Reflection : Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago

Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago, was a fun one. The style of writing was very different, sentences were long and separated by commas which made it hard to follow at some points as you had to figure out who was talking mostly based on context. Also, the author would address the reader midway through to try to explain potential plot holes or inconsistencies with logic in the book, like the first family that decided to bring their relatives across the border owns (I think it was a horse and a cart ?)  but they were said to be poor so it is unlikely that they could own these things??? It felt like the author was pre-firing and silencing the people who would point out inconsistencies before they could even finish the book, showing that he was one step ahead of the people who believed they could outsmart the novel. I also realized while reading like what was said in the lecture video, that the way that Death writes her letters is similar to the way that the author uses punctuation and that the whole thing with the grammarian critiquing Death’s writing and Death's snarky reply to him was probably Saramago getting back at his critics once again.

For a book that focuses a lot on death, I found it to be quite funny. Like the fact that one of the major problems that the government has to face is dealing with the people who are in charge of funerals because they are mad that they lost their only source of revenue with the government's solution being to make it obligatory to hold burials and create coffins for all the animals that died. While that sounds pretty absurd it also kinda reminds me of ancient Egypt which I thought was cool.  Also, death as an entity was not what I would have expected it to be like. Instead of the grim reaper that you imagine, which is cold, and calculated and only takes people to the land of the dead, the one presented in the novel is much more human-like and is capable of being frustrated or tired, and that even death is not free from the nightmare of bureaucracy.

I also found the idea of how Death would affect the government and society as a whole to be interesting. In theory, the prevention of death would mean that old values should never really die since those that hold them don't die either, but the novel offers a different perspective on this. The Church and Christianity, upon which society at the time based its sense of morality would cease to exist since death is fundamental to religion, and as the Cardinal says “without resurrection, there is no church” (10).

My question for everyone,

Did the novel change your perspective on eternal life?