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Prisoners of Plot in José Saramago’s The Cave
- Philosophy and Literature
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 38, Number 2, October 2014
- pp. 332-349
- 10.1353/phl.2014.0050
- Article
- Additional Information
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What do god, a novelist, craftsmen, and capitalist monopolies have in common? José Saramago’s The Cave engages with this question in a way that recalls Plato’s Republic and its notion of mimesis: the mortal agents imitate divinity by wielding absolute power over products—a novel, ceramic dolls, a commercial-cum-residential center—that imprison their denizens in illusory worlds. The Cave contains a cave and various cave-like constructions that compound the prevailing sense of control and entrapment. Freedom from The Cave and its coercive power requires finishing and exiting the novel.