Jose Saramago was one of the most significant writers of the modern novel.
Blindness is a haunting story written with great skill and authority.
The characters are peculiar, and yet the book is contemporary and bravely depicts the human condition.
The story reads like one of Dante's apocalyptic fables.
However, Saramago's purgatory is rooted in real life.
The interest of the story centers on an unnamed town whose citizens, bar one, who are afflicted by blindness.
We follow the path of "the first blind man" (no one has a name in Blindness, and even the city is not identified) as he loses his eyesight while driving his car.
Distraught, the first blind man, is comforted by a stranger.
The Good Samaritan, who helps him get home, eventually steals his car.
However, "the thief" soon loses his eyesight.
They later meet at the doctor's surgery and the 'the first blind man' rages at 'the thief' for stealing his car.
But, 'the thief' responds: 'If you think you're going to get away with this, then you're mistaken, all right, I stole your car, but you stole my eyesight, so who's the bigger thief.
' Thus with everyone both a victim and a culprit, the carnage of the blind begins.
The doctor who exams 'the first blind man' could find no cause or lesion for his blindness.
"Who would have believed it? Seen merely at a glance, the man's eyes seem healthy, the iris looks bright, luminous, the sclera white, as compact as porcelain.
' Later, even the doctor succumbs to the spreading epidemic of blindness.
Soon almost, the entire city becomes blind.
The Minister of Health recommends quarantine for all those who were blind or had been in contact with them until a cure is found.
From this environment of the blind leading the blind a tragedy unfolds where the world becomes a dangerous place, a 'hell of hells' where even soldiers fear the blind citizens.
With their blindness, the citizens had transported war from the field to their streets, with man more fearsome than a beast.
It is at this point that the reader may flinch, and even turn away in disgust at the carnage that unfolds.
The dark streets are covered in filth; there is no food or running water; the dead lie unburied: the city is teeming with scavengers; there are multiple accidents with planes plunging from the sky because the pilots are blind.
There seem to be no limits to the misfortune of the blind.
However, the story's magnificence transcends the evil, and even turns it into a light that illuminates the universal tragedy of ignorance.
At the end of the book one of the characters asks: 'Why did we become blind, I don't know, perhaps one day we'll find out, Do you want me to tell you what I think, Yes, do, I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.
' None of the tragic events in the book is superfluous, and they show that human dignity is insulted every day by the corrupters of the truth in our world.
Sadly, these are the ones that hardly make an appearance in the book.
In Saramago's refreshing but tragic fantasy is the truth, and in his damnation there is a grudging respect for man's instincts and will to survive, and even thrive.
The strangest passage in Blindness happens when the inmates manage to escape from the asylum after a battle between two gangs of blind people: 'Say to a blind man, you're free, open the door that was separating him from the world, Go, you are free, we tell him once more, and he does not go, he has remained motionless there in the middle of the road, he and the others, they are terrified, they do not know where to go, the fact is that there is no comparison between living in a rational labyrinth, which is, by definition, a mental asylum and venturing forth, without a guiding hand or a dog leash, into the demented labyrinth of the city, where memory serves no purpose.
' Blindness belongs to many, and what Saramago is urging us to do is to strike a match as an escape from the disease and pathology of darkness.
Blindness is masterfully written-an incredible book that surpasses all of Saramago's other works.
Blindness is a haunting story written with great skill and authority.
The characters are peculiar, and yet the book is contemporary and bravely depicts the human condition.
The story reads like one of Dante's apocalyptic fables.
However, Saramago's purgatory is rooted in real life.
The interest of the story centers on an unnamed town whose citizens, bar one, who are afflicted by blindness.
We follow the path of "the first blind man" (no one has a name in Blindness, and even the city is not identified) as he loses his eyesight while driving his car.
Distraught, the first blind man, is comforted by a stranger.
The Good Samaritan, who helps him get home, eventually steals his car.
However, "the thief" soon loses his eyesight.
They later meet at the doctor's surgery and the 'the first blind man' rages at 'the thief' for stealing his car.
But, 'the thief' responds: 'If you think you're going to get away with this, then you're mistaken, all right, I stole your car, but you stole my eyesight, so who's the bigger thief.
' Thus with everyone both a victim and a culprit, the carnage of the blind begins.
The doctor who exams 'the first blind man' could find no cause or lesion for his blindness.
"Who would have believed it? Seen merely at a glance, the man's eyes seem healthy, the iris looks bright, luminous, the sclera white, as compact as porcelain.
' Later, even the doctor succumbs to the spreading epidemic of blindness.
Soon almost, the entire city becomes blind.
The Minister of Health recommends quarantine for all those who were blind or had been in contact with them until a cure is found.
From this environment of the blind leading the blind a tragedy unfolds where the world becomes a dangerous place, a 'hell of hells' where even soldiers fear the blind citizens.
With their blindness, the citizens had transported war from the field to their streets, with man more fearsome than a beast.
It is at this point that the reader may flinch, and even turn away in disgust at the carnage that unfolds.
The dark streets are covered in filth; there is no food or running water; the dead lie unburied: the city is teeming with scavengers; there are multiple accidents with planes plunging from the sky because the pilots are blind.
There seem to be no limits to the misfortune of the blind.
However, the story's magnificence transcends the evil, and even turns it into a light that illuminates the universal tragedy of ignorance.
At the end of the book one of the characters asks: 'Why did we become blind, I don't know, perhaps one day we'll find out, Do you want me to tell you what I think, Yes, do, I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.
' None of the tragic events in the book is superfluous, and they show that human dignity is insulted every day by the corrupters of the truth in our world.
Sadly, these are the ones that hardly make an appearance in the book.
In Saramago's refreshing but tragic fantasy is the truth, and in his damnation there is a grudging respect for man's instincts and will to survive, and even thrive.
The strangest passage in Blindness happens when the inmates manage to escape from the asylum after a battle between two gangs of blind people: 'Say to a blind man, you're free, open the door that was separating him from the world, Go, you are free, we tell him once more, and he does not go, he has remained motionless there in the middle of the road, he and the others, they are terrified, they do not know where to go, the fact is that there is no comparison between living in a rational labyrinth, which is, by definition, a mental asylum and venturing forth, without a guiding hand or a dog leash, into the demented labyrinth of the city, where memory serves no purpose.
' Blindness belongs to many, and what Saramago is urging us to do is to strike a match as an escape from the disease and pathology of darkness.
Blindness is masterfully written-an incredible book that surpasses all of Saramago's other works.
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