Death with Interruptions: The Importance of Death

I was very excited to read “Death with Interruptions” since I thought the idea of imagining a world without death was so fascinating. This book is obviously fictionalized, but many aspects of it feel very realistic. Death is such a complex idea that is imagined very differently across various individuals, cultures, and religions. For myself and I’m sure many others, the initial idea of no death sounds amazing since we as humans are always doing our best to avoid it. However, after reading this book and deeply reflecting on what the realistic implications of no death would be, it has made me realize how important death is. The absence of death would result in overcrowding of hospitals, funeral homes shutting down, and religions and philosophy having no purpose. One of the most important functions of death is to end suffering. As we saw with the queen mother, for example, the absence of death leaves people to be constantly suffering and living a poor quality of life. Personally, this book has made me more comfortable with and accepting of the idea of death since I realized how important it is for humans. The idea of death still induces feelings of anxiety for me, but I can now appreciate its significance. 

I was completely drawn into the book in the very beginning, but then I started to get lost with the very philosophical aspects and extremely long sentences. The dialogue having no quotation marks and being all in the same sentence made it very confusing, but after watching the lecture, I thought it was interesting that Saramago’s writing is similar to that of death’s. After death is personified, I found the book to pick up a little bit and could feel myself getting more into it. I had never thought of death as a thing, let alone a person, so reading about death as a female woman was an interesting change of perspective. After death becomes more intrigued with the cellist and still, “the following day, no one died” (p. 238), as stated at the very beginning of the book, I was left feeling confused. So death is now a human who has feelings and actually sleeps? It appears that no one is dying again, so what is happening?? What is going to happen in the future?? On one hand, ending the book by circling back to the same idea that started the book gives a sense of completeness. However, it leaves many questions unanswered and doesn’t solve the problems that the absence of death causes. 

My question for discussion is “why do you think death takes on the form of a female woman? What does this add to our understanding of the book?”.