The Hour of the Star is a novel that tells the story of a “northeastern girl” Macabea, who is from the poorest part of Brazil. The story unfolds through tiny details of the main character’s. The novel, although quite short in length, narrates the life of Macabea. Macabea grew up living with her aunt. She becomes a typist, who eventually falls in love with a boy called Olimpico de Jesus Moreira Chaves. After being dumped by Olimpico, she visits a fortune teller who tells her that her life will change immediately as she steps out. Her life does change, but it also doesn’t. She gets hit by a car after seeing the fortune teller and ends up dying. 

The novel is written in a style very different from most novels I have read. In the very beginning, the narrator writes as if he were conversing with me, the reader, about how this story will talk about a “northeastern girl” and how his thoughts would be laid out. I found this part to be very interesting. His thought processes of writing a story, from grasping how the story will unfold to depicting the character of Macabea, was revealed to the readers. This provides insight not only for understanding Macabea, but also for interpreting how she was created in this story from the narrator’s written words. In this process of doing so, the narrator introduces rich ideas that he ponders upon while discussing the idea of writing. 

One thing I really liked about the author’s style was that she managed to imitate the characteristics of Macabea through manipulating the spelling of words. For example, when the author was explaining that Macabea lives in slow motion, she deliberately duplicated the vowels in the words: “living in sloooow motion, hare leeeeaping through the aaaair over hiiiill and daaaale”. This technique emphasized to readers how slowly Macabea lived. Additionally, the author also imitated how Macabea stuttered with her thoughts through the repetition of words: “How to marry-marry-marry a being who was only to-to-to be seen, she stammered in her thoughts”. This style really managed to very accurately illustrate the characteristics of Macabea. 

When I was in the process of reading this book, I wasn’t able to connect how the content related with the title “The Hour of the Star”. However, I began to interpret it after reading the book. The author writes that “a person becomes a shining movie star” during “the hour of death”. The death of Macabea could possibly be interpreted as her “glory moment” as her life wasn’t one that could be considered “glory”, especially since people barely paid attention to her. People often tell their children that once a person dies, they turn into a star in the sky. Perhaps the title can also be interpreted as “the hour of death” as this idea of turning into a star often euphemizes the cruel reality of death. 

My question for this week is how do you interpret the title of this book?