The Cave of Saramago between sacred and profane

or mythical-ideological impact colonial in modernity

Abstract

This paper will analyze the novel The Cave, by José Saramago (2000), observing the conflicts of the narrative from the mythical-ideological perspective. In order to expose the trajectory of the main character, Cipriano Algor, we will emphasize the economic difficulty and the advancement of globalization as a crisis of cultural identity of neocolonial brands in the modern world, and so we will base this first objective on the critical precepts established by Bhabha (2013) and Eagleton (1998). We intend to provide the clues that reveal the economic center as the paradise of capitalist modernity, mainly through the construction of marketing interests that invade this idyllic place, according to Eliade (2019) and Barthes (2001). Finally, we aim to explain the conflict between Cipriano Algor and the Center in the face of the impact that this contact of differences reveals the fate of man in the globalized world, because the adverse relationship that is being manifested in the literary plot becomes increasingly tense due to studies of Hall (2020), the invention of identity in search of finding one’s own belonging to reality.