Conclusion

Link to the NPR Review: http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=132292587&m=132416385


There's something I missed, because I started on the first page. I missed the epigraph, and it sums up this book wonderfully for my conclusion blog post. 

 "If you can see, look. If you can look, observe."

There is a lot to this book. I think that's what makes it AP worthy. There are several themes, complex characters, allusions, metaphors, symbolism, unique diction, and the list goes on. Some of my favorite examples are:

• Saramago's writing style: In a non-subtle way, the writing follows the intensity of the story. As the government and the people panic there are increases in run on sentences and quick words that add to the pandemonium. Here's one example on such a sentence, 
• "Two hundred people could not get into the hallway, or anything like that number, so it was not long before the door leading to the courtyard, despite being fairly wide, was completely blocked, as if obstructed by a plug, they could go neither backwards nor forwards, those who were inside, crushed and flattened, tried to protect themselves by kicking and elbowing their neighbours, who were suffocating, cries could be heard, blind children were sobbing, blind mothers were fainting, while the vast crowd that had been unable to enter pushed even harder, terrified by he bellowing of the soldiers, who could not understand why those idiots had not gone through." (110-111)
• The complexity of minor characters such as the car thief discussed in an earlier post. Especially the complexity of major characters like the doctor's wife are so raw. Her final words of the novel , "“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” (326), piece together an important theme, the ignorance of society.
• The symbolism, "The face of a blind man. Fear made the soldier's blood freeze, and fear drove him to aim his weapon and release a blast of gunfire at close range"( 75) here fear is personified  but also symbolizes a driving force in the loss of humanity. 

Overall, I really loved this book. I think it was very much worth reading because it was thrilling and complex. As for its literary merit, I think its AP worthy. On the AP Eng. exam this spring I can use this book for characterization questions, societal problem questions, multi-theme questions. This book covers a lot, and there is so much I didn't get into. I think I'm gonna re-read it if I have any time before we start our new book on Tuesday.

Who Are We Working With Part 2

In this part of my blog, I'd like to focus on the kind of ward 3, the girl with the dark glasses, the man with the eye patch, and the Doctor's wife.

The King of Ward Three

This character is introduced mid way through the book, but is still important to the understanding as a whole. As a semi-background character he plays a role to highlight the ethics and morals of the doctor's wife. He is known as the "King of Ward Three" because in the mental hospital he somehow gets a hold of a gun and bullets, and therefore takes control over the people. He attracts a gang of men to be his thugs and take over the food rations. Soon after taking the food from the blind, he makes demands of the people in exchange for food. When the jewelry is exhausted and there is nothing the people have left in exchange for food, he demands women to rape from each ward. The doctor's wife doesn't put up with the humiliation and degradation for more than one night, and she kills him by slitting his throat with a pair of scissors during the next rape session. He becomes an important character to see what people evolve into when they need to survive. In real life without blindness the king of ward three wouldn't probably have been a gun wielding  psychopathic tyrant, and the doctor's wife who is kind and gentle and caring wouldn't have sliced a man to death through the jugular. 

The Girl with Dark Glasses

This girl goes blind while having casual sex with a man in a hotel. From this introduction to her she seems cold and not valuing of love. However, when in the mental hospital with the rest of the blind, she becomes the caregiver for the orphaned boy. She always gives him some of her food and comforts his cries for his mother who he never finds. The girl with the dark glasses evolves as a human in the mental asylum, she becomes a caring and thoughtful person who cares for more than appearances. She is described as beautiful and young, but because her ascetics become less important when the world is blind she is forced to grow. She develops a relationship with the man with an eye patch because she values and loves who he is as a man. The greatest change this character sees is when she makes a genuine compliment to the doctor's wife on her beauty, "You are beautiful, said the girl with the dark glasses, How do you know, since you have never seen me, I have dreamt of you twice," The girl goes on to explain how her mind invented her beauty to her, this understanding brings the girl to new understandings of beauty, and how it isn't purely appearances that make people wonderful and beautiful.

 "Inside us there is something with no name, that something is what we are."

The Man with an Eye Patch

The man with the eye patch comes joins the main group of blind people in the mental hospital after some time has passed. He brings with him knowledge of the outside world and the chaos that has erupted from the blindness epidemic. The man with the eye patch enters the ward in a way that no one else has, he waits for hours for the crowd to die down and patiently asks if there is room available for him. He seems to already have a clear understanding of what is going to work for him, and in this way isn't as blind as the rest of the people.

