Mr Jose, the protagonist of "All The Names", is a melancholy, reclusive, lonely middle-aged bachelor who works as an assistant clerk at the General Civil Registration Office. Mr Jose has pursued a secret celebrity collecting hobby while doing his job. By chance, he gets a file card from a woman he doesn't know, which leads him into an unexplainable but crazy journey of discovery. Although not jose Saramago's most famous work, All The Names is undoubtedly a gripping novel that fully captures Saramago's narrative power. Satirical, derisive and hilarious, the mesmerizing narrative alternates between the surreal and the tragic.
First, the virtuality of narrative space
In modern and postmodern novels, space, as an important narrative element, is endowed with unprecedented value. It is not only the background of plot occurrence and character action, but also has special implication. Especially among modern novelists, "space" has become a technique or means to be consciously utilized. ① They gradually break away from the objective reality, construct a space of imagination, and give full play to their artistic creativity. Jose jose's is such an effective structures, imaginary space of the writer, the name of all is no specific time and space background, the author just put the story took place blurred for a unknown cities in modern times, the protagonist in the administration of registration of hard work, and still the inhabitants of the land in accordance with the rules of ancient social hierarchy. A review in The New York Times suggested that the space described in the first few pages of the novel had a suffocating feel, and that despite the lack of an iconic logo, the melancholy and decaying city in which the novel is set could well be Lisbon. 2.
The construction of narrative space first provides heavy realistic basis for the strange imagination and slightly absurd stories. Saramago magnifies the blurred boundary between the virtual and the real world, and depicts scenes that are infinitely close to real life in extremely detailed details, making the virtual space constantly close to the real space. The Spaces depicted by the author are the general Registration Office, the school and the cemetery, which appear at the beginning, middle and end of the novel respectively. The first chapter of the novel focuses on the outline of the civil Registration Bureau, which follows the ancient tradition of the building: "Above the door frame is a long narrow metal plate, glazed, white background is black lettering - Civil Registration Bureau, in places the glaze has broken off. ③ From the antique appearance to the internal office areas which are everywhere in accordance with the order of hierarchy, from the smell of roses and chrysanthemums to the chaotic and huge archive area, the author has carefully described all of them, making the reader imagine a huge enclosed space like a maze in his mind. In chapter eight, Mr. Jose ventures into the school on a rainy night in search of information about the girl's schooling, and the author also lavishes paragraphs on the layout of the classroom, the headmaster's office, the gymnasium, the archives office and other facilities. Similarly, the construction of the solemn space of the public cemetery is not only described as a whole and in detail, "vegetation grows spontaneously on both sides of the cemetery... For centuries, the roots of strong trees have often crushed the tombstones and left the bones exposed to the sun. "④ A similar investigation of the historical development of popular science is inserted to trace the appearance of the design of tombstones. In addition to the large space description, the interspersed description of streets, apartments, buses and other daily scenes in the novel also gives life the impression of activation. Jose's space writing is clever he blurs the strict boundaries between real life and virtual imagination, with a realistic frame to host kernel surrealism fantasy story, close the distance with readers, let the reader feel also live in such a dark city, also experience a dull life, and to reflect on the own existence and thinking.
