After reading this book I’ve come to the realization that we must kill the CEO of every single mega corporate conglomerate.–>  Thanks to Jack for starting off this blog post strong. This novella was a lot to take in- I found it deeply unsettling from the very beginning, and perhaps this was the author’s intention. It was uncomfortable to look in on Macabéa’s life and realize all that she was missing, knowing that she didn’t realize it herself. The narrator’s uncertain tone made me feel like I was constantly on the edge of something- I felt that Macabéa was completely at his mercy, that he could do what he wanted with her at any time- and ultimately, of course, he could. His apparent fascination with her seemed sickly and unnatural, like he was utterly disgusted by her but at the same time couldn’t look away. That’s kind of how I felt while reading this novella. It was quite captivating, but in a way that felt almost voyeuristic, like I was just another person taking advantage of Macabéa. Just like the narrator, there were moments where I wished I could comfort her and tell her that her life was worth something, like when Olimpico calls her a “hair in a soup” after breaking up with her.

I think Lispector was trying to make us uncomfortable by placing us so effectively into these conditions of poverty, this bleak portrayal of life the only way that Macabéa and so many others knew it. This life is a reality for people, and she forces us to face that. Early on in the story, the narrator states that “the girl doesn’t know herself except living aimlessly” (7), and that to ask herself “who am I” would “create a need.” The girl doesn’t seem to have many needs other than just getting by, surviving on hot dogs and her observations of the small details of the outside world. At the end, on the edge of death, she says to herself “I am, I am, I am”, as if reassuring herself. For her, being alive was nothing more than that, just existing. It is only in this moment of death that she becomes something more than her closed off little life, that she becomes a spectacle of sort. It feels like the narrator is playing a sick joke, like he revels in this tragedy to a certain degree. He claims that Macabéa is “finally free of herself”, and maybe that’s true. Maybe life would have only brought her more suffering that she wasn’t even able to recognize as suffering. But there are those final words of hers, “as for the future”, that make me think she would have longed for something more, someday.

My question- do you think Macabéa was ever in control of her own life or was even a real person that the narrator observed?