Clarice Lispector’s, The Hour of the Star, is a captivating story about the ultimate fate and existential crisis of a 19-year-old young woman named Macabea. Macabea moves from the countryside to Rio de Janeiro, and lives in a tenant room in the slums of Rio. The novel takes us through her life – a life that is ultimately quite mundane – exploring themes of identity, belonging, and the state of being. The novel also touches on prevalent social and economic inequalities in Brazilian society, as Lispector navigates the intricacies of writing about impoverished communities.
I thought it was incredibly fascinating that the way the book was written allows the reader to enter the mind of Macabea and navigate through various thoughts and emotions that she is grappling with. Macabea struggles with the fact that she is undereducated, coming from a very low social status. and therefore is viewed as not enough in the eyes of others. Her lack of ambition makes her not very interesting to others, which further isolates her and highlights a sense of loneliness.
I think what I loved about the novel so much was the way it explored so much more than just the story of Macabea’s life, but rather depicts the human condition. It was fascinating when Jon mentioned in the lecture video that, “how we construct our own narrative and sense of self comes from the material available to us, from what is at hand to what we consume.” It made me take a step back and look at my own life as a whole, highlighting what we consider bystanders to our own life, while navigating the fact that we are in fact bystanders in other people’s story. It really made me question the kind of purpose we attach to our life and how, when you look at life this way, daily stressors become rather insignificant. I think the story reminds us of the importance of living life to the fullest, while capturing the life of a girl who may not be doing just that, and doesn’t have many ambitions either. When thinking about the fact that we too are “playing out roles that were written for us,” I think it can be a scary thought to think that we are potentially living a life of conformity.
My question for you all is: how did The Hour of the Star make you think about your own life? Did it shift your perspective on the reality of living life to the fullest vs. a life of conformity?
Hi!
I find it really interesting that you mention Macabéa having an existential crisis because as far as I understood by the narrator’s description Macabéa is too unconscious of her own existence to have a crisis over it. She exists and does not question it. The narrator on the other hand seems to be having an existential crisis throughout and projects some of that onto Macabéa. To answer your question a bit, the novella did make me think about happiness and the intrinsic happiness or lack there of in living and existing. It made me wonder whether we sometimes overcomplicate happiness. Perhaps Macabéa is doing it right and the rest of us are messing it up and making ourselves unhappy with hopes and wants.
I think we can already speak of a “Macabean effect” in us as Lispector readers. That is to say, in that capacity that the author has to make us question our daily existence with moments of the plot that are apparently banal but that are filled with meaning and make us think of ourselves as subjectivities that can be molded, to return to the theme of the identity of the what were you talking about. But there is another existential crisis: that of the narrator of the story of Macabea. What do you think of it?