Cain

by José Saramago

The history of mankind is the history of our misunderstandings with god, for he doesn’t understand us, and we don’t understand him.

An unquestionably irreverent book (God’s a big boy; He can take it), Nobel Laureate José Saramago’s final published novel is the story of…Cain.

When Cain and Abel made their respective sacrifices to God, and God chose Abel’s of meat and dismissed Cain’s of crops, Abel wouldn’t let Cain live it down. So Cain killed him in his humiliation, partially because he lacked the power to kill God Himself. God then punished Cain with immortality. Cain roamed the earth, unhinged from time, and found himself mixed with Babylon, Sodom, Lillith, Noah, Abraham and others, as well as God and angels along the way.

Cain’s position in relation to God’s is both argumentative and incredulous, as he has difficulty fathoming the cruelty God displayed to his people, killing them left and right (Sodom, Jericho, Babylon, the Flood, etc.) and demanding horrific sacrifice (Abraham sacrificing his son, Isaac; Job, with the world at his feet, losing pretty much everything out of God’s bet with Satan; Adam and Eve, searching for knowledge and eating of the tree, forced out of paradise to toil and grovel; you get the picture).

Irreverent is a strong word, but the book focuses on some of the problems with the parables that people hold dear, examining them in both sarcastic and logical light, and eventually leaves readers with something to think about. Devout Christians, it may be best to just pass this one by; it’s not really for you.

It should be mentioned that this e-book, and to my understanding, the author in general, uses a style that plays fast and loose with capitalization and punctuation and makes copious use of run-on sentences and walls of text. For once, this is not Amazon’s fault for not proofreading, but intentional style.

For example, the following is a select part of a conversation between God and Cain who are  speaking of Job:

“…your wager with satan brought him poverty and made of his body a running sore, at least that was how he was when I left the land of uz, Not any more, cain, not any more, his skin has healed completely and his herds and flocks have doubled, now he has fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand asses, And how did he manage that, He bowed to my authority, he recognized that my power is absolute, limitless, that the only person I have to account to is myself, that I never have to concern myself with considerations of a personal nature, and that I am endowed, let me say this to you now, with a conscience so flexible that it agrees with whatever I do…”

Cain takes dead aim at many events of the Old Testament, but alters the point of view from what is presented in the Bible. While it certainly can be viewed as disrespectful, my personal take on it isn’t so much an author shaking his fist at God, but more an author illuminating issues with the stories and intent of the stories as they’re presented. It’s more exploratory than mocking, but just the act of contradicting the word of God some will find challenging; you can choose to read it from either perspective. Just be warned, then give it a spin.

“Contrary to popular belief, the future is already written, it’s just that we don’t know how to read the page it’s written on.”

3+ (4-)