The Cave

Nobel Prize in Literature? Seriously? You will waste valuable hours of life reading this unctuously fecal diatribe of all things human.

The Cave

By José Saramago

• Characters: 5 Stars
• Story: 1 Star
• Preachiness: Over-the-top
• Writing style: Irritating and unnecessary lack of punctuation, quotations, and paragraphs delineating thoughts and or dialog between characters.
• Story: What story?

DEFINITELY NOT RECOMMENDED!

I’ve never read Plato. His Republic, specifically, contains the allegory from which Saramago’s novel’s title is derived. To understand the meaning behind this meandering mental expactoration, ensure your familiarity to Plato’s allegory of the cave. Otherwise, one might mistakenly assume Saramago writes about the symbology of words and relationships when in fact he seeks to meticulously deride every facet of human society.

In close to 300 pages you will see a potter deliver pots, pick up his son a few times, researches, then makes ceramic dolls and moves into the infamous “Center”. Chronologically, that’s it.

The writing all takes place in the stream-of-consciousness thoughts and internal musings of characters, or in the ad nauseum commentary filling all the spaces between things actually happening. It’s these intervening places where Saramago’s anti-societal, anti-capitalist, anti-social castigations surface. The poignant use of words and silence is a common theme, as are Saramago’s scathing view of modern materialistic dehumanizing society.