Blindness

Y I K E S.

Spoonies beware!
This book is terribly exhausting to read, and if you have trouble keeping your place when reading or have trouble reading long paragraphs, spare yourself the spoons and don't read this book. It's not worth it, I promise!

Content warnings:
vicious and disgusting ableism
rape
sexual harassment

So this book begins with one man (with no name; nobody in this book has a name. They're referred to as "doctor", "the doctor's wife", "the boy with a squint", etc.) who suddenly sees only whiteness. This "blindness" spreads like a virus, and soon everybody has it. The Ministry tries to contain it at first, putting those affected into quarantine - in a mental asylum, no less.

Now, this book is written in an infuriating way that show more gets old after . . . say, 10 pages. There's almost no periods. Run-ons are everywhere. No quotation marks. No new paragraphs to differentiate who's saying what. No new sentences to differentiate who's saying what. I don't know about you, but that right there sounds like a dystopia. Again, spoonies beware! I have tired eyes and chronic fatigue, so I had to have a bookmark keep track of my reading line, or else there would be no way I could keep my place in this no-paragraph mess of meandering words.

It's also impossible to enjoy or at least become engaged by because it's so damn sexist and ableist!! The men had titles like "doctor", "the first blind man", etc., while the women had these: "first blind man's wife", "doctor's wife", etc. The narrator also had to tell the audience how surprising it was that the sex worker had good relations with her parents, given her career. ?? I don't even want to get into that right now.

There was also a scene that other reviewers here have talked about much more eloquently than I could - a scene so violently disgusting that I can't believe this book is so highly praised. It's a rape scene, where women line up and "volunteer" to be raped by some ruffians in exchange so that they and their husbands can get some food. Of course, this scene had to be described in such vivid detail that I'm 100% sure it was some sick thing the author put in to jack off to. I usually don't input such disgusting things into my reviews but in this case . . . it was that disgusting.

And the ableism! This man had to have hated blind people to such a degree I can't even fathom. Let this be a lesson to all: don't use disabilities as metaphors for whatever gross thing in humanity you want to point out! Just don't do it. Don't.

I can't even count the number of times the word "blind" was used to point out something terrible in humanity, or even so bluntly as just to point out how awful being blind was. That to be blind was to be dead, and vice versa. Let's find one quote though . . . here's one: "What is your name, Blind people do not need a name." Beautiful.

Not to mention, in the end everyone regained their sight! Oh boy what an ending! This probably started the magical cure trope, I don't know. It's sure annoying in any case. The protagonists learned their lessons, so their "disability was cured"! Amazing, give the book a prize!

This book was an awful reading experience. And so ableist I can't recommend it to anyone. Please read something by an actually blind author. show less

“I don’t think we did go blind, I believe we are blind, blind who can see” - the doctor

This was a tough read, and as others have pointed out, the middle section in the quarantine is particularly horrifying. One way to deal with a novel like this would be to relegate it to the pile of post-apocalyptic stories that expose the vulgar, inhuman side of our collective nature. We could then read and appreciate the novel as one may appreciate an episode of The Walking Dead. In it, the doctor’s wife is the hero, the one with grit, who pulls things togethers, suffers, and never loses her humanity. And the story works on this level, but I think there is more to think about here.

Saramago dramatizes the collapse of civilization into show more depravity and inhumanity and seems to attribute it to an epidemic of blindness. Early on, the narration creates the suggestion that losing the ability to see robs us of our ability to care for ourselves. The first man who goes blind, for example, is helped by a passerby who then steals his car, and this is the start of a series of escalating crimes and indignities that people inflict on each other. By the end of the novel, however, this perspective is flipped: it is not our inability to see that is the problem, but our inability to be seen by others. Dignity and humanity is not something we do for ourselves; it is relational.

The blindness that afflicts the population is a “white blindness” or what the military comes to call the “white sickness.” It is the deprivation of sight, but instead of seeing darkness, the blind see white, like their vision is overwhelmed. Perhaps they (or we, if we are to identify) see so much that we are not picking out the threads that mean something. We see but do not see. Our eyes are exposed to stimuli of the world but do not discern them. There are so many examples of the things that we see in this way, things that we are overwhelmed with seeing everyday that many of us pretend not to see or defensively overlook. There are big things like political turmoil, humanitarian crises, bigotry, racism, and poverty as well as simple things like everyday humiliations, indignities, rudenesses, and callousness. There is so much, and it is everywhere, and we can’t not see it, but at the same time we don’t see it, and we look right through it. It is not that we cannot see but that what we see is not seen. And things that are not seen do not rise to a level of basic importance that provokes a response.