The Doctor's Wife

The doctor's wife is who I would consider to be the main character. She is the only person not to go blind during this epidemic, but certainly in the spirit of Saramago's themes isn't completely able to see for the whole book.  From the beginning of her journey she was loving and caring toward her husband, and the people around her. She tried to nurse the car thief with his injury, and was diplomatic in giving food rations. Despite being caring and involved, she wasn't always the main character in my eyes. The doctor took a leadership role in the hospital and was seemingly who I thought I'd follow. However, it is the doctor's wife who really leads the people behind the scenes. When the kind of ward three demands sex for food the doctor's wife kills him in an attempt to take down the gang that controls the hospital. She sacrifices her morals and ethics for the better of the rest of the people. When the people leave the hospital and the world outside is even worse she leads her charges through the city and searches for food. She can only care for so many people and he husband advises that she keep her eyesight a secret so that she can doesn't become slave to the blind. The book ends with a moment where she believes she will go blind as she looks up into the sky, but the city remains below her eyes. She is a changed person from the blindness of others. When the other people couldn't see the terrors of what has happened, she could. When the blind couldn't see the suffering of other people, she could. When it came to life or death she had to kill, and she had to leave people behind. In the beginning I believe she would have remained passive had it not been for the necessity to live. After having to witness the sight and smell of rotting people after she left a food storage basement open she is most traumatized. She survives the trauma of the epidemic in a completely different way, she will never see life the same.

 "When is it necessary to kill? When something that is alive is already dead."

Who Are We Working With Part 1

One way that my book is a special snowflake, is that none of the characters ever receive a name. It's even mentioned that they will never be identified, because what's the use of putting a name to a face if you can't see.
Let's start in order of appearance with some bias on importance to me.
*This includes spoilers*

The First Blind Man

The first blind man goes blind first. He goes blind at a traffic light, and when people come to help him out of his car, he infects all of them. All of the people who helped him are now infected, and so all people in contact with any of them including the first blind man with become infected and so on and so forth. However, he is also the first to regain his sight at the end of the novel. What he represents as a character to me is how quickly things can spread. He's not a centrifugal character, but hey he lives.

The Car Thief

This guy doesn't live long so he can't be that important right? Wrong. The car thief is one of the people to help the first blind man. He is doomed from the start, but to make matters worse he robs the blind man of his car. A few hours later while driving he also goes blind and must wait for the police to pick his sorry ass up. Since all the first people to go blind go to the quarantine, the thief is reunited with the man he robs. They fight, and now everyone's in a bad mood. The car thief later gropes the girl with the dark glasses in the hall and she stabs him with her heel. This wound gets infected, the car thief thinks about his life in dying agony. He regrets stealing the car from the blind man, but is also mad because he was helping him at first. Surprisingly,  he doesn't die from the disgusting puss filled infection. No, he crawls his way to the guarded gate in the night to beg for medicine and gets gunned down by the soldiers. His significance is in how he was one of the first characters to really reflect on the blindness. He also was important in showing the ignorance and fear of the guards who empty their guns on him because they don't want to be blind too.

The Doctor

The doctor becomes one of the most important characters.  He's level-headed, kind, and diplomatic. However he also is kinda a pretentious jerk. The doctor goes blind helping the first blind man figure out why he is blind. He goes home after the examination, and reads more about eyes and blindness to help. While researching he goes blind. He doesn't tell his wife, he just slips into bed and wakes up the next morning still blinded by the white ocean. This is were I think he's a jerk. For instance, no

                    "Hey honey look, I was helping this guy who was blind and apparently its super infectious and well I didn't wanna wake you up but I doomed you because I didn't want to wake you up. Love you!" For real. He knows that he sentenced his wife to blindness as well with no clear cure. He feels bad in the morning, but that night he made some selfish decisions. Anyway, because the majority of people in the institute know the doctor and are patients of him he becomes a leader of the group of blind. The blind leading the blind.  The doctor is compassionate and makes good decisions, but people early on take advantage of that. Some people take others rations of food and a simple slap on the wrist from the doctor will not solve the problem. He quickly becomes overwhelmed by the flow of people turning blind, and the animalistic qualities people develop in order to survive.  What is important to know about the doctor is his reliance to lead based on the sight his wife retains. He tries to protect her by keeping her sight secret so she won't become a slave to the bidding of the needy blind, but he is extremely dependent. 

