Saramago's commitment to Marxism inserts him into an ideological frame of reference that can be considered materialist in essence. However, rather than developing a neorealist trend that renders a materialist conception of history into literature, Saramago's novels tend to expand on the basic structure of "magical realism," whereby absurd events are placed in plots that occur inside a world governed by realistic laws. This chapter analyzes whether there is a contradiction between historical materialism and magical realism in Saramago's novels, more specifically by sustaining that his usage of allegories is never fully immune to the deterministic conditions of societies that can be identified in the light of a materialist conception of history.