Essay on Book "blindness"

The sinners dealt with in our past novels and the present novel Blindness empathetically been assigned the trait of ignorance. Thus, providing the root of sin and degration of lives, as relating to the treatment of people in the short story Somni in the novel Cloud Atlas. Focusing on Blindness, the ungreedy are horribly dealt with by the thugs with a “conscience with teeth to bite” (18). This quality of man is the result of how humans sometimes favor short-term luxuries over long term consequences. This can be related to the car thief of the blind man near the beginning of the novel. So evidently, Saramago uses greed for fuel of ignorance to corrupt reason in this novel, and diagnoses the “sensual appetite” (171) of humans as a natural trait. The desperation of some people described of some people described in this novel such as the thieves, or the careless mad madmen who trampled over the blind relies on a psychological attempt to “escape their black destiny” and the reassuration from future hope(112).

The corruption of reason can also be derived from the development of desperation pursued in the novels Life of Pi, and Blindness. Referring to Life of Pi, Pi’s solitary confinement seems to have a psychological effect, driving him to eat feces. This sense of indignation is also described in Blindness, considering a portion of the blind relieved themselves at any given moment. That was also due to a lack of respect for themselves, and everyone else. The logic possessing some of the blind that “the blind have nothing [they] can call [they’re] own” is another factor leading to such degration (223). “The fact all humans were blind was a calamity for which they were not responsible”; this kind of misfortune seems to limit ones responsibility. Saramago uses the depiction of misfortune to allow the blind to act so inhumanely in this novel. There is the perception that “humanity will manage to live without eyes, but then it will cease to be humanity”, which is what the doctors wife perceives on her repentance of her murderous revenge on the thief. Saramago also perceives that “revenge is just human” (256).

The doctor’s wife at least shows her respect of her own dignity due to her compunction of her “humanitarian motives” (256) and by “weighing up her consequences” (78) unlike most of the others. But then again, there is no humanity within the blind. This logic is what backs up the group of seven’s constant cease of indignation. The doctor’s wife symbolizes hope and dignity considering her engagement of leadership on the seven strangers. One’s experience affects its quality; representing the doctors wife’s deliverance of faith to the others. And in the environment they were in, eyes were the best technique for experience. She “must stay, it’s [her] duty”; that motive of hope maintained the other’s treatment of they’re own dignity (252). The protagonist’s gender is another metaphor for the doctor’s wife’s quality, especially when recollecting on the “masculine logic” involved in this novel (168).

“All steps of indignity” endured by the main group in Blindness are usually based on a life or death decision (276). Consider the sacrifice of women to the thieves; the value of food diminishes all reason when it comes to survival. Then consider the thief’s ambition of sexual pleasure; it seems that primitive instinct also diminishes all reason in “more hardened criminals” (16). Or, is it the psychological sublimation created from the terrifying