Blindness

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Blindness" is the most captivating novel I have read in a long time, but also the one I closed with the most generous relief. It's an oppressive and nauseating atmosphere. Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps!

Wearing the new dress that she bought yesterday in a shop downtown, death goes to the concert. She is sitting alone in the box, and . . . she is looking at the cellist. Just before the lights went down, when the orchestra was waiting for the conductor to come, he noticed her. He wasn't the only musician to do so. Firstly, because she was alone in the box, which although not rare, wasn't that frequent an occurrence either. Secondly, because she was pretty . . . pretty in a very particular, indefinable way that couldn't be put into words, like a line of poetry whose ultimate meaning . . . continually escapes the translator. And finally, because her lone figure, there in the box, surrounded by emptiness and absence on every side, as if she inhabited a void, seemed to be the expression of the most absolute solitude." The first part of the novel follows the experiences of the central characters in the filthy, overcrowded asylum where they and other blind people have been quarantined. Hygiene, living conditions, and morale degrade horrifically in a very short period, mirroring the society outside. This novel is as much an exploration of the horrendous possibilities created by the dysfunction of anatomy as it is of the limits of human resilience to resist consummate annihilation. After all the process of evolution has taught us very little; we adapt to external dangers but we fail when something goes amiss inside our bodies. We would live longer had it not been the case. a b "The screen jury at the Cannes Film Festival, 2008". Screen International. Archived from the original on March 18, 2009 . Retrieved 2008-06-12.The doctor's wife is an educated woman in her late 40s; a childless woman who's married to an ophthalmologist and seems to be both his intellectual and emotional equal. They're a “power couple,” so to speak, the types of pillars of society that have the mayor over for dinner. A fost vina mea, suspina ea, ce-i drept e drept, nu se putea nega, dar e la fel de adevărat, în caz c-ar fi o mîngîiere, că, dacă înainte de fiecare gest, am încerca să-i prevedem toate consecinţele, să le cîntărim serios, mai întîi pe cele imediate, apoi pe cele probabile, posibile, cele imaginabile, n-am reuşi să ne urnim un pas din locul unde primul gînd ne-a făcut să ne oprim”; Update. I said I would never read another Saramago because of his writing style. I did though. All the Names and Death with Interruptions. Both brilliant. But I listened to them. I wouldn't have appreciated them as much if I'd had to struggle through Saramago's idiosyncratic writing style. An early band of affected citizens is sent to a mental ward, in the hopes of containing this sudden epidemic of blindness. Only one among them can see, a woman as unnamed as anyone else in the story, but we come to know her as “the doctor's wife.” a b c Schneller, Johanna (2007-08-25). "Julianne Moore sees her way to a little bit of sanity". The Globe and Mail. Toronto: CTVglobemedia . Retrieved 2008-03-11.

For anyone who has ever had the revelation at the end of the day that this world is full of too many cowards. . . I offer up to you: the doctor's wife. Howell, Peter (2008-05-16). "Blindness not getting glad eye". Toronto Star. Torstar . Retrieved 2008-05-20. Someone once said: "You are who you are when no one is watching." And in this world, no one is watching. Fear reigns and some will choose to exploit the fear or succumb to it. I thought it was a frightening and believable portrait of the disintegration of society. But without doubt it's a brilliantly told story, a fascinating study into human failings, if you allow for the vicarious witnessing of the horror of human degradation to be called fascinating. In-between Saramago manages to create comedy out of tragedy. This is not a new phenomenon in literature but Saramago's treatment has been so light and deadpan that you could deny he ever meant to be ironically humorous in its telling. Conditions degenerate further as an armed clique gains control over food deliveries, subjugating their fellow internees and exposing them to violent assault, rape, and deprivation. Faced with starvation, internees battle each other and burn down the asylum, only to discover that the army has abandoned the asylum, after which the protagonists join the throngs of nearly helpless blind people outside who wander the devastated city and fight one another to survive.Saramago emphasizes that narratives can function as survival mechanisms and help people achieve freedom from oppression. In the hospital, the blind internees “pass the time” by telling stories, which allows them to reclaim their humanity and individuality in an environment where they otherwise seem homogeneous. Later, when the first blind man and the man’s wife visit their old apartment, they find a blind writer living there. This man goes on writing, even though he cannot read his own work, because this is how he preserves his “voice” and maintains his identity during the blindness crisis. While everybody else is desperately wandering the streets, focusing on little besides food and seeking meaning through religion and politics, the writer maintains his decency and composure inside, using narrative as a means of survival.

We don't know why it happened - whether it's a test, a warning, or a punishment. Instead, we get a nagging haunting feeling that the real blindness was there all along - the blindness towards the others, the blindness towards our real selves, and the physical blindness served as a way to unveil it. What was always there but went unseen before because it used to be easy to shrug off. Fear. "Us against them" attitude. Greed. Contempt. Hatred. Selfishness. Love of power. Cowardice. Apathy. Isolation. Filth. Rape. Murder. Theft. Ignorance. Indifference. Blaming the victim. It was all already there, and blindness amplified it. And, as society decays and falls apart, the question of what is means to be human comes up. An allegory of the breakdown of civilisation, Blindness is also the story of those who finally start resisting raw violence and brutal force, and of those who see through the darkness. However, even as the blind spell breaks, and people are regaining their vision, the world is changed forever. Blindness has become a real threat, a terrifying possibility lurking underneath everyday worries. If it can happen once, it can happen again. And who knows when? You may be waiting at a traffic light, and all of a sudden, life goes white... Ebert, Roger (2008-10-02). "Blindness review". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on 2010-01-07 . Retrieved 2010-07-13.I will finish this review with the plea in the epigraph for this thought-provoking eye-opening (no pun intended) book: "If you can see, look. If you can look, observe." Please, do. Let's try to look past our own blindness and actually see. Oscar-nominated director films movie based on a Nobel Prize winning book in Guelph". guelph.ca. City of Guelph. Archived from the original on 2007-10-21 . Retrieved 2007-09-14. Maury Chaykin as Accountant, [8] who helps the King of Ward 3 bully the members of the other wards. Because he has been blind since birth, the Accountant is much more used to relying on his other senses, which gives him a major advantage over the other prisoners; he assumes control over Ward 3 and the food supplies for the community after the King is murdered.