In the Spanish making machine, the narrative is constructed from the point of
view of the narrator, António Jorge Silva, at the moment when he is abandoned
by his children after his wife's death. In order to preserve identity, the old man
begins to narrate his memories and listen to the memories of other old men who
are in the asylum in the same situation as he, the other "Silvas". Thus, this paper
aims to analyze the role of memory in the novel the machine to make Spaniards
of Valter Hugo Mãe. To do so, we start with the following research question: to
what extent individual memory reflects in a set of collective memories of
experiences of the elderly in the home? To answer this question, we carried out
a research whose general objective is: to analyze the role of memory in the
narrative of Valter Hugo Mãe's Spanish making machine, and its specific
objectives: to identify the role of individual memory; establish the interrelationship
between individual memory and collective memory; to point the confluence
between individual and collective memory for the reconstruction of a past
common to the characters of the novel. This research is based on Benjamin
(1987), Derrida (1997), Derrida (2001), Freud (1976), Halbwachs (2003) and
Ricouer (2007). The methodological approach used in the research was of
bibliographic character. The analysis points to the memory, in the narrative of
fiction, as a fundamental element for the understanding of a collective past.
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