Catch up with: The Doctor's Wife, the Girl with the Dark Glasses, King of Ward 3, and the Man with the Black Eye-patch in the next part.

 

Themes

Alright peeps, since I've already finished the book I think it's time to talk about some themes.

• Survival of the fittest
• Blindness: devastating and eye opening(darkness vs. light)
• The nature of tragedy
• Fear and hysteria are fuel to disaster
• Fragility of society 

So, there are a bunch of themes that are pretty complex. My favorite ones, or the ones that stood out most to me are the nature of tragedy and how the blindness is both devastating and eye-opening. However since I've already touched on the blindness theme, I'm going to go with fear and hysteria fueling the disaster.

The nature of tragedy isn't a theme that I've really explored in the books I've read. When it appeared so clearly in Saramago's diction, imagery, and conflict it made me think. In the beginning, all the people who are blind are sent to the empty mental asylum to be quarantined. The government and the society reacted in a quick "get it away" policy. The description and realism was extremely vivid. I would imaging(unfortunately) something similar happening in the real world. The way the events played out in the book were so raw and real this book was unsettling in both my thoughts and emotions. In this way, the nature of tragedy stood out. It invoked the need to review society. 

That theme also intertwines neatly with how fear and hysteria are fuel to disaster. We'll never know from the book if the blindness could have been cured had doctors and scientists been able to do their work. However, what we do know is that that wasn't going to happen in Saramago's society in blindness. The government panicked, the people panicked and the blind panicked. Everyone suffered from this.  There's more to the disaster than just from the destruction of the society.

 Now, there are thousands and thousands of people scared for the rest of their lives as a result. How are they going to rebuild? With their new eyes that have seen and lost, and now "see" again they must continue. What's really a disaster is not that the government panicked, but that all the people played along like sheep. Letting their neighbors, friends, children, and family simply go away to be locked up. To stumble around in the blinding white, and if they make a wrong turn ( because without a doubt a blind person will not go the right way 100% of the time) they could be gunned down by fearful soldiers who out of ignorance empty their magazines on the innocent. 

The book has themes that tie together like a spiderweb. The blindness comes together with the ignorance, the panic and fear come together to bring forth hysteria. The people who have any sort of advantage, like being blind beforehand and being used to it rise, and survival becomes the most necessary aspect of life. Finally, it pulls together to show how fragile society is and how while the blindness was epic, it symbolically shows that people are comfortable in how easy life currently is.

Jose Saramago

the author of Blindness and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature

A Double Entendre

 The book is called: Blindness, but it's really not all about the physical blindness.
Well, in a way, yea... if it wasn't for the first man going blind at the traffic light then no one would notice their blindness to other aspects of their lives. The people go physically blind in the beginning and have to suffer. All along though, people have been blind in a way. They were blind to the privileges they had, blind to the comfort of their lives. They were blindly putting value on things monetarily that would later not matter a single bit to them. When the people lose their sight, and are put in the mental ward to be quarantined, this becomes more clear. There is blind hatred for the government; a faceless, nameless hatred. There was blind fear. Fear of the unknown and the dark, despite only seeing white.
Eyes and vision are used as motifs and symbols throughout literature. Blind characters often "see" beyond what other characters understand. They sense life differently. One of the characters in the novel, has been blind for years already, and this is to his advantage because he is well accustomed to not seeing, and getting around. What is different in this book than others about the symbolism of blindness, is that it is sudden and eye opening. The woman with the dark glasses is a character who goes blind early in the book. She went blind having sex with some random guy in a hotel room, and apparently is really really good looking. Her looks don't matter when everyone is blind though. It takes her to become blind to really understand that she's been blindly loving people. It's in the quarantine that she falls in love with an old man who has an eye-patch. At one point the old man points out that, if she could see and if she had never gone blind she would never love a man like him. This is where the importance of the blindness is very clear, because that is completely true. Now though, her love is real and not superficial.

So even though the blindness is an epidemic that kills tons of people and probably traumatizes all of the survivors, in a weird way it wasn't completely terrible.

''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.''
One of my favorite lines above. The dialog is vaguely separated by comas.