Main Article Content
Abstract
As a political moralist, Jose Saramago, the Portuguese novelist has his own convictions and value system. Extremely prolific and talented, he has proved himself in all areas of literature like essay, drama, short story, and novel. He was the first Portuguese novelist who bagged the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998. Saramago has a vision and philosophy. His vision and philosophy are clearly articulated through his narratives and characters. Saramago considers his philosophy as his own Gospel truth. In his novels, he tries to retain the qualities of love and compassion for humanity. In that sense, Saramago’s Jesus in his Gospel according to Jesus Christ is a humanitarian figure and He enjoys his own human actions without the divine touch of God. Instead of resembling a loyal and very obedient son in the Canonical Gospels, Saramago’s Jesus becomes an opposing and contradictory figure in his Gospel. Saramago’s Jesus protests against God the father, a powerful hierarchy in the Gospel, and He wants his father to be merciful and more kind to humankind. Moreover, Saramago is trying to exhibit a humanist philosophy in his novels. For him, sin and ignorance are part and parcel of human life. Saramago’s main concern is to humanize the circumstances and people. In order to represent them as more humane and caring, he portrays his characters as sinful and fallible. Sin according to Saramago is a human activity and it is sometimes a violation of the rituals and the predictions of the society. Saramago questions the inhumanity and it becomes a colonial encounter for him to create a binary between sin and virtue and between a sinner and saint.