FOLLOWING A HETERONYM'S INNUMERABLE SELVES IN JOSÉ SARAMAGO'S THE YEAR OF THE DEATH OF RICARDO REIS.

José Saramago's 'The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis' deals with an existential confrontation of the human subject who strives to impart meaning to a crucialjuncture in his life. The coinciding occasion of the death of Fernando Pessoa and his heteronym's return to the place of his origin underlines an existential experience wherein, rather than discovering definitive answers, Ricardo Reis undergoes a multiplicity of experience which is productive of a body constructed by innumerable, partitive selves. This paper attempts to explore the series of incidents Reis encounters independently after the death of his creator from the perspective of the thematic paradigm of innumerability. It would be argued that Reis 's belief that he is innumerable people could be specifically contextualizedwith respect to the understanding of his character that evolves out of the interconnectivity between the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, his alter ego Ricardo Reis, and existential episodes involving the heteronym as imagined by Saramago. It becomes a threefold human struggle, charged with significance and presented through a paradigmatically chosen pattern of signifying images revealing the complexity of his existential condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]