The Book of Disquiet

Soares’s rented room on the Rua dos Douradores is a symbol of isolation. Soares lives in this room by himself. It is a squalid space with “cracked walls” and overlooks “the poverty of the same old downtown streets below” (37). Soares asserts that this shabby environment doesn’t bother him, but he often remarks on how trapped he feels in this space. When he is home, he is most often lying on his bed and daydreaming or standing at the window and looking out at the city below. The “fourth-floor room overlook[s] infinity, in the viable intimacy of the falling evening” (348). Soares likes that he can look out and see Lisbon, but the repeated images of him cloistered in his room convey his separation from this same society. He lacks consistent social engagement outside the context of the office and lacks stimulation outside the context of his own wandering mind. The scenes set in this room illustrate how alone Soares is: “Me in this fourth-floor room, interrogating life!, Saying what souls feel!, writing prose like a genius or a famous author!” (16). Soares notes the simultaneous luxury and absurdity of his intense solitude in this moment. At times his aloneness feeds him, while at other times it depletes him.

Soares’s office is a symbol of social entrapment. Soares must go to the office to work because he must pay his bills and support himself. However, the work bores him and the setting oppresses him. Soares is often desperate to escape the office as much as he is desperate to escape “the fourth floor [rented room] on the Rua dos Douradores” (16). The office setting represents his proverbial societal debt. He would choose not to work if he didn’t have to, but wouldn’t be able to finance his artistic life if he didn’t. He would rather quit his job and suffer the hazards, but also knows he would miss his bookkeeping responsibilities and his coworkers if he were to leave. He is attached to the structure of his office days despite how tedious, meaningless, and disillusioning they can be.