Reflections on old age and death in As intermitências da morte, by José Saramago

Abstract

In As intermitências da morte (2005), José Saramago invites us to reflect on the consequences of a life without death. This ancient desire of human beings is endangered when we see the chaos caused by the strike of a death that claims its importance in the lives of men. Based on the first intermittence of this death-character, we propose a reflection on the theme of death and old age, in order to understand how it distances itself from everyday concerns in contemporary times. In this process, we observe the interdiction of death caused by the intense medicalization of life and by a movement of market sectors that took care of the task of dealing with such a scary fact. In the reflections now proposed, we recognize that Saramago’s novel starts from the weird disappearance of death to transcend reality, acting in a way that extrapolates the natural order of existence, something that leads us to reflection, impelling us to think more about our finitude, to finally understand his withdrawal, which reflects much more our fear and incapacity in the face of death.