What Would You Think If You Had An Encounter With A Violent Mercedes?

Trigger Warning: Mentions of death and poverty

Cover is painting “Not Too Bad (Blue)” by Artist Euan Roberts

“Who hasn’t ever wondered: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?”

Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star, pg 7

(Book analysis begins at paragraph 2. Feel free to skip to there!)

Hello, my lovely friends! Welcome back to my little home! I hope everyone is doing well despite the cold weather and enjoying the Vancouver sun (weird weather, huh?). Before I start my analysis, I just wanted to take the time to thank Professor Beasley-Murray, the TAs Tesi and Daniel, and, of course, the RMST 202 class! For what exactly? I am so fortunate to have my last week’s blog win the first ever “Blog Post Award” of the semester! Of course, these awards are meant to be fun and games, but I am very proud of myself for this little accomplishment and wanted to thank you all for that. I wouldn’t be making my blogs the way they are if the class wasn’t fun and interesting so I thank you for that. I remember my prof saying that I “didn’t have to do blogs like this every week.” By “like this”, we’re referring to the rather lengthy blogs I’ve been writing. The analyses I write tend to be 7-10 minute reads and I get why some people may not want to take the time to read me yap about how I thought about a book. I believe the reason why I write so much instead of the 500 minimum is because….I want to? I mean, when I have something to say, I’d like to say it. Especially if it’s something I’m passionate about, I feel like it’s a disservice to myself to not speak my mind! At the beginning of the course, I was really excited about the blog aspect because I now had an excuse to make my own platform and communicate my thoughts with you all! So no, I’m not writing lengthy posts just because I’m a “try hard” or “the more the better”, it’s because I like to speak my mind. This blog has become a little fortress for my yapping! Also, if I’m passionate about something, why not let the heart speak its mind? It just so happens that a few others like to hear what I have to say! And for that, I’m really grateful and honoured to have received this lovely award!

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Analysis Begins Starting here:

Words cannot begin to express the maelstrom of emotions I felt reading this novel by Clarice Lispector, “The Hour of the Star”. What exactly those emotions were, I’m still trying to figure it out. As with all other books, I entered it blindly without the lecture or the internet and I was amused to have been met with a plethora of contradicting statements, borderline sexist commentary, and very “existentialist” questions. That’s when I realized, “Ah, this is a commentary about existentialism?????” Perhaps yes, perhaps no. It’s humorous how this book is so short, less than 100 pages, yet is so dense and rich with philosophical phenomena and questions that really gets you thinking.

I have a lot of thoughts I hope I can find a way to reiterate into coherent syntax. But first, let’s do a quick TLDR about the summary. Man meets a poor, hopeless, yet interesting Woman. Woman lives a poor, tragic, doomed life, eventually meeting her demise. Woman somehow turns Man’s life upside down, teaching him things about life, living, the world, the universe, and especially writing! Blah, blah, blah. If I didn’t attach names to these titles, I bet you would have thought this book was Nadja by André Breton. I saw a lot of parallels too which is something I wanted to point out. Perhaps this is just the classic archetype for literature. Instead of Nadja and Breton, we have the affluent, angsty, lowkey confusing writer, Rodrigo S.M., and the poor, hopeless, unattractive, nineteen-year-old Macabéa. Rodrigo claims to be inspired to write a story about a girl he saw in the slums of Rio de Janeiro when he “glimpsed in the air the feeling of perdition on the face of a northeastern girl” (4). That girl is Macabéa, who appears to fill the exact archetype of the “poor, tragic” girl mentioned before. She was raised by an abusive aunt who, when passing, was now left alone to fend for herself in a surplus of girls trying to work. She is also roomies with four other girls all of whom are named Maria (I thought this was funny). Despite her living conditions, Macabéa has a semblance of contentment with the state of her life. This is something that really confuses and interests Rodrigo. Then there’s a red-flag boyfriend, a homewrecker, a very interesting fortune-telling moment, and Macabéa then meets her unfortunate end.

There are a lot of themes I could start with. I could say that “this book is a brilliant commentary about poverty, class systems, and philosophies personified through the character Macabéa in the way she lived and died!” But I think that’s kind of a given when you read it. Let’s skip the bread slices and get into the meat of the sandwich. I want to start talking about Macabéa’s view of her own life. Heck, I just want to talk about Macabéa. It’s tempting to feel sad for her considering how she is poor, she’s attractive, unlovable, ignored, etc. Feeling sorry for her is like an innate instinct. But something I wanted to ask is: “Is it okay to feel sorry for someone who doesn’t feel sorry for themselves?” Isn’t it a bit condescending to feel bad about the way someone lives if they are 100% content with the way they’re living? Who says there are no people out there right now who feel bad about the way you live? Wouldn’t you feel a bit hurt? I know I would! I then asked myself, was Macabéa content or was she just ignorant to the state of her life? But then again, it drew me back into the cycle of: well, even if Macabéa was ignorant, that ignorance formed her perception of her content life. Who cares if it was a “sad life” if the person living it was content? Who even dictates the criteria of what makes a “sad life?” Long story short, the very existence of Macabéa raises questions:

“What was the truth of my Maca? As soon as you discover the truth it’s already gone: the moment passed. I ask: what is? Reply: it’s not.”

pg. 76

Like what does that even mean???? “Q: What is Macabéa” “A: She is not” She’s not what? Alive? Rich? Real? Privileged? This novel found me making questions, and then asking more questions of those questions, which then created this endless cycle of question after question. I feel like this element of the novel was what permeated philosophy and existentialism into the novel.

