Life and Death in The Hour of the Star

The Hour of the Star is not your ordinary novel but regardless, I didn’t mind reading it.

No one in Macabéa’s life, including the writer of her story, was very kind to her. I kept forgetting that the author was supposedly in love with her because often he would say very mean things about her appearance and character. 

I think one of the themes I started to notice in this novel was the topic of life and death. What does it mean to live? Just the way the author talked about Macabéa’s life I think reflects this topic. At the start the author says “she just lives, inhaling and exhaling, inhaling and exhaling” (p.15). I interpret this to be describing how Macabéa is only fitting the definition of living because she breathes and nothing more. Death is also a significant topic in this novel. Lying on the street, Macabéa is dying. But instead of being scared of death there is almost this acceptance and enlightenment, “She thought, today is the first day of my life: I was born” (p. 71). Macabéa is described to become more and more herself. She basically has this sudden realization that she is alive and that she is as she repeats “I am”. Maybe once we die we feel our existence stronger than we ever have when we were living. “I don’t think she’s going to die because she wants to live so much” (p.74). I find this sad because only at the end of her life does she realize she wants to live. 

Also interesting to me was that the novel mentioned God quite a bit. The author had said that “God belongs to those who manage to get him” (p.18). Macabéa didn’t think about God the author describes that “since there wasn’t anyone to answer she herself seemed to have answered: that’s how it is because thats how it is. Is there another answer in the world? If anyone knows a better one speak up and tell me, I’ve been waiting for years” (p. 18). I think we can see how the author has questions on why things are the way that they are. I don’t think he believes the answer is God and rather that the answer is that life is that way because it is. At one point Macabéa has a (what I would describe as some type of) spiritual awakening yet this doesn’t mean she believes in God now. Instead it’s something she can’t even explain “you can’t tell everything because the everything is a hollow nothing” (p.54). 

As I read the last words of this novel, I couldn’t help feeling a little unsatisfied. Even after analyzing the themes I still don’t know what the message of this novel is. Is it that nothing matters? Or is it that everything matters?

Question: What was your main takeaway from this novel? What do you think the message on life and death is that the novel wants to send?