The image of death in Death with interruptions, by José Saramago: the game of the symbolic and the imaginary

Abstract

The subject of death can be problematized in countless ways. Virtually all literature approaches the subject, either directly or indirectly, real or metaphorical. José Saramago works with death singularly in the novel Death with Interruptions (2005), because it appears not only as a biological event, but also humanized, being a character of the narrative. Death, therefore, occupies the space of protagonist of the novel. Saramago allows reflections on life with and without death. Even to live without death is the ideal that humanity search, the author works with the negative effects of such an event and the picture of these two dimensions makes the fictional story an example of how life would be without death to the real world. As the author transforms the aspect of death into the narrative, he ends up working with different images of it, bringing the known perspective, of death as a skeleton, feared by humanity and, at the same time, humanizing it. In this sense, we seek with this work, to show how the image of death changes throughout the narrative from the three phases that assumes: natural phase, bureaucratic and humanized, analyzing primarily as the plans of the Symbolic and the Imaginary become. Therefore, the main theoretical framework will be to Slavoj Žižek, that in addition to reread the concepts of Lacanian triad (Real - Symbolic - Imaginary), allows other readings and interpretations of the central theme in Saramago romance.