Before I make my attempt at philosophy, I want to touch on this “cycle” I’ve pointed out. I thought it was very interesting how the novel began with:

“All the world began with a Yes.”

pg. 3

And how the book’s final line was also:

“Yes.”

pg. 77

This was no coincidence. Lispector masterfully embeds this idea of a cycle, more specifically, life being a cycle. The end has Rodrigo “remember[ing] that we die”. We live because molecules said “Yes”, and yet we all die in the end. It is this unavoidable cycle we have to come to terms with. Life said “Yes” to us, and so we must say “yes” to death when there is no more life to be given. (Did that even make sense?) I was also wondering what the usage of the “strawberry season” is. It’s probably symbolic of something. Perhaps maybe it’s because seasons connote harvest times, and harvest times come and go like a cycle, analogous to life. 

I feel this leads us into our discussion about philosophy and existentialism. I was never gifted with understanding the beauties of philosophies. My brain (and I feel like many others can relate) has been conditioned (Ivan Pavlov’s reference lol) to view life systematically and methodically. To pinpoint patterns, dissect, and deduce. That’s why I think Lispector does a masterful job combining the two, moreso philosophy. I had myself thinking, “Why is she (Macabéa) “not”? Or perhaps, what is Macabéa? Let’s dive into how she lived first before how she died. When I thought about it, Macabéa’s character is Lispector’s personification of existential beliefs. From what I understand, existentialism emphasizes how people are independent and responsible agents who actively form their own existence and fate. In other words, Macabéa reflects the existential belief that people are responsible for shaping their own lives, identity, and most importantly, finding their own purpose. In her eyes, her life is content while we may view it as the opposite. That’s because truth is subjective and what really matters is how the owner of the life views their own life. You may judge me for writing long blog posts as a “waste of time” when I probably will receive the same grade as another person who contracted an A+. But for me, I shaped my perspective to view my tendency to make lengthy blog posts as a love and an enjoyment, not something to be done merely just for a grade.

Examples of Existentialism in modern art: The Second Sex (1949) by Simone de Beauvoir; Unmasked (2022) by Joe Webb; Not Too Bad (Blue) by Euan Roberts. Y’all know my love for Beauvoir’s work! Beauvoir was actually an existentialist philosopher who used her knowledge to write The Second Sex which served in the 2nd wave of feminism! I thought it was beautiful how this philosophy could serve as an instrument in such imperative movements. The two art pieces too I thought were really captivating. Webb captures how rich and idiosyncratic each of our perceptions are behind our masks. After reading Robert’s painting explanation, I thought how interesting and simple the piece was, yet demonstrated the contradicting nature of “being okay” when “drowning”. “Being okay” is subjective! It’s all up to perception!

However, this leads to a flaw in my analysis, focusing on how Macabéa died. She dies by being hit by a Mercedes after receiving a fortune for the life she could have had. Macabéa lives alone and dies alone. Personally (I could be wrong), her dying too early was the reason she never met her purpose: she died before she could meet it. So if Macabéa is her own author, then why wasn’t she able to write her own purpose before she died? Was it because she was unlucky as she died too soon before even having the chance to write her own destiny? I don’t know! I told you! I’m not good at philosophy. Maybe it has something to do with what the Mercedes represents. The way I see it, the yellow Mercedes represents what everyone is thinking: death. Not just because it was the agent that killed her, but it was also the fact that the car drove away without any concern for the life it just took. The Mercedes is symbolic of death, or rather, forces in life we cannot dictate or control. Yes, we may be authors in our own stories, but surely there are forces that we cannot control. Like how an author can write a beautiful novel, but cannot control how successfully the public receives it. Like how I cannot control if it rains today, but I can control how I respond to it and if it’ll ruin my day. There’s only so much we can and cannot control in our lives. But, as Macabéa once did, she controlled how she perceived her own life. Despite its unfortunate nature, she still was relatively content with her life. I think this means that, ultimately, no one will help you but yourself. You are the only person who can shape the life you want. It matters not what life throws at you (even if it’s a Mercedes), what matters is how you respond to it. I feel like that’s what I needed, potentially what we all needed. 

If you’re wondering why I didn’t touch on Rodrigo’s red-flag nature, it’s because I feel like that was very obvious. It’s not rocket science to tell that he was a man who exploited the experiences of a nineteen-year-old, struggling girl because he found a weird sacredness to her life and struggle. I also wanted to make a quick note of how beautiful this novel was. Being that it was the last novel of Clarice Lispector published after her death, this novel is a monument of how talented she truly was. To finish off this already long blog post, I hope you all take this to heart even if it is a hard pill to swallow: YOU are the only person who can help you. That was something my brother once said to me in a time of need and it really opened my eyes. Yes, it’s hard and yes it’s painful, but I cannot sit idly as I watch life unfold negatively. You have the power to cultivate what you want and need. You have the power to control what you can control. It’s all up to perception! (that was my best take on being a philosopher lol).

Here is my question: What does the strawberry season mean? What is it symbolic of? Is it symbolic at all?

With Love Always,

S