2. The Cave addresses themes of city and countryside, nature and artificiality, most notably in the descriptions of The Center as compared to those of Cipriano's house. Does your community more closely resemble The Center or the rural area around it? Has mass marketing affected the way you live?
3. Life at The Center is driven by customer surveys, hierarchies, and rigorously enforced regulations. Advertising slogans replace wise proverbs, and curiosity is discouraged. What is the true source of The Center's malevolence? Who is responsible for its creation and expansion?
4. Marta's imminent child and Cipriano's wistful comments regarding the pottery becoming a family business indicate the multigenerational thread of The Cave. What is the significance of this thread? What does the pottery represent to Cipriano in terms of posterity? What do you predict your aspirations will be when you reach Cipriano's stage of life? Do finances enhance or interfere with the use of your innate talents?
5. Marçal undergoes perhaps the most extensive transformation of all in The Cave. In what way do his contentious parents and his early bouts of competitiveness with Cipriano shape the storytelling? How does Marta cope with her conflicting loyalties?
6. How are creativity and profit reconciled in contemporary economics? Do you believe that today's artisans fare better or worse than their predecessors a generation ago?
7. Discuss Cipriano's choice of characters for the figurines: a nurse, an Alaskan, a bearded Assyrian, a mandarin, and a clown, and a jester. How do they complement each other? What does this assortment indicate about its creator?
8. The Center takes on a God-like role in the lives of its inhabitants and vendors. How does its power compare to that exercised by Cipriano when he must determine which figurines are defective and which ones are acceptable?
9. What is Found's role in the novel? How does his canine perception of the world measure up to reality? What does his new family find in him?
10. What do the novel's primary characters hope for? What keeps Isaura and Cipriano apart? What finally unites them?
11. The Cave bears several hallmarks of Saramago's literary form: lines of dialogue are not differentiated with quotation marks, paragraphs might unfold over several pages, and innocuous details take center stage in the midst of suspense. In what way do these elements enhance the believability of Saramago's fiction?
12. Envisioning Saramago's novels as one continuum, in what way does The Cave respond to his previous characters and scenarios?
13. Did your attitude toward Cipriano shift throughout the novel? What did you make of him at first?
14. The novel ends with the family's reunion and liberating departure. Where do you imagine they are going? What would their version of idyllic living be like?
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About the Author
JOSÉ SARAMAGO (1922–2010) was the author of many novels, among them Blindness, All the Names, Baltasar and Blimunda, and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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