“The Double” by Nobel novelist José Saramago (post 3): Protagonist’s dialogue with alternate personality; “double” in mirror; narrator’s plural self-reference.

“Saramago's experimental style often features long sentences, at times more than a page long. He used periods sparingly, choosing instead a loose flow of clauses joined by commas. Many of his paragraphs extend for pages without pausing for dialogue, which Saramago chooses not to delimit by quotation marks; when the speaker changes, Saramago capitalizes the first letter of the new speaker's clause. His works often refer to his other works. In his novel Blindness, Saramago completely abandons the use of proper nouns, instead referring to characters simply by some unique characteristic, an example of his style reflecting the recurring themes of identity and meaning found throughout his work.”—Wikipedia

[Added Oct. 29: I reject the concept of experimental style. Search "experimental."]

In the above, I have boldfaced one way in which Saramago’s style is like what happens in the treatment of multiple personality, in which, since many alternate personalities are nameless, the therapist will often refer to an alternate personality by its unique characteristic.

In the following excerpt from a six-and-a-half page paragraph in Saramago’s The Double, the protagonist, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, carries on a conversation with a voice in his head (an alternate personality), which is referred to by its unique characteristic, its common sense. His commonsense personality is advising him how to deal with a problem.

The protagonist’s problem is that he recently saw a video of a movie recommended by a colleague in which he was shocked to see that one of the minor character actors, playing a clerk at a reception desk, looked exactly like him, the “double” referred to by the novel’s title:

“…Tertuliano Máximo Afonso’s common sense finally turned up to give the advice that had been noticeable by its absence ever since the clerk at the reception desk first appeared on the television screen, and this advice was as follows, If you feel you must ask your colleague for an explanation, then do so at once, that would be infinitely better than walking around with all kinds of questions and queries stuck in your throat, but I would recommend that you don’t open your mouth too much, that you watch what you say, you’re holding a very hot potato, so put it down before you get burned, take the video back to the shop today, that way you can draw a line under the whole business and put an end to the mystery before it begins to bring out things you would rather not know or see or do, besides, if there is another person who is a copy of you, or of whom you are the copy, as apparently there is, you’re under no obligation to go looking for him, he exists and you knew nothing about him, you exist and he knows nothing about you, you’ve never seen each other, you’ve never passed in the street, the best thing you can do is, But what if one day I do meet him, what if I do pass him on the street, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso broke in, You just look the other way, as if to say, I haven’t seen you and I don’t know you, And what if he speaks to me, If he has even a grain of good sense, he’ll do exactly the same, You can’t expect everyone to be sensible, That’s why the world’s in the state it is, You didn’t answer my question, Which one, What do I do if he speaks to me, You say, well, what an extraordinary, fantastic, strange coincidence, whatever seems appropriate, but emphasizing the it is just a coincidence, then you walk away, Just like that, Just like that, That would be rude, ill-mannered, Sometimes that’s all you can do if you want to avoid the worst, if you don’t, you know what will happen, one word will lead to another, after that first meeting there’ll be a second and a third, and in no time at all, you’ll be telling your life story to a complete stranger, and you’ve been around long enough to have learned that you can’t be too careful with strangers when it comes to personal matters, and frankly, I can’t imagine anything more personal, or more intimate, than the mess you seem about to step into, It’s hard to think of someone identical to me as a stranger, Just let him continue to be what he has been up until now, someone you don’t know, Yes, but he’ll never be a stranger, We’re all strangers, even us, Who do you mean, You and me, your common sense and you, we hardly ever meet to talk, only very occasionally, and, to be perfectly honest, it’s hardly ever been worthwhile, That’s my fault I suppose, No, it’s my fault too, we are obliged by our nature and our condition to follow parallel roads, but the distance that separates or divides us is so great that mostly we don’t hear from each other, Yes, but I can hear you now, It was an emergency and emergencies bring people together, What will be, will be, Oh, I know that philosophy, it’s what people call predestination, fatalism, fate, but what it really means is that, as usual, you’ll do whatever you choose to do, It means that I’ll do what I have to do, neither more nor less, For some people what they did is the same as what they thought they would have to do, Contrary to what you, common sense, may think, the things of the will are never simple, indecision, uncertainty, irresolution are simple, Who would have thought it, Don’t be so surprised, there are always new things to learn, Well, my mission is at an end, you’re obviously going to do exactly what you like, Precisely, Good-bye, then see you next time, take care, See you at the next emergency, If I manage to get there in time…” (1, pp. 23-25).

A few pages later, the protagonist, looking in his bathroom mirror, “became the actor” (1, p. 28) (saw his double from the movie in his mirror), and had to cover the mirror with shaving cream to avoid “a nervous breakdown, a sudden fit of madness, a destructive rage” (1, p. 28).

People with multiple personality sometimes see an alternate personality when they look in the mirror. Occasionally, they find this disturbing, like the protagonist above. Search “mirror” and “mirrors” in this blog to see past posts on mirrors and multiple personality.

I have just started to read this novel, but it already appears that there is more multiple personality in it than that implied by the title. In addition to the commonsense alternate personality (see above), the narrator may have multiple personality, as indicated by plural self-reference. Sometimes the narrator’s “we” might be meant to include the reader, but other times it refers only to the narrator; for example, “we believe” (1, p. 3) and “we” and “in our view” (1, p. 4). Either the narrator is using the royal or editorial “we,” or the narrator consists of two or more personalities.

1. José Saramago. The Double [2002]. Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa. Orlando, Harcourt, 2004.