review
The book ?? Alle Namen ?? by the Portuguese writer José Saramago is one of his many works with again a certain criticism of society, as all his books have. This writer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998, is known for his particular style of writing and, moreover, in his novels he incorporates a certain criticism of contemporary society.
José Saramago is known for his particular way of writing, for example he hardly uses punctuation marks in his stories – something you really have to get used to when reading a book by him – only capitals indicate that a character changes with speaking and sentences walking endlessly without using periods, fortunately commas. The idea behind this is that Saramago wants to make his stories so lifelike. In that sense, in daily life when you are talking to people you do not hear the points and conversations are mixed up.
The other thing that is striking, not only in this particular book, but in all of his books, is that he doesn’t use character names – the main character in this book is an exception. The characters are named according to function or location where they live. There is also a simple reasoning behind this, namely that (nowadays) people rarely use names of people in daily life when you talk about someone (check for yourself, in your own use). You quickly talk about the neighbor / man across the street, the old man with the cane, the bus driver, the police officer, the teacher, etc. than you really use their names (which in some cases you don’t know either).
Short summary of the book
It is striking in this story that the protagonist has the same name as the author himself, namely José.
Mr. José is a civil servant ?? writer – of the General Archives of the Civil Registry in an unknown small country (not named) where the inhabitants live according to old rules and a strongly hierarchical social class. A good example of this is the hierarchical relationship within the Archives, in which the writers are at work all day at the first row of writing desks, the clerks occasionally work on the second row, behind the clerks are the sous chefs who are only very finished. time to work and the archivist sits at the very back separately and on his own and hardly ever does anything.
Outside office hours, Mr. José collects newspaper clippings from famous compatriots and one day he decides to expand these newspaper clippings with official information from the registry of the Civil Registry, because these are 100% reliable. When one day he temporarily borrowed these identity cards and files overnight from the archive, through his connecting door to the archive, to copy them at home, his attention falls on a birth certificate of a 36-year-old unknown woman, who was accidentally come along with the deeds of the famous people. He is so taken by this deed that he decides to make a complete reconstruction of the life of this unknown woman. The previously so neat Mr. José is now ignoring all the rules to achieve his goal ?? the end justifies all means – it even becomes a true obsession for him, in which he cannot be stopped. For example, he uses lies, abuses his position, breaks in, falsifies official documents and even stays away from his work at one point. His quest takes him to the address where the unknown woman was born, her high school, her godmother, and even the graveyard, her parents, and the house where the unknown woman lived. After a long search, Mr. José discovers something shocking about this unknown woman. His curiosity, however, takes him on a new quest for what he has discovered about her.
Characteristics and style in the story;
- Little use of it punctuation marks;
Example: … apart from the discomfort, Whatever discomfort, Giddiness, dizzy spells, depths of mind, whatever you want to call it, You never complained, I don’t like to complain, That’s great of you, go on, I wanted to go to bed go, yeah, I even took off my shoes, ????(page 33)
- Brief look at the history;
Example: In the past, an ancient past, the civil servants lived at the General Archives. Not in the building itself, as guild brothers among themselves, but in simple houses on the outside of it, ???? (page 14)
- No use of names in the story ?? only the main character -:
Example: the Chief, Archivist the unknown woman, the lady from the ground floor on the right, the principal, the parents of the unknown woman.
- A lot of inner / fantasy dialogues:
Example: Although there was another dialogue, again less hypothetical, in which the pharmacist says to the wife of the sous chef, Laats someone came here from a school, ???? (page 124);
– At that point the ceiling dropped its indifferent attitude and said anything that seemed to be neither directly nor indirectly related to what it had just heard. There are at least three more people you have not spoken to, ???? (p. 197)
Saramago’s criticism is of society
Saramago’s criticism of society in this book is very difficult to discern.
But because of the enormous size of the Archive, which contains the names of all citizens and the strong hierarchical relationships within the archive, I suspect that it is a criticism of the increased bureaucracy and that there is really no escape from it. But also that very quickly deviant behavior of an individual, Mr José, is disapproved by the community, in this case Mr José’s colleagues.
In addition, I think that there is also a certain philosophical story / message hidden in it, namely, in giving names to people, and perhaps that is why Saramago does not use names in this story. Because in the longer term human existence actually has no meaning. We are born, given a name and then we live a certain period in which we are known by friends, family etc. But after death our names fall into oblivion and anonymity, especially when the people who knew us are no longer there. .