Saramago, José "Blindness"

1998

(Portuguese title: O Ensaio sobre a Cegueira) - 1995

 

Reviewed by Marianne
from Let's Read

This is my second book by this wonderful author. Same as "Cain", this book is totally captivating.

We get no information about the city or even the country where this takes place. However, this is a dystopian novel and they usually could take place anywhere. We never know what will happen if a catastrophe - or in this case an epidemic - strikes us.

In this book, the people go completely mad. Everyone goes blind one after the other and everyone is scared. That doesn't mean they all react in the same way. There are those who stick together and help others and other who live according to the motto "help yourself so God will help you". It wouldn't even be fair to the animals to say they behave like them because animals at least only take what they need.

Both the sentences and the paragraphs in this book are very long, there is hardly a place where you can stop. But that makes it even more compelling, you have the feeling you are stuck in the book just the way the blind people are stuck in their destiny. A good way to emphasize the situation.

None of the characters have a name. They are just called "the first blind man" or "the doctor's wife" and "the girl with the dark glasses". Again, this makes it easier for us to identify with them, I guess. Anyone could be one of the guys or one of the girls.

He definitely makes it easy for us to imagine that this actually could happen. We can try to imagine how it is when you turn blind. And we can feel with the people who not only go blind but lose their life as they knew it until then.

Great novel. Like many dystopian books, a look into humanity or the lack of it.

From the back cover:

A city is struck by an epidemic of 'white blindness'. The first man to succumb sits in his car, waiting for the light to change. He is taken to an eye doctor, who does not know what to make of the phenomenon - and soon goes blind himself.

The blindness spreads, sparing no one. Authorities confine the blind to a vacant mental hospital secured by armed guards under instructions to shoot anyone trying to escape. Inside, the criminal element among the blind holds the rest captive: food rations are stolen, women are raped. The compound is set ablaze, and the blind escape into what is now a deserted city, strewn with litter and unburied corpses.

The only eyewitness to this nightmare is the doctor's wife, who faked blindness in order to join her husband in the camp. She guides seven strangers through the barren streets. The bonds within this oddly anonymous group - the doctor, the first blind man and his wife, the old man with the black eye patch, the girl with dark glasses, the boy with no mother, and the dog of tears - are as uncanny as the surrounding chaos is harrowing. Told with compassion, humor, and lyricism, Blindness is a stunning exploration of loss and disorientation in the modern world, of man's will to survive against all odds."

José Saramago "who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality" received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998.

Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.  

Original Post on "Let's Read".

Blindness and Seeing by José Saramago

I've been on a Saramago roll lately! His writing style intrigues me; and his allegorical-philosophical discourses - while they can get me a little bogged down - never fail to surprise me with his insights into human nature, even the worst of it.

After passing over Seeing many times as it happens always to be on the shelves... finally a  few months ago, I saw Blindness. All I knew is that I'd need to read Blindness before Seeing.

The books in one sentence each:

• Blindness: A city is inexplicably hit by blindness - save for one woman - the blind are confined to a mental hospital where man's worst appetites rear its ugly head. 
• Seeing: Majority cast blank votes in the election; government strives to deal with this "revolt," and pinpoints that the "seeing woman" is behind this plot.  

My thoughts

I've always been intrigued by dystopian literature, though it can be a little of a downer for me so I always make sure to stagger read it. 

Blindness is a depressing read yet shows what goodness, forgiveness and strength of character can do to rise above depravity and anarchy. The scenario is simple - in an entire city of blind people, one woman remains able to see. Why? What does she do?

This enigmatic phenomenon starts off with a man who is strangely struck by blindness. He goes to his ophthalmologist to find out why ... and instead he starts off a strange epidemic of blindness in other patient, including the very doctor who seeks to cure them.

The blind are quarantined in an old mental hospital. The doctor's wife, who remains able to see, refuses to leave her husband's side and feigns blindness to be able to do so. The hospital leaves the blind to basically left to fend for themselves ... and anarchy takes over in the fight for survival. The doctor's wife arises as a natural leader.

The characters are an interesting lot and lend various perspectives to this unusual story. There is the "girl with the dark glasses" - a prostitute who turns motherly to a young boy separated from his parents. Then there is the "man with the black eye patch," who unlike everyone else, takes his blindness calmly and matter-of-a-factly and sees it as an opportunity to learn a much-needed lesson. There is also the tyrannical "Ward 3 leader," who when supplies run low and modes of payment are non-existing, demands women in exchange.

{I watched the movie (Julianne Moore?!?) and decided that this story is something best left as a book. It is much too graphic and depressing to have to watch - instead of being fodder for thought.}

* * * 

Seeing is the sequel to Blindness post-blindness. Sight is miraculously restored and election time has swung around. The whole day, very few come around to vote, explained away as a heavy rain falls. But right after the skies clear up at around 4:00 pm, people are inexplicably at the polls and extensive lines start up. And to everyone's shock, the majority of the votes cast are blank.

Government investigates, viewing this sudden surge of voters at 4:00 pm and the resulting blank ballots as a plot to overthrow the government. In the increasingly oppressive nature of this Government, there is widespread discontent yet the fear of the repercussions of communicating this. Government keeps up a semblance of normality through what is regarded as highly suspicious propaganda. Meanwhile people are questioned and start disappearing - and what results is an interesting yet precarious balance between the ruled and the rulers.

The "seeing" woman again figures in this story. She is pinpointed as the one responsible for orchestrating the casting of bank votes by mere virtue of her retaining her sight during the inexplicable blindness. A Superintendent is assigned to investigate who is responsible for this "revolution." The Superintendent, in the course of his investigations comes to see the human side of the situation, and he  becomes a dissenting voice in this silent city.

Verdict: Both must-reads! Blindness focuses on the individual at his best and worst. Seeing focuses on the government at its worst. 

{Originally posted at guiltlessreading.blogspot.com.}

Blindness by José Saramago

Blindness, by the Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, is completely different to The Double which I read last year. It’s an astonishing book. I don’t think I will ever forget it.

It’s the story of an epidemic of ‘white blindness’, which spreads across a city affecting everyone. The novel reveals just how quickly chaos descends.

It begins with the sudden blindness of a man at the wheel of his car, and though a stranger’s first impulse is to kindly drive him home - the opportunity to steal the car is irresistible. He is then taken by his wife to an eye doctor, who soon goes blind himself, and within 24 hours the others in the waiting room become blind as well. The only one not to lose her sight, inexplicably, is the doctor’s wife.

Before long they are quarantined along with other victims in a former mental asylum, and Part I of the story traces their adjustment to the loss of their sight, their freedom and their independence. The government abrogates their human rights, providing them only with rudimentary shelter, paltry rations, inadequate sanitation, and no medical assistance or supplies. There is also a trigger-happy set of guards, who eventually panic over the proximity of the internees and fire on them because they believe the blindness to be contagious. There are squabbles over bed allocations and sharing of rations; there is distrust and untruth; there is a distasteful dispute over the burial of the dead and there is opportunistic fondling of one of the women with a dramatic consequence – but that is nothing compared to what is to come.

To read the rest of my review, please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2011/10/20/blindness-by-jose-saramago/