Secondly, the multiple metaphorical meanings of space further deepen the thematic connotation of the work. Saramago's novel is kafkaesque, full of metaphor and ambiguous complex ambiguity. "With its ancient gate, three black stone steps at the entrance and five narrow Windows in the front, the whole house looks like a ruin frozen in time" ⑤. Like Kafka's "castle" and the invisible machine in the Trial, the General Registry is also a mythological embodiment of the human spirit. It is ruled by an indestructible bureaucracy, which exempts itself from hard work by giving orders to low-level civil servants. The design of the Registration Bureau embodies space oppression, power mechanism and hierarchy oppression everywhere. The decoration of the chairs and tables show the authority of aesthetics and harmony geometric arrangement, eight is the most close to the counter assistant clerk of the table, followed by four are clerks of the table, again in the future is a row two deputy registrar of, and finally belong to registrar of independent space, and is maintained for each level between step three, four, five steps the precision of distance. The archive index area, where Mr Jose works mostly, is equally depressing, a maze of cluttered, clogged papers, covered in dust and cobwebs, stretching up to the ceiling and buried in total darkness. Due to the chaos of archival management, the records of the older dead were kept closer to the clerk, while the documents of the living were stored in dark buildings farther away. To find information about the living, the seeker needed to carry an Ariadne thread to return to the path of light. Similarly, public cemeteries have no enclosed walls, but are an open area that opens out in all directions. As the number of dead grows, cemeteries continue to expand, with tombstones next to the living's daily living areas. These two wonderful Spaces are meaningful, and the living and the dead are intimately connected, reflecting saramago's subtle themes of consciousness of life and death that he returns to throughout the book. In addition, the metaphor of "labyrinth" and "tomb" is used many times in the novel. For example, a scholar gets lost in the "catacomb labyrinth of the archives of the dead", "the sky seems to be covered by a single cloud, so low that it almost touches the roof, like a huge tomb slab", "a cemetery; It's a maze. "These two spatial images render the novel mysterious and profound, creating a deep and depressing atmosphere, and further deepening the author's thinking about modern meaningless and absurd life.
The construction of space is closely related to the creation of characters. ⑩ By creating a special space, writers reveal their characters' characters in detail. In "All The Names", Mr Jose lives in a small room attached to the interior of the Registrar's office, which is a spatial representation of his character. It is small, dark, simple, it seems that the water stain will never dry, hot water is never stable bath room, everywhere can not show the protagonist's loneliness and sad. Although the door leads directly to the office, Mr Joser still makes a long circuit of the outside and enters through the main gate, a space that reflects the character's weak and timid nature, long tased by the hierarchy of power.
Second, the subtlety of narrative structure
"All The Names" takes the form of a whodunit, one ring at a time, focusing on Mr. Joser's quest, methodically progressing from his mind and actions to the heart of the mystery. The accident of "absurdity" is the first step to jose dog show queer imagination, although the text perspective for Mr Jose inner consciousness and the "ceiling" questions to him, but the reader still don't understand Mr Jose wanted a clear reason, jose is not willing to give an answer, he will be the cause of the ambiguity rationalization, as no doubt and no more discussion on the premise of, Go straight to extremely rigorous and solid reasoning and argument.
Mr Jose's search is fraught with difficulties, as he discovers subtle clues about strange women, copes with doubts and questions from insiders and carefully conceals his true feelings. But Mr Jose was not a professional detective, so his actions must have been riddled with errors, such as fake letters of authorisation accidentally dropping and elderly women or other insiders calling the registrar's Office to help with investigations. Saramago's writing talent here is breathtaking, as he uses the imaginative narrative technique of the future tense at various points, actively expanding the narrative space and revealing alternative possibilities beyond the main story line. Jose's to answer questions one by one reader may exist, clarify the hero secret was discovered many possibilities, to luck or chance again to the idea of the virtual results are negative, and take the initiative to future imagination tense make up the story possible loopholes or create suspense, in ensuring the overall narrative rhythm flowing at the same time, increased administrative levels feeling of the story.
In addition, Saramago often foretells, in small ways, the decisions Mr. Jose is about to make, the actions he is about to take or the progress of the story. Gennette put forward the issue of "time sequence" for the first time in Narrative Discourse, and found the phenomenon of inversion between the order of discourse and the order of story, and prenarration is the natural time when narrative time precedes the occurrence of story. Tan Junqiang, a scholar, believes that the pre-narration should "point out the key ending point of the story or make an outline of the development or ending of the story" at the beginning. Early on, the author makes a fateful prediction about Mr Jose's decision to sneak into the bureau to enrich his collection. Without disturbing the rhythm of the narrative, it uses the technique of pre-narration and presets the intention of the result to arouse readers' interest in reading. Although the story sometimes has natural interruptions, interspersed with imaginative tenses, prenarration and various critical thoughts of the author, the overall linear narrative structure has always maintained a complete and rigorous development mode of the story, while presenting a concise feature.
