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Jose’s Saramago’s writing style was something that at first threw me off. He writes with little punctuation and page long sentences aren’t surprising. “Speech runs on in a sprawling mess, How does that work, By separating each statement with a comma and a capital, Oh I see, It takes a while to get used to. I initially thought it was clever; none of the characters are named, either, merely referred to by their position - the first man, the doctor's wife, the man with the black eye-patch, and so on - and the combination of the two is intensely claustrophobic. You never quite feel you can see what's going on, you feel that your viewpoint is constrained - in fact, you feel partially blind.” I disagree with his statement. While perplexing to some readers, Saramago's unabashed style gives the feeling of a firsthand account of the events, adding to the realism and tension of the novel. It provides a flowing rhythm similar to an oral dialogue. Not only the dialogue, but also the character’s thought process is also written in this style.
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