Pereirra--he himself being widowed--spends much of his adult life thinking of death, feeling remorseful of his present and past. A constant obsession with the past makes Pereira
indifferent to the present until “it seems to [him] that the whole world is
dead or on the point of death” (Tabucchi 11). In making the reader aware of Pereira's obsession with death, Tabucchi sets up a stark contrast between Pereira and his mentee Rossi, who is first introduced as possessing an interest not in death but in life. Pereira senses Monteiro
Rossi’s political enthusiasm, but attempts to stifle it. But Rossi's political views take on a strength incomparable to Pereira’s
censorship. Even Marta challenges Pereira’s complacency by
instructing him to “do something about it”--it being his sensible unhappiness. As writers, both characters have
responsibilities to print the truth, but Tabucchi instills within each of them
different definitions of responsibility. As Pereira tells Rossi, “journalism nowadays
in Portugal has no place for either irresponsibility or troublemaking”
(Tabucchi 33). Yet Pereira says this because, as the reader comes to find, he experiences
an incongruity between what he says and what he thinks—an incongruity
conditioned by the political censorship he experiences as a writer and an
incongruity that Pereira himself wishes to execute by printing the truth.
The view of death is what vastly separates Rossi and Pereira. Rossi being young cannot thing of death and is fearless. While Pereira is constantly aware of death due to his age. Also he is shown to be quite fearful and is made uneasy in very reasonable situations
ReplyDeleteI would say that Pereira is more concerned with freedom, especially freedom of the press than he is with death. It is true that he is fixed on the idea of "early obituaries" but one must look at the content of the obituaries instead of the fact that they are obituaries and therefore associated with death. The main issue with the obituaries is that Rossi writes them about pro war and pro fascism writers and openly criticizes their beliefs and actions. This scares Pereira and causes him to declare the submissions unpublishable. Pereira is instead concerned with obituaries that will not harm his or the newspaper's reputation. This is one of the major themes of the story because his is unknowingly censoring Rossi and himself, despite his strong desire for freedom of the press.
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