Blindness by José
Saramago
Published: Harcourt,
Inc. (1997)
The Book:
“In a nameless city, a
nameless man goes blind. His
blindness is not ordinary—though his eyes appear completely healthy, his vision
has become an impenetrable whiteness.
Very soon, it becomes clear that his blindness is contagious, as “white
blindness” sweeps through the population. Desperate to keep the blindness from
spreading, the man and other sufferers are quarantined in a mental hospital and
guarded by soldiers.
The only eyewitness to
what will happen in that place is one woman, who carefully hides her
unexplainable immunity in order to accompany her husband. Removed as the victims now are from
civilization and authority, they must find a way to establish their own
community or risk falling into lives of unending brutality.” ~Allie
I read this novel loosely as a part of the Outside the Norm
reading group (at WWEnd), which is not active at the moment. I’m hoping for a revival in 2013! Apparently, there is a movie of this
novel as well, which I’ve heard is pretty good. Lastly, I feel like I should include a trigger warning about
this book, because it contains some disturbingly graphic sexual violence.
My Thoughts:
Since I’m unable to read Portuguese, all of my comments here
relate to the English translation of the text. I can’t compare the novel I read to the original, so I can’t
guarantee that the stylistic quirks hold true in both languages. The English
language version of Blindness employs
an unusual grammatical structure, with no quotation marks to denote dialogue
and a high amount of commas per sentence. The text is often composed of massive
sentences with many clauses and lines of dialogue spliced together by commas. For
a quick example of the style, here is a sentence taken from late in the novel (cut
for brevity and spoiler prevention):
“The doctor’s wife had
already guessed what the writer’s reply would be, You and your wife, like the
friend who is with you, live in a flat, I imagine, Yes, in her flat in fact, Is
it far away, Not really, Then, if you’ll permit me, I have a proposal to make…
[~1 page of text]….I do not know braille, How can you write, then, asked the
first blind man, Let me show you.” ~pages 232-233, one sentence
I’ve read some reviews that suggested this style was
intended to immerse the reader in the confusion of blindness, but I’ve also
heard that this is just Saramago’s preferred style of writing. There are also no names used for any
characters or locations. People
are referred to by characteristics, such as “the boy with the squint” or “the
girl with the dark glasses”. My
guess was that this was meant to stress the universality of the story, and to avoid pinning it
down to a specific culture or region.
It might seem strange to refer to every character by a phrase rather
than a name, but I didn’t think it interrupted the flow of the story. With the strange grammar and nameless
characters, I did not find this to be an effortless read, but I don’t think
that the content of the novel was ever obscured by its presentation.
The main science fictional element of the novel is the
mysterious illness that topples civilization, ‘white blindness’. However, the physical origin of the
white blindness is not explored, and the story focuses almost entirely on its
disastrous effects. The real point
of the blindness is as a tool to explore human nature and the fragility of
civilization. Basically, Blindness tells a similar kind of story
to Golding’s Lord of the Flies, but
with adults and children living in the wreckage of their own civilization.
While the characters actions are important in the sense of
portraying various aspects of human nature, they were not really very deeply
developed. Perhaps the most
interesting character is the one who emerges as the leader of the group. She is the one sighted woman, who observes all these atrocities and
reacts to them with an initially frustrating passivity. It brings up the question of how much
horror one person has to witness and experience before they are willing to take
an action that might risk their personal well-being. Rather than developing individual characters, the novel
seemed more focused on observing how many different people abandoned or
embraced their humanity when faced with personal blindness and the loss of the
infrastructure of their society.
Due to apparent lack of accountability brought about by the
changes in their world, many people begin to act out their worst impulses. This
leads to some of the more disturbing parts of the book, which include violence,
rape, and large amounts of human waste.
The various characters’ reactions to these things are also sometimes
quite painful to read. The story does not have a completely bleak view of
humanity, however. The central
group, formed mostly of the first to be struck blind, continues to attempt to
hold together their small community, despite all the hardships they face. I think that examination of the
motivations and actions of the various characters could lead to a lot of
interesting discussion.
My Rating: 4.5/5
In this short review, there’s no way I can even mention all
the topics that would make this an interesting book for discussion. It’s definitely not light reading, both
due to the unusual writing style and the disturbingly graphic content. The white blindness, as an illness, is
never much explained, but it is used as a tool to examine how many different
people would react to finding themselves in the world the blindness
created. It did not explore only
the negative, but also the positive, as some of the survivors struggled to
preserve at least their small community.
I’m glad I ended up reading Blindness,
and now I’m really curious to see how well the English film represented the
novel.
