José Saramago: Blindness

[mr_michel]

I just finished reading this book, and found it to be great.
It made me think.
However, I was wondering; had the entire world gone blind? Or was it just a country? If so, why didn't the other countries react?

not sure, i read it when it came out (have a signed copy by saramago ) but i think that in "ensayo sobre la lucidez" is mentioned it only happened in that country

 

[bbydoll603]

"blindness'" themes relating to the media today

hey
i just finished reading blindess and have to read a paper relating a theme from the novel to issues we see in the media today, but im have trouble coming up with some. i was think about the role of women as a theme from the novel but am having trouble relating it to today's media. please help me!!! im so confused!!

 

[lilbiteb]

I started Blindness this morning and I just can't put it down. The writing style is very strange and at first I thought that I might struggle with it but I'm doing fine with it now. Personally if I was struggling after 114 pages I'd dump it right now. I have too many books to read to spend time struggling. I've just stopped reading We Need To Talk About Kevin after about 60 pages as I found that just too boring and slow. I might go back to it some time in the future as my mood can change and with it the type of books I want to read.

 

[lilbiteb]

I loved the book. I found that the confusing style that it was written added to the atmosphere of how the blind people must have felt.

One thing that I didn't really get was

Spoiler

when they slept with each other, particularly the doctor sleeping with the girl with dark glasses. Why would he put his wife through this ordeal?[/ spoiler]

 

[Morty]

This is a terrifying book. Repulsive, because we realize it is true; human beings would become savages under such circumstances. Saramago brilliantly exposes civilization as a simple cover-up for our animal insticts.

Does anyone else feel the end was too soft? I think Saramago, eventually, became so depressed himself that he was forced to write a more hopeful ending.

 

[Ronny]

I just finished this book yesterday, and although I'm probably going to cop a lot of flack for it, I'm just going to go ahead and say it. I think that this book is over-rated. There.. I guess it wasn't so bad

The writing style was, to me, unnecessarily confusing. It took me a while at the start to understand what was happening, and who was saying what, and even near the end I was still at times unsure if people were talking or not, and who was doing the talking (or not talking, as it were). I understand that it was meant to mirror the confusion of the blind people, but I believe that the book would have been much better if they had have just left the confusion to the imagination of the reader, instead of making it a reality.

I also disliked the way that the story would just blab on about something which had nothing at all to do with the plot of the story. I could almost swear that they had the whole history of the sunrise or explained in depth the method of eating food somewhere in the novel.

And frankly, the book didn't really shock or scare me. The hardest bit to overcome for me was them walking through human excretement, and even that got old after awhile. The confusing way in which the book was set out did not allow me to fully sympathise with the people in the book - all it made me do was wish that the darn thing was over.

As has already been mentioned here, the lack of names also put me off. People are so much easier to relate to when they have names.

Just my opinion - try not to bite my head off too aggressively

Monkeycatcher

I actually agree with you MC, I really struggled through this book and didn't really care for it from the start for the same reasons you mentioned. Now I'm just glad it's over.

 

[moofman]

Reviving a bit of a dead thread, but I just finished the book and am bursting with someone to talk about it with. I think the theme that seems to have been left untouched in this discussion is the tenuous reciprocal relationships of the seer and the seen/speaker and the hearer/individual and community, as demonstrated with the repeated image of the blind crowds gathering and listening to various speakers as well as several other passages, such as the lines about voice being identity in a blind world, etc. When the community is plunged into chaos and must actually feel out the world around them, voice and sound become the only way to cross distances and interact other than actually touching. Thus, the mass of sound that is the now blinded world and the individual's voice must struggle to maintain a useful relationship. (Tiny

Spoiler

As the Writer (in the first blind man's apartment) puts the individual's half of this struggle, "I am my voice, nothing else matters."

) This, in my understanding, could be the reason for the lack of names, as well as the symbolic "everyman" status of nameless characters. It seems to be an almost existentialist encouragement to the reader to go out and live and, indeed, see, which, in my opinion, lends the novel a remarkably uplifting tone, despite dragging the reader through the trenches of humanity's dark side for the first half of the novel or so. This is the first Saramago novel I've read, so I may be pulling the existentialist thing out of thin air. Is there any evidence for an existentialist undercurrent in Saramago's work?