The novel uses the narrative structure of sugar-gourd string, connecting the whole story with the clue of "searching for people". Mr Saramago gives up the parallel structure of the living (Mr Jose) and the dead (the stranger), and all the information the reader learns about the stranger is seen from Mr Jose's point of view. The author sets the strange woman as the goal of the hero's transformation and adventure, but is always stingy in describing the whole picture of her life, only revealing the tip of the iceberg from the words of people around her, and even fails to explain why she committed suicide in the end. So the underlying theme of the text is that suicide is unexplainable, and the deceased is under no obligation to explain his choice to others. The strange woman's suicide is the first turning point of the text, which means that Mr. Jose stops looking for clues of the living and starts to trace back from the other side of death. And putting the emergence of the shepherd has to the whole game "magic mutation", as Mr Jose thought he found a strange woman in the graveyard, and spent the night sleeping beside one morning passing the shepherd revealed a startling secret: daily to replace his tombstone Numbers for interest, so buried the dead is not corresponding with the name on the gravestone. The smooth story breaks off abruptly near the end, with startling effect like a flat-land thunder, as textual tension spirals up and down the page, culminating in another twist of the reader's expectations.
Although the novel as a whole uses a single linear structure, through the connection between the living and the dead, the trajectory of the strange woman's activities is secretly intertwined with the protagonist's life. Mr. Jose keeps searching for the key to the secret of the strange woman's past, which is in fact the key to open the door of his own time. When Mr. Jose entered the school at night, he suddenly remembered that he had been punished by the principal, dripping all over, like a "twisted rag," which reminded him of the misfortune and pain of growing up in the depths of oblivion. The process of searching for the woman even reestablishes the value and significance of the protagonist's existence. After confirming that the stranger had died, Mr Jose was utterly lost and distressed because he feared that the end of the search would mean there was nothing left for him to do with his life. In the work of tolerance, timid and humble Mr. Jose, but in the journey of seeking people constantly break the boundaries and rules never dare to cross the first half of life, overcome the shadow and fear of childhood, gradually revealed the wisdom and extraordinary courage.
Third, the uniqueness of narrative language
Saramago's "All The Names" uses a large number of multipart dialogues to present the inner states of the characters and drive the story forward, such as the conflict between Mr. Jose's different minds (rational and troubled), the dialogue with the ceiling, the debate with the imaginary other, This distinctive polyphonic feature is mainly manifested as the dark distinguishing style, the free style full of debating color and the hidden dialogue style. Bakhtin proposed the polyphonic theory in Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. He used the term "polyphonic" in music to explain the phenomenon of "multi-voice" in the novel, which refers to "a real polyphonic composed of specific full values and different sounds with numerous independent but not integrated voices and consciousness... It is not that numerous characters and fates constitute a unified objective world, which unfolds layer upon layer under the domination of the author's unified consciousness; Here are the many equal minds, together with their respective worlds, united in a single event, and without merging with one another? . Saramago is very good at using different voices in polyphony to supplement and explain the inner thinking and behavioral logic of the protagonist, and repeatedly uses the polyphonic dialogue between "Ceiling" and Mr. Jose to convey profound ideological connotations. These multi-voice words further add a strong ideological content to the text, showing saramago's profound rational spirit in addition to absurd stories.
