You know, I really didn’t think there would be a book that I hated just about as much as Proust, yet here we are. Oh my god the way I almost gave up on this whole book within the first 10 pages needs to be studied because what even. I get that it’a through a fictitious author and all of that, and I’m sure you could get into the meaning and reasoning behind that, however that pissed me off so bad at the beginning. It was like reading an extra 10 pages of nothing. Though I do appreciate our narrator’s devoted hating at the start, such as the line “Because she lacked fat and her body was drier than a half-empty sack of crumbled toast” (pg 30), it was honestly the only thing that kept me going, his perspective of her transforms slowly into what appears to be a form of love for her, ironicaly just in time for her death (that I 100% saw coming). My redeeming quality is the random four Marias that she lives with, I don’t know why I love it as much as I do.
I think I’m learning that I cannot stand dealing with genuinely stupid people, but Macabea pissed me off so bad the entire book. Don’t get me wrong there is something to be said about an essentially entirely ordinary girl, but she has absolutely zero redeeming qualities? She’s not intelligent or aware, she’s not especially kind or moral, she’s notably rather ugly, she’s essentially a doormat, she’s entirely socially incompetent with zero improvement, etc. I mean come on, and she’s not even that aware of any of it! I mean she has a job, she considers herself a ‘typist’ of sorts, but she can’t even type accurately? It is not a hard skill to learn with practice, she deserves to be fired if she can’t do the bare minimum (how she wasn’t actually, despite the original threat, idk). She’s basically the human equivalent of a moon jellyfish: useless, brainless, and spineless. She needs to be removed from the gene pool (… ask and you shall receive?).
To be fair though, most of the characters here suck, including Olimpico and Gloria. Olimpico is a little bitch, which we knew from the start. He’s the eptiome of toxic masculinity combined with absolute incompetence. Is it weaponized incompetence? Is it general incompetence? Is it delusions of grandeur? or D All of the Above! Gloria on the other hand immediately broke girl code, it’s rule 1 that you don’t date your friend’s exes, let alone take your friends’ boyfriends… yet there we go. To be fair it’s not like Olimpico was much of a catch so that might have been a dodged bullet for Macabea.
Q: Did you like Rodrigo’s role in the narration? Would you have changed it, and if so, to what? How would that impact the story and it’s meaning? What do you think the author’s intentions with making it a story within a story were, rather than just directly telling Macabea’s story?
4 replies on “RIP Macabea, you will not be missed in the slightest”
Poor Macabea! I noticed you didn’t liked her at all. Can you think if this is regarding the narrator description of because of her actions? Does Lispector want us to feel like this?
Hallooo! Bahaha I was able to chat with you in class regarding your view on Macabea but reading it is another experience >< I thought macabea represented herself well as a character meant to represent nothingness. Since her life is bare without any opportunity, knowledge, skill, she too lacks all of those qualities. After our little discussion on the authors “explosions” it makes me wonder what it signifies and if it is trying to hint that macabea herself is causing these booms even if she is “nothing”
haha, I had the same feelings towards Olimpico, he was truly terrible.
To answer your question, I didn’t really love Rodrigo’s narration. It was amusing at times, but I didn’t like the rambling or the long intro.
I liked Rodrigo’s narration as it was an interesting fourth-wall break, even though it was confusing at first. Having the story told through him makes Macabea feel even more distant and powerless, which is what I think Lispectir was going for.