Week 11 yay we’re almost done! For this week I read Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago which I thoroughly enjoyed. I found this story really surprising and unexpected in a good way, truth be told I never really knew too much about the books that I chose to read I kinda picked based off of which title I thought interested me the most. I probably read a bit of a synopsis at the very beginning of the semester but that was so long ago I really didn’t remember what each book was about. I feel even if I did remember the basis of this book it still wouldn’t have prepared me for the complexity of the novel’s themes. The style of writing in this text largely abandons traditional rules of grammar which makes the book very difficult to read. At the beginning of the semester, I explained that I didn’t enjoy reading in a university setting because I always found the novel studies capitalized on inaccessibility. This novel to me felt reminiscent of those feelings I had with inaccessibility as the work is deliberately tricky to consume, however in contrast to the other novels I’ve read throughout my university career Death with Interruptions felt inaccessible in a unique fashion. The grammatical errors and improperly punctuated sentences and quotations of speech allowed the novel to play out like a stream of consciousness which lent very well to the exploration of a philosophical premise of mortality, instead of being difficult for difficult sake in ways that are exclusionary by design. I was really intrigued by the personification of Death and the differences between Death as the absence of life, the presence that claims the lives of all, and death as a young person experiencing life for the first time, distinguished by upper and lower cases. Saramago explores an age-old question regarding mortality/immortality but expands the question to what would happen to social structures if death could be defeated. It’s interesting to see the different groups that are against rather than for the absence of death. Religious leaders, political figures, doctors, coroners, and groups alike are distraught in times without Death which really makes you think about how some professions in a weird way profit off of suffering, if no one is ever going to die do rules even matter anymore will anyone actually care about political discourse, if no one fears Death anymore than church leaders can no longer promise eternal life in Heaven, and doctors have no immediate necessity. Revered social institutions fall apart in the absence of Death and chaos erupts as expected of humans when new power dynamics are introduced.
Q: I feel the novel pondered human nature itself and the experiences of humanity which I was not expecting from a novel seemingly pondering the significance of death I was wondering did anyone else share in a similar understanding?