The novel chooses the first-person "we" as the narrator of the story, often appearing openly in the text and making no attempt to hide its existence. Chatman first proposed the concept of explicit narrator in Story and Discourse, that is, he often openly expresses his views and opinions on characters and events, which are easily perceived by readers. In All The Names, the narrator jumps out at any time in the smooth progress of the narrative, predicting, revealing and exposing the characters and plots, and makes the eyes shine with its concise generality and benign irony. The narrator's intervention is scattered throughout the text, or provides background and supplementary explanation; Or judgment evaluation and satire, guide the reader's value judgment; Or summarize, directly express the author's understanding and true intention. Moreover, the narrator often calls the reader to follow the narrator and reminds the reader to stop for a while and think about the ideas behind the narrator's words. Similar expressions such as "there is no need to elaborate on this" and "this point has already been elaborated on" appear many times in the paper, explaining the narrators' own narrative mode and informing readers of the reasons for skipping the process description. All The Names thus has the character of a meta-narrative, which refers to the narrative itself and explains how it works and why it is told the way it is. The prologue "You know the name given to you, but you do not know the name you have" comes from the Baha 'i sacred book of Conviction, which is secretly related to the content of the story. The narrator uses the prologue to directly reveal his own existence, explain his creative intention and values, and express his personal standpoint. In addition, from the perspective of narrative level, the narrator "we" is higher than the story level of the novel. As a bystander, we always keep a considerable distance from the characters and stories of the novel, and deal with the absurd actions of the protagonist and the absurd world surrounding him with a rational and calm and restrained attitude.
Punctuation is missing jose's writing feature, "all of the name" is not exceptional also, long and tortuous sentences and lasted the whole pages of dialogue in the paragraph no quotes, only to distinguish the different characters of words by a semicolon, to start this reading his work has brought a lot of reading obstacles, but fuzziness instead of the conventional narrative and dialogue to expand the function of the phrase, Many layers of meaning radiate in all directions, making his dialogue full of traps and snares more ambiguous and ambiguous.
Mr Saramago is good at telling stories in lopily funny ways, such as at the end of Chapter seven, when He describes Mr Jose climbing a school window at night: "First he raises one foot, then the other, until he lands softly on the other side like a leaf just falling from a tree"? . Yet chapter 8 begins with a reversal of that description: "Out of respect for the truth of the matter, and a purely moral obligation... This respect and obligation requires immediate clarification... On the contrary, the fact was that he fell so hard it looked as if the whole tree had fallen down." ? The author divides the chapters to write in reverse style, this absurd and turn of the line and narrative inconsistency immediately gives the reader a strange sense. He was also partial to weird tropes: "The student's desk is like a lined tomb, the teacher's desk is like a somber altar, and the blackboard is like a place where the last judgment of all is held"? , through prolonging the process of understanding and enhancing the difficulty of understanding to achieve a kind of defamiliarization effect.
Clever and crafty writing, it's easy to overlook the subtleties behind Saramago's slightly poetic language. But whether it's the defamiliarization of everyday Settings, the elaborate dialogue between multiple characters and ideologies, or the obsession with authoritatively meditative interludes, it's more than just a story of dramatic exploration. In addition to bringing freshness and strangeness, the author conveys the profound connotation of the text with the charm of personalized language art, which inspires us to ask and reflect constantly.
Four, conclusion
"All of the name" with full of imagination and the ease with which the narrative skill of perfectly embodies the jose's style of writing style, the narrative space of the building is close to the reality and a parable of metaphor, has both concise narrative structure of the processing characteristic and dramatic tension, the style of narrative language both naughty funny and exquisite and warmth. Saramago's narrative art is like a mysterious maze, which passes through numerous obstacles and barriers deliberately set by him and finally leads to his profound thinking about the world, society and life.
Saramago's two themes run through the book. One is whether the line between life and death is clear. Another question is what does "name" really mean? As the only protagonist with a name, Mr Jose is openly mocked and scorned, which gives him no privilege and even underlines his smallness as a lone individual among the nameless. While everyone remains anonymous, there is still meaning and value in knowing the stories of "ordinary people". So Mr Jose is indeed an unusual hero, unable to accept the craggly definition of humanity offered by the dossier card and the state machine's neglect of individual integrity. In jose's, who Shared by human beings encounter, ecstasy, depression, smiles and tears are all the same, but in fact every one of every sad and not common, life is different because these subtle shine, this is his concern for human destiny and the rational under the restraint of affectionately tender feelings.
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