Spoiler

I think she still does see at the end as it says: "It is my turn, she thought. Fear made her quickly lower her eyes. The city was still there."

As for the last paragraph, I think (though it can honestly be interpreted either way)

Spoiler

she does go blind, but the city continues to exist, just as it did before,

and that is the ultimate message of the novel: life does not just go on, life will and must go on. As it is put in one of my favorite passages from the book, "The only miracle we can perform is to go on living, said the woman, to preserve the fragility of life from day to day, as if it were blind and did not know where to go, and perhaps it is like that, perhaps it really does not know, it placed itself in our hands, after giving us intelligence, and this is what we have made of it."


Needless to say, I found the book incredibly crafted and powerful.

 

[Bananeez]

Hi, I'm new to The Book Forum, so i don't know exactly how to do the quoting or spoiling stuff (so watch out!), but I just read Blindness (was very moved by it) and had to reply to some of these discussions.
First the ending: SPOILER: On whether or not the doctor's wife could she at the end. "It is my turn, she thought. Fear made her quickly lower her eyes. The city was still there."
I think she still could see at the end of the book. The city was still there...the city of blindness was still there... meaning the people had gone back to being able to see, yet went back to being symbolically blind to all the unjustices of humanity like they all used to be when we could see.
Now, to some other questions:

This book probably has the most depressing view of the human race I have ever seen.. besides the news.

I totally agree.. horribly depressing about humanity but very often too true.

I don't understand the lack of names, the explanation that names have no meaning to blind people, as is often said in the book, makes no sense to me. Even if we are blind we would want to have something to call people by, and instead of names he just calls them things like Girl with the dark glasses. Why should names stop to matter just because we were blind?

I think by not giving any of them names, they each could have been any of us and all of us. The whole point was that what was choose to see and hold importance to today (such as names) doesn't really matter compared to issues we are choosing not to see (like humanity towards each other)

There also seems to be a strong implication that the loss of sight makes the people loose their humanity, this is said by a lot of the characters in the book, but I'm not sure if this is supposed to be the view of Saramago or if he is trying to say something I didn't get. I think somewhere in the book, someone says that those who where blind before the white blindness, felt things through those who could see, thereby saying that the reason they were still human was because there were still people who could see.

I don't think he meant this at all. I think he meant that by losing their eyesight the characters were finally actually able to really SEE. They could see the inhumanities that they chose not too see when they had their eyesight. Basically, the truth is what we cannot bear to see.

The main thing I wondered about in the book was why the doctor's wife was the only one who could see. Is there an explanation to that which I have just missed? I would assume that some of the answer, if there is any, can be found in what she sees in the church. Does anyone have any ideas about this?

I don't really know an answer to this, except maybe to bring up the discussion of whether or not it is better to see. Are we better off being able to see but be blind to the world around us, or do we want to know the truth?
What injustices in the world have we ignored because we can just not bear to look them in the face?

Does anyone else feel the end was too soft? I think Saramago, eventually, became so depressed himself that he was forced to write a more hopeful ending.

I think actually the ending makes the whole story more depressing. After learning about all the injustices facing humanity that the people could finally see when they became blind, all of this knowledge seems to be lost as the city once again reclaims it's eyesight and celebrate being able to ignore the injustices once again - leaving us back where we started.

There is a lot more I would love to discuss about this book if anyone is still up to it!
Thanks!

 

[deadwhiteguys52]

are we blind?

hey. we're reading this book in my lit class. its really fascinating. i love saramago's style, with no quotation marks. our professor said that's the new trend for authors. anyone have any discussion topics for my class? greatly appreciated

 

[aniela]

i read the book quite a while ago. and the only thing i did not appreciate in it was the ending. i had the feeling that the writer was faced to a great dilema how to finish a shocking book so he just chose a rather conventional ending in my point of view.
i saw the lack of names as an attempt of the writer to put us in a situation similar to that of a blind person. when you cannot see the only way to figure out the identity of a person is by its words (especially at the beginning of the blindness when one has not yet acquired the ability of distinguishing the voices).

