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CONVERSATION WITH WARDROBE MAN

Conversa Com O Homem Roupeiro ​ ​ (1975)

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In Conversation with the Wardrobe Man we are almost at the end or the very end of the path. The availability for the fight is over. The conversation begins after the losing battle and with the admittedly defeated character. Exhausted. No longer eat, do not dress, do not pay rent, do not dare to go out ... jerk off. It is a number. Fits in any file, in any locker. It is available to surrender and be manipulated. Who and by whom? By and by the state, of course! Through exquisitely black humor, McEwan installs the character in a paradigmatic and perverse perspective. The utmost accountability of the State at the exact moment when that State resigns from its functions towards the citizen. The character / citizen says: I'm here, I did everything that was humanly within my power to be normal. I believed in your speech. Did not work. OK! I can't take it anymore. Now the responsibility is entirely yours. I am aware and available. Kill me! I don't need your freedom, I don't rule with it, “in fact, I now remember sometimes wanting less freedom. Parole does not pay me for food and rent. I want to be small, I don't want this noise and these people around me. I want to be away from it all in the dark. ” Forget about me.

 

Rui Madeira