Blindness
Blindness is also this, to live in a world where all hope is gone. (188)
Jose Saramago's Blindness describes what happens when, for no clear reason, everyone goes blind. This blindness reaches all but one character in the novel and is apparently spread through contact. In response to the spreading blindness, the government quarantines those who have already gone blind as well as those who have been exposed to the blind. The novel follows one particular group that has been quarantined in an abandoned mental institution, where they have no one to help them (except one woman who lied about being blind to stay with her husband and who cannot let the others know that she can see for fear of being abused or made a slave) and only sporadic and insufficient deliveries of food. With no clear leadership, no way to fix things or clean their surroundings, and no supplies with which to take care of themselves and the institution, the place quickly becomes a disgusting mess that is run by whoever can control the food.
Blindness is bleak, depressing, and even, at times, horrific. It forces the reader to experience the world of the characters (all but one of whom have mysteriously gone blind) as they deal with their captivity and their blindness. It is a difficult book to read--partly because of its style, which reinforces in its long paragraphs and unclear delineation of dialogue the claustrophobia and confusion of the situation, and partly because of its content, which includes blood, shit, death (from starvation, illness, injury, and murder), and rape.
In the world of the novel, humanity is but a thin layer of decency and civility laid over untold depths of savagery. And this decency is, it seems, enforced solely by the knowledge that, in the normal world, you are always seen by others and held accountable. In a world where everyone is blind, however, no one can see you shit in the hallway, steal other people's food, or even kill. No one knows who you are. In this world of blindness to human identity, anything goes. As one character says, "Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are . . . People, too, no one will be there to see them" (114). If this is true, then what people really are is selfish, violent, and, ultimately, alone.
In the end, I kept reading this book, which was so hard and so painful, not just because of my own compulsion to finish a book I've begun, not just because it is masterfully written and crafted, but because I was holding out hope for hope. I was waiting for the book to provide some glimmer of hope in all of its horror. But this is the best it can provide in the way of hope:The only miracle we can perform is to go on living, said the woman, to preserve the fragility of life from day to day, as if it were blind and did not know where to go, and perhaps it is like that, perhaps it really does not know, it placed itself in our hands, after giving us intelligence, and this is what we have made of it. (266)
And here is my biggest (and really my only) problem with Blindness. It is a book that is about what it means to be human, about what makes life worth living, and about what has gone wrong in the world; however, it is a book that, in my opinion, thinks too little of people and the possibilities that still exist for decency, consideration of others, and love.
In the end, this book, well-written as it is, is just too cynical for me.
Jose Saramago's Blindness describes what happens when, for no clear reason, everyone goes blind. This blindness reaches all but one character in the novel and is apparently spread through contact. In response to the spreading blindness, the government quarantines those who have already gone blind as well as those who have been exposed to the blind. The novel follows one particular group that has been quarantined in an abandoned mental institution, where they have no one to help them (except one woman who lied about being blind to stay with her husband and who cannot let the others know that she can see for fear of being abused or made a slave) and only sporadic and insufficient deliveries of food. With no clear leadership, no way to fix things or clean their surroundings, and no supplies with which to take care of themselves and the institution, the place quickly becomes a disgusting mess that is run by whoever can control the food.
Blindness is bleak, depressing, and even, at times, horrific. It forces the reader to experience the world of the characters (all but one of whom have mysteriously gone blind) as they deal with their captivity and their blindness. It is a difficult book to read--partly because of its style, which reinforces in its long paragraphs and unclear delineation of dialogue the claustrophobia and confusion of the situation, and partly because of its content, which includes blood, shit, death (from starvation, illness, injury, and murder), and rape.
In the world of the novel, humanity is but a thin layer of decency and civility laid over untold depths of savagery. And this decency is, it seems, enforced solely by the knowledge that, in the normal world, you are always seen by others and held accountable. In a world where everyone is blind, however, no one can see you shit in the hallway, steal other people's food, or even kill. No one knows who you are. In this world of blindness to human identity, anything goes. As one character says, "Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are . . . People, too, no one will be there to see them" (114). If this is true, then what people really are is selfish, violent, and, ultimately, alone.
In the end, I kept reading this book, which was so hard and so painful, not just because of my own compulsion to finish a book I've begun, not just because it is masterfully written and crafted, but because I was holding out hope for hope. I was waiting for the book to provide some glimmer of hope in all of its horror. But this is the best it can provide in the way of hope:The only miracle we can perform is to go on living, said the woman, to preserve the fragility of life from day to day, as if it were blind and did not know where to go, and perhaps it is like that, perhaps it really does not know, it placed itself in our hands, after giving us intelligence, and this is what we have made of it. (266)
And here is my biggest (and really my only) problem with Blindness. It is a book that is about what it means to be human, about what makes life worth living, and about what has gone wrong in the world; however, it is a book that, in my opinion, thinks too little of people and the possibilities that still exist for decency, consideration of others, and love.
In the end, this book, well-written as it is, is just too cynical for me.