Capital seems more attractive, more "alive", less "severina" (a play on his name, implying a harsh, dire existence). In his wanderings, however, Severino encounters not life, but what he already knows as a common thing: death and the despair that surrounds it.
In his first encounter with it, the migrant stumbles upon two men carrying a corpse to its final resting place. During a conversation, he learns that the poor soul had been murdered, and the motive was wanting to expand his meager, unproductive land a little. The migrant continues his journey and realizes that in the region where he is, even the Capibaribe River—dry in the summer—cannot fulfill its role. Severino fears he will not reach his destination.
He then hears a song and, approaching, sees that a funeral mass is being sung for a deceased person. For the first time, Severino considers interrupting his "descent" to the coast and looking for work in that village. When he addresses a woman, he discovers that everything he knows how to do is useless there, and the only profitable work is related to death: doctor, prayer woman, pharmacist, gravedigger. And the profit is certain in these professions, as there is no shortage of clients, since death is also a common thing there.
If there is no way to work, Severino once again resumes his path and reaches the Zona da Mata (Sugar Cane Zone), where he again considers interrupting his journey and settling in that soft, yielding land, so different from the soil of the Sertão. More than that: he began to believe that he saw no one because life there must be so good that everyone was on holiday and that no one should know a life of hardship, a "severina" life. This is the illusion of one seeking paradise: soon Severino witnesses the burial of a field worker and hears what his friends, who carried him to the cemetery, say about the deceased. Severino realizes that the deprivations there are the same as he knows well, and that the only part of that land that can be his is a grave, nothing more.
The migrant then decides to quicken his pace to reach Recife soon. Severino sits down to rest at the foot of a high wall and overhears a conversation. It is death lurking again, two gravediggers who give him the bad news: all the people who come from the Sertão looking to die of old age are actually following their own funeral procession, because as soon as they arrive, the cemeteries await them.
Severino never wanted much from life, but he is disillusioned: he expected to find work, hard work, but now—despair!—he already imagines himself a corpse like those the gravediggers described, only lacking the final act of fulfilling his migrant destiny.
At this moment, Seu José, a master carpenter and resident of one of the shantytowns between the dock and the river, approaches Severino. The desperate migrant reveals his intention to commit suicide, to throw himself into the river and have a "soft and liquid" shroud. José tries to convince Severino that it is still worth fighting for life, even if it is a "severina" life. But Severino no longer sees a difference between life and death and poses the question: "what difference would it make / if instead of continuing / I took a better way out: / to jump, one night, / off the bridge and out of life?"
From the doorway where the master carpenter had emerged, a woman appears, shouting some news. A child had been born, Seu José's son! Neighbors, friends, people bringing gifts to the newborn arrive. Two gypsies also come, who predict the boy's future: he will grow up learning from the animals and in the future will work in a factory, covered in grease, and perhaps, he might live in a slightly better place.
Severino watches the commotion, the atmosphere of euphoria with the arrival of the boy. The carpenter approaches the migrant again and resumes the conversation they were having. He says he doesn't know the answer to the question asked, but, better than words, the birth of the child could be an answer: life is worth defending.
