Blindness takes on a wide-range of social ills: over-population, the government’s apathy toward the middle class, the relationship between selfishness and power, and how individual shortsightedness clouds judgment.
Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Jose Saramago uses the loss of sight as a metaphor to explain how the social order, if it is to survive, must be rooted in common sense.
A random driver, stopped in the middle of traffic, becomes the first casualty of this unexplainable and sudden phenomenon.
His blindness makes no sense. It just happened. Then the blindness goes viral. One by one, every man, woman and child is stricken by the syndrome; the victim sees not darkness, but a cloud of whiteness.
In a panic, the government decides to quarantine anyone stricken with the blindness or who has had contact with a blind person.
“Blindness isn’t something that can be caught just by a blind man looking at some who is not. Blindness is a private matter between a person and the eyes with which he or she was born,” writes Saramago.
The main characters are identified simply as the first blind man, the doctor, his wife, the boy with the squint, the girl with dark glasses, the man with the black patch over his eye, and the other woman.
“We’re so remote from the world that any day now, we shall no longer know who we are, or even remember our names,” writes Saramago.
The group of seven discovers existing is a challenge with food, hygiene, and shelter becoming the focus in their quarantined lives.
However, to the group of seven’s advantage, the doctor’s wife has not lost her sight. “You do not know. You cannot know, what it is means to have eyes in a world in which everyone else is blind,” the doctor’s wife says as she struggles to help the group carry on.
The dialogue among the group is phrased in allegorical double-meanings as they attempt to give a reason for their sudden blindness and pursue efforts to stay alive. “The difficult thing isn’t living with other people, it’s understanding them,” writes Saramago.
Eventually, the blindness spread throughout the entire city.
Saramago describes the blind city-dwellers as “simple, sexless forms, vague shapes, shadows losing themselves in the half-light. They fade into the surrounding light, and it is the light which does not allow them to see.”
Saramago uses metaphorical language. “To be blind is not the same as being dead. Yes, but to be dead is to be blind.” He is saying as long as a person is alive, they should strive for meaning, “If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.”
This novel is difficult to read and comprehend at some points; however, it grows on you as you learn how to live and understand what Blindness means. Interpreting the tragedy, Saramago writes, “Illnesses may differ from one person to another, but what is really killing us now is blindness.” He adds, “It even used to be said here is no such thing as blindness, only blind people. When the experience of time has taught us nothing other than that there are no blind people, but only blindness.”
Juan’s Book Review
