Ariadne's thread in All the names

by Jos Saramago

Paloma Esteves Laitano

Brazil
an edifice with numberless winding passages and
turnings opening into one another, and seeming
to have neither beginning nor end
(Thomas Bulfinch)
Ariadnes thread
=
Womans record
 The labyrinth as a space
Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths
Cemetery
installation of five massive floor-to-ceiling
shelves placed immediately behind the
clerks, the central bank of shelves being set
farther back, one end almost touching the
Registrars large chair, the ends of the two
sets of shelves along the side walls nearly
flush with the counter, and the other two
located, so to speak, amidships. Considered
monumental and superhuman by everyone
who sees them these constructions extend
far into the interior of the building, farther
than the eye can see, and at a certain point
darkness takes over []. These are the
selves that carry the weight of the living.
The dead, or, rather, their papers, are
located still father inside []
(SARAMAGO, p.4)
The unknown
woman

School

Her house

Her parents house

One might ask why Senhor Jos needs a hundred-yard-long-piece of string if
the length of the Central Registry, despite successive extensions, is no more
than eighty. [] here, where the living and the dead share the same space,
sometimes, in order to find one of them, you have to make a lot of twists and
turns, you have to skirt round mountains of bundles, columns of files, piles of
cards, thickets of ancient remains [], yards and yards of string will have to be
unravelled, left behind, like a sinuous, subtle trail traced in the dust, there is
no other way of finding your way back. (SARAMAGO, p.174)
the straight lines in a labyrinth of corridors, theyre constantly breaking
off, changing direction, you walk around a grave and suddenly you dont
know where you are (SARAMAGO, p.237)
Ariadnes thread
=
Womans record

Theseus
=
Senhor Jos
In the end, we always arrive at the
place where we are expected.
Book of Itineraries