 

[Vernon]

Chaos

I came across this book while browsing at a bookstore in NYC. I'm glad I decided to read it after scanning the blurb on the back. It's a frightening book. But it's also an amazing book. It's a book that I'm sure I'll read again some day.

At first I thought the writing style (few punctuations) was a result of the translation, but then, like one of the previous commenters in this thread, I thought the style where you can't tell which character is talking, is very appropriate for what is happening in the book. The characters are blind and amid all the chaos, we are drawn closer to what is happening, by being a little confused ourselves.

It was also a timely read for me, in a sense that the first thing that came to mind as I was reading it, was what happened recently in New Orleans (the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina). I couldn't help but to think that the chaos, anarchy, and total breakdown in society was very similar to what I've heard described first-hand by people who evacuated to the Superdome and other places in the city.

That's what is frightening. Something like what Saramago describes did happen. Instead of blindness, there was a storm and a flood, and it could very well happen again.

I live in New Orleans.

 

[blueboatdriver]

Finished reading this book this morning so I thought I'd have a look at this thread.
Anyone reading this thread thinking of reading Blindness should not be put off by it's lack of punctuation; I think I saw full only stops and commas. After a couple of pages you soon get used to it and it seems to set the reading pace of the story nicely.
It's a real horror story in every sense and would make a pretty grusome movie. I found no real need for names and got to know the charachters fairly quickely.
Just one thing though. Where were all the rats. I know there are one or two mentioned in passing but I'm sure the place would have been running with them. Just a thought; I'm not complaining.
Excellent excellent book and I will be trying some more Jose Saramago.

 

[aniela]

i do not thik that the author tried to convey a realistic image about what would happen from all points of view. otherwise he would have had to write a really really long book where he would deal with all the problems, like the rats for example. i think he tried to focus more on how the essential characteristics of what we understand by being humane are degraded. therefore he just gave us hints of threats of the exterior, like the rats. i saw rats mainly as a symbol of degradation, and not like a real issue to be dealt with. but maybe i am just too of an unrealistic person.

 

[hay82]

I don't think he meant this at all. I think he meant that by losing their eyesight the characters were finally actually able to really SEE. They could see the inhumanities that they chose not too see when they had their eyesight. Basically, the truth is what we cannot bear to see.

I can't really see it that way. I might go so far as to say that they don't lose their humanity, but they use "the cover of darkness" to act the way they truely want to. So it might not be a matter of losing something, but rather showing who you really are. When no one saw it, it's probably easier to deny, even to yourself.

I don't really know an answer to this, except maybe to bring up the discussion of whether or not it is better to see. Are we better off being able to see but be blind to the world around us, or do we want to know the truth?
What injustices in the world have we ignored because we can just not bear to look them in the face?

Some things in the world we don't see because we don't want to see them, others we don't notice because we have seen them too much. Sometimes the best place to hide things is in plain sight. Being blind forces these people to learn to "see" world in a new way and so they are forced to deal with both the things they ignoreded before but also those they simply accepted as a way of life.

 

[Dogmatix]

The Double

Loved this discussion and I will be reading this book. I recently read his "The Double" which was also fabulous.

 

[lilbiteb]

I'm just on the first few pages of The Double. I'm really looking forward to it as I loved Blindness.

 

[Dogmatix]

I had to start The Double twice couldn't get into it the first time. (Funny how you have to be a certain place oR mood to enjoy a book) Anyways it really was a wonderful read and the last page will knock your socks off. Enjoy!

 

[Dogmatix]

Starting Blindness tomorrow morning. Can't wait!

 

[aniela]

good luck, i hope you will enjoy it. it is a really good book.

 

[Erica]

Starting Blindness tomorrow morning. Can't wait!

Hope you enjoy it...
I loved ''Blindness'', have got ''The Double'' on my tbr pile hope its as good!