"The Lord wanted them, the Lord gathered ... Until one day the future realized that it was time to manifest. "
After the murder of Abel, the fall from grace divine pushes Cain to wander the land of Nod and doubtful for the sole sake of immortality.
In Saramago's pen, however, that exile becomes a journey of knowledge, a rapid back and forth across time and place that will allow Cain understand the origin of his own curse.
From the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham to the conquest of Jericho, the destruction Sodom the Flood or the suffering of Job, Cain attends each of the episodes of a history of blood, the Bible, written by a capricious god and irresponsible.
With the distance that allows the irony, but with the approach that gives a passionate commitment to the facts he narrates, Saramago gives us a stark at the same time humorous parody of the government of heaven.
In this new novel by José Saramago of the most remote origins of the man who points out the Christian world: the creation of Adam and Eve and the expulsion from Paradise. The first human crime, the murder of Abel by Cain, God gives way to download his wrath for the second time on men and sentenced Cain to wander forever through the land of Nod, ie the land of nothing. And this after they made a shameful treatment where, in exchange for his silence and a kind of bribery, God gives Cain immortality.
Following in the footsteps of Cain, the author finds the guide that will show from a vantage point some of the most significant events of the Old Testament: the aborted sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Moses' anger Mount Sinai, the conquest of Jericho, the Flood ... Chapters all with a common denominator: the cruelty of God Christian and arbitrary decisions. Eyewitness
and even leading some of these episodes, confident in itself that gives you not have anything to lose, Cain becomes a critical consciousness that seeks God and his faithful stalwarts, condemning the sacrifice of innocent, that is no meaning to the divine test that looks for reasons which are only available designs. This led to a questioning of blind faith, of unconditional obedience, while a parody of authoritarianism. The Christian God, devoid of reason and sometimes it seems that reasoning, is shown in the light of the talks with his servants as a spoiled child or a tyrant.
Thatgo back and forth in time in which the protagonist is doomed, or more accurately, as its author, "those sudden changes of mind", will that Cain has the perspective of someone who knows the past and to come, and paradoxically act more like God than God himself. It is Caine is the only character who wonders about fate, about the meaning of his life, and he even has answers for it.
With Cain, Saramago explores the everyday history of the Bible. Daily because, from the exile that caused the murder of Cain, the author plays to put voice and specific words to each speech, dialogue and even thinking of the great protagonists of the Bible. This makes us more understandable facts and figures always entrenched behind the solemnity and mystery of the sacred texts. Cain closely follows, therefore, the facts of the Bible and they fable, but from a certain knowledge of the sacred texts.
Like other novels of the author, Cain is devastating in his view of human destiny, and does so through its main character, which takes a despairing view of providence, devoid of confidence in the future of man and God's goodness. And in this desolate landscape, are perhaps the characters 'damn' in the Bible who awaken greater sympathy: Cain and Lilith the enchantress, in addition to the banished Adam and Eve.
In the short but intense novel that is Cain, through a fine sense of humor and irony, José Saramago turns a vision of the biblical facts matured in the heat of the years, experiences and books, a foremost vision is tinged with criticism and questioning, which avoids the cliches and the parody easy even at the risk of being insolent, a vision that, ultimately, is in the injustice and human suffering around the lighthouse reasoning.
Source:
http://www.elpais.com/especiales/2009/tuslibros/cain/interior.html
Phrases:
"I do not believe in God and I do not at fault. At least I'm safe to be intolerant. Atheists are the most tolerant in the world. A believer passes easily intolerance. At no time in history, anywhere in the world, religions have served to human beings closer to each other. On the contrary, have only served to separate, to burn, to torture. I do not believe in God, do not need it and I am also a good person. "
" God is the silence of the universe, and man, the cry that gives meaning to the silence. "
"If there were more atheists there would be fewer wars."
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