A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers-among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears-through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses-and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit. The stunningly powerful novel of man's will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Amazon.com Review In an unnamed city in an unnamed country, a man sitting in his car waiting for a traffic light to change is suddenly struck blind. But instead of being plunged into darkness, this man sees everything white, as if he "were caught in a mist or had fallen into a milky sea." A Good Samaritan offers to drive him home (and later steals his car); his wife takes him by taxi to a nearby eye clinic where they are ushered past other patients into the doctor's office. Within a day the man's wife, the taxi driver, the doctor and his patients, and the car thief have all succumbed to blindness. As the epidemic spreads, the government panics and begins quarantining victims in an abandoned mental asylum--guarded by soldiers with orders to shoot anyone who tries to escape. So begins Portuguese author Jose Saramago's gripping story of humanity under siege, written with a dearth of paragraphs, limited punctuation, and embedded dialogue minus either quotation marks or attribution. At first this may seem challenging, but the style actually contributes to the narrative's building tension, and to the reader's involvement.
In this community of blind people there is still one set of functioning eyes: the doctor's wife has affected blindness in order to accompany her husband to the asylum. As the number of victims grows and the asylum becomes overcrowded, systems begin to break down: toilets back up, food deliveries become sporadic; there is no medical treatment for the sick and no proper way to bury the dead. Inevitably, social conventions begin to crumble as well, with one group of blind inmates taking control of the dwindling food supply and using it to exploit the others. Through it all, the doctor's wife does her best to protect her little band of blind charges, eventually leading them out of the hospital and back into the horribly changed landscape of the city.
Blindness is in many ways a horrific novel, detailing as it does the total breakdown in society that follows upon this most unnatural disaster. Saramago takes his characters to the very edge of humanity and then pushes them over the precipice. His people learn to live in inexpressible filth, they commit acts of both unspeakable violence and amazing generosity that would have been unimaginable to them before the tragedy. The very structure of society itself alters to suit the circumstances as once-civilized, urban dwellers become ragged nomads traveling by touch from building to building in search of food. The devil is in the details, and Saramago has imagined for us in all its devastation a hell where those who went blind in the streets can never find their homes again, where people are reduced to eating chickens raw and packs of dogs roam the excrement-covered sidewalks scavenging from corpses.
And yet in the midst of all this horror Saramago has written passages of unsurpassed beauty. Upon being told she is beautiful by three of her charges, women who have never seen her, "the doctor's wife is reduced to tears because of a personal pronoun, an adverb, a verb, an adjective, mere grammatical categories, mere labels, just like the two women, the others, indefinite pronouns, they too are crying, they embrace the woman of the whole sentence, three graces beneath the falling rain." In this one woman Saramago has created an enduring, fully developed character who serves both as the eyes and ears of the reader and as the conscience of the race. And in Blindness he has written a profound, ultimately transcendent meditation on what it means to be human. --Alix Wilber
there's more to humanity than misery November 18, 2008 Saramago's writing style is compelling, both he & his translator are/were(in case of Pontiero) craftsmen of a high order. Unfortunately I believe the book suffers from a flat imagination of what blindness (even sudden mass blindness) entails, and brings out all of the worst that human beings are capable of.
The metaphor of our many blindnesses and the chronic ignorance that plagues our society only carried me so far in terms of willingness to endure extremes in human misery.
I finished this book hungry for an uplifting view of humanity - something to counter-act the misery of the last few days of reading.
I was also sorely disappointed by the ending which seemed to reflect the author's desire to stop showing us this world, rather than a well crafted story arc.
Book In Perfect Condition With Prompt Delivery November 11, 2008 0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was very satisfied with my purchase of this book because it was in perfect condition and it was delivered in a prompt manner.
Too Savage November 11, 2008 0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Horrific read and too graphic for my taste. Our book group did this book and many could not read beyond the first 100 pages.
the white sickness October 22, 2008 Only an author of Nobel stature could create such a compelling story about such a bleak situation. In this unnamed place, the blind citizens are reduced to short descriptions, no names. They are written of as an image perhaps the last image someone had of them before blindness struck. Here is the girl with the dark glasses, the first blind man, the boy with the squint. Readers go on a journey with a small group of blind people ho have banded in an attempt at survival in a world where their main sensory input is removed. Because we never know where we are and we have limited visual input, the author has made it easier for the reader to feel blinded.
Blindness is terrifying yet compelling we. The book begins with a situation of horror then moves to another horror and yet another. The blind people fend for themselves both poorly and well. This is not cheap sensationalist horror. This is a thought- provoking horror that speaks to the human condition and its fragility but like a spider web, it has tremendous strength. The writer uses scant punctuation. Once the reader gets the rhythm of the story, it will flow - no punctuation needed. Blindness is a challenging read. It is not a lightweight beach book. Blindness starts with a mystery and ends with another equal mystery. For a while, the reader is dehumanized and essentially blind
Very strong and disturbing story October 12, 2008 This book definetely will bring up a reaction from its readers.
The narration style gives the impression that the reader is watching the story evolve in front of them, a clever approach given the subject.
The part of the story which takes place in the hospital is very disturbing and strong.
I was disappointed with the ending, did not expect a positive ending given the tone of the story, and wonder why the author decided to go in that direction.
I recommend the book, but be forewarned about how strong the content is.
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