The Hour of the Star

The first-person narrator, Rodrigo S. M., meditates on how life started. He doesn’t know why the universe came to be but tries to describe it as simply as possible. As a writer, he uses writing to search for answers to things he doesn’t understand. He guesses that by writing the story he wants to write he’s creating something too. He’s going to tell a story, but he has a bad toothache that will affect his writing. He has been conceptualizing a story for more than two years. He doesn’t have much money and doesn’t know who will read his work. He guesses that only someone with money would read it because a person of limited means couldn’t afford to spend the time doing so.

Rodrigo’s story idea was inspired by his encounter with a northeastern girl “on a street in Rio de Janeiro” (4). He doesn’t know the girl, but he too grew up in the northeast. He doesn’t think his story will be complicated and has no interest in using fancy language to write it. However, he has decided that he doesn’t pity his character and wants her story to be cold. His main goal is to show her life on the page. His character, Macabéa, is a virgin whom no one likes, wants, or cares about.

Rodrigo tries to prepare his body to write. He used to prepare his spirit too. Now he just thinks about the words he might use. He wants to use plain language because Macabéa is a plain girl. She’s from Alagoas but now lives in Rio, where she works as a typist. Rodrigo stops thinking about Macabéa to consider himself for a moment. The more he writes, the closer he comes to discovering his destiny. Sometimes he wonders if he’s a monster. Macabéa, however, doesn’t know herself at all. Therefore, her story won’t be ornate or refined. However, Rodrigo still isn’t sure how her story will end or if he should outline it first. Most of what he writes isn’t intellectual and comes from his body.

Rodrigo knows that he’s procrastinating. He admits that he’s afraid to start writing because his story seems too simple. However, he wants to write about reality because he often has difficulty understanding it. He still doesn’t understand why he writes at all. He usually isn’t interested in stories and prefers to let the language and form create the substance.

Rodrigo decides to focus on Macabéa again. She’s similar to him in that they both like to live in the present. Rodrigo stops writing about Macabéa again, once more overcome with fear at trying to record her story. Writing is always difficult, but he’s finding it particularly difficult to write about Macabéa. The only thing he knows for sure about her story is that it will present a real individual as alive as he is. However, he’s afraid that the story might be sad. Perhaps, he tells himself, he’ll write a happier story after finishing Macabéa’s story.

Rodrigo feels tired. He often overtires himself in anticipation of writing about Macabéa. He reminds himself that he has no reason to worry about writing her story. However, he’s convinced that doing so will change him.

Rodrigo sits back down to write. He imagines a white butterfly and then imagines Macabéa getting married. However, he doesn’t know whether she’ll marry. He can control her fate but still isn’t sure why he wants to write about a northeastern girl on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. The only reason he writes at all is that he has no other purpose in life.

Rodrigo knows almost everything about Macabéa because she lives inside him. He remembers a story about an old man hanging onto a young man’s neck and imagines Macabéa attached to him in the same way. He can’t decide what should happen to her, but he has no choice but to record her story. He imagines her looking at herself in the mirror and seeing his face. She isn’t attractive and feels ashamed of her body. He tells himself that the only way he can write about her is if he first gets ahold of himself. He locks himself in a small cubbyhole, feeds himself on fruits and Coke, and deprives himself of other literature in order to focus on writing Macabéa.

Rodrigo tries to get into the story. Macabéa lives in a tiny apartment and sleeps in cheap, stained underwear. She’s sick but doesn’t have a blanket and curls into the fetal position to stay warm at night. Rodrigo remembers his own maladies; his toothache still hasn’t gone away. He guesses that he’ll add a sickly violinist to Macabéa’s story. He decided to include these details before he started writing the story because the story has little content.

Macabéa’s primary character trait is her incompetence. Unlike the narrator, she lacks a sense of her own emptiness or an understanding of the world. She works as a typist for Mr. Raimundo Silveira and often makes mistakes in her work. Her coworker, Glória, is more skilled. One day, after Raimundo threatens to fire Macabéa if she doesn’t stop making errors, she goes into the bathroom and looks at herself in the mirror. She’s young but already looks old. She knows she’s missing something but doesn’t know what it is. She remembers her aunt telling her the story of a vampire. She wishes she could be a vampire because she’s so pale and needs color in her cheeks.

Writing about Macabéa disturbs Rodrigo. He wishes she were stronger and would react to things differently.

Macabéa stares at her giant eyes in the mirror. She feels no impulse to ask questions about herself or the world. Rodrigo doesn’t understand why. When she was young, she always apologized for existing. Her life was small and drab. It’s the same now. She smells stale and lives in a grimy apartment. She looks so unkempt that no one notices her. Rodrigo is the only person who cares about her. He decides to start by describing her early life.

Macabéa was born sick. Her parents died when she was two, and she went to live with her aunt in Maceió. Sometimes she recalls ugly memories of her aunt, who was cruel to her throughout her childhood. Many girls like her ended up working on the street, but Macabéa never considered this future because she never saw herself as a woman. She didn’t ask many questions about life because she preferred not to know things. She didn’t even understand that she was part of a society. The only thing she knew was that she came from Alagoas. Then her aunt died.

Relaying the facts of Macabéa’s life makes Rodrigo feel tired. He invented her but feels sorry for her because she’s unintelligent and a person of limited means.

Before Macabéa’s aunt died, she found Macabéa the typist job at the Lojas Americanas in Rio de Janeiro. Macabéa moved into the apartment where she now lives, which is in an old house on Acre Street. She lives with four other women: Maria da Penha, Maria Aparecida, Maria José, and Maria. Sometimes Macabéa hears a rooster in the distance. Usually, she lies in bed suffocating in the heat or shivering in the cold and feeling hungry. Her roommates aren’t often home because they have jobs too. They’re so overworked that even Macabéa’s constant coughing doesn’t keep them from sleeping.

Rodrigo is proud of himself for writing so much of Macabéa’s story. He thinks he’s figuring out how to capture her on the page. However, he still doesn’t know what she thinks about life and the soul. She doesn’t ask questions but does sometimes pray the prayers her aunt taught her even though she doesn’t believe in God. She’s a quiet person who mostly accepts things as they are. Sometimes she wakes up afraid, convinced that her aunt is coming to punish her. Macabéa generally feels sad. Rodrigo wishes he could help her but doesn’t think he can make things better for her. She has a neurosis stemming from the war. She allows herself only small luxuries, like going to the movies on payday or painting her fingernails. Every so often, she wakes up and wonders who and where she is. She reminds herself and feels better.