Another way to see the white blindness is, perhaps, as an allegory for (some of) our western/global_north/white ways of seeing the world and simultaneously not seeing it at all. As the doctor said near the end of the book, quoted above, “I don’t think we did go blind, I believe we are blind, blind who can see.” But I also like a different impression of whiteness that we get when the first blindman and his wife return to their flat to find it occupied by another family that had been driven out of their home. One of those squatters, the man, is a writer. Despite being blind he has started to write again, turning the blank whiteness of a sheet of paper into art, a chronicle of their experience so that it may be, one day, seen again. show less

0/10

Disclaimer

This review is riddled with spoilers, so if you're afraid of them, please move on. I know that this book will touch many a nerve, so if you wish to lob rotten tomatoes, please know that I've played baseball with my brother, who has the arm of Sandy Koufax, and I could catch them all.

-------------------------------------------------------

There is nothing here to see. Do yourself a favour and move on, ladies and gents. This is the advice that I wish had been offered me, upon picking up this book. Nothing. Here. To. See.

I mean it most ironically, most cynically, most cholerically.

Ostensibly, I was offered a dystopian society which promised to unnerve my last nerve, with the sheer horror of what I was about to read. In show more truth, I was offered a dys-optic society, in which my last nerve was trammelled into the ground, from sheer ennui -- for annoyance alone does not quite plumb the depths the way the French plumb it.

On a bright sunny day, a man is stricken with blindness. Before anyone can mutter Jumping-Jack-FLASH ... the rest of the world is stricken with a white blindess that catapults a normal society into a functioning pit-of-hell that sounds like a mash-up between Bruegel and Bosch. Yes, it happened just like this: from driving down the street, to being knee-deep in one's own feces, and face to face with the most heinous criminals in society in one easy step -- you don't even have to go through steps 2 and 3.

It didn't take me long to realize this is one pervert's nocturnal emission of a novel: for it bears not even a modicum of probability within its outrageous premise.

The dystopian novels that scare the hell out of me are those that build from likely premises and deteriorate into constructed hells. Novels that create hell out of thin air, on the other hand, deteriorate quickly into farce, and are utterly meaningless, except for the writer. This felt, very much, like Saramago's own little private entertainment.

In no possible universe can I imagine that a blind group of people will be dropped into a lunatic asylum, without food or water; where the perimeter will be surrounded by armed guards; where the inmates are left to fend for themselves in literal, and figurative, cesspools.

In no possible universe can I imagine a herd of blind people, playing blind man's buff/bluff, while swimming around in their own ordure, and abusing the hell out of each other, just for shits-and-giggles, if you'll pardon the too-apt pun.

Apart from the utter improbability of the general premise, has anyone wondered how anything of any consequence could have occurred in that asylum, without prior direction, superintendence. From a bird's eye view, I laughed myself sick.

I discussed this book with my blind brother. We had the laugh of our lives. We were almost vomiting from too much laughter: imagine herding women into a room to be raped -- all blind people -- in a vast, vast asylum ... blind criminals being able to corral the women and force them into unspeakable acts.

Blind people herding blind people is like herding cats. One should try the latter, before attempting the former to get even a gist of what is possible.

The terror and the violence, then, is gratuitous, unjustifiable, unessential. One simply cannot object to gratuitous violence and still find value in this book; for this book is not a parable of a dystopia, but merely an old man's perverse vision of a society he wishes to depredate. It is a morality play that's gone more than a little bit wrong. show less

Blindness covers the lives of seven pilgrims, not pilgrims in the religious sense but fellow travelers who have become companions in order to survive. Seven of the many in a city whose population has descended into blindness and the inevitable growing chaos.

It’s not your usual apocalyptic novel, although as the days go by society, degenerates. The book goes into a lot of detail of the lives of the seven pilgrims who find each other through directing indirect connections with an optician. It’s a book about kindness and the human urge to survive.

The writing style can be wordy and at times it seems similar to the style of Javier Marias a favorite of mine. The writer uses repetition in order to express the depths of pressure when show more humans are faced with catastrophe, and the souls of those humans under pressure. Blindness here strikes seemingly at random. Not everyone goes blind at once. And unlike physiological blindness this blindness is white, not black.

The seven are called not by their given names, but by names to describe their looks and relationships to each other. They are :- the one who can see, her husband the doctor, the girl with glasses, the boy with the squint, the old man with the black eyepatch, the first man to go blind
and the wife of the first man. Accompanying them is the dog of tears

The woman who can see, is able to help the others to navigate the city in search of food and places to sleep. As time goes on this becomes more difficult as society is disintegrating and all about them and food and services become scarce.

When the seven find and settle on a place to stay that is relatively safe, they get into a routine and at night the woman who can see reads from a book. I found this interesting being blind myself. I can only hear books and sometimes I drift off to sleep like the companions in this passage.

The trouble is that the weakness of the bodies sometimes leads to a lack of attention of the mind, and it was not for lack of intellectual interest. No, what happened was that the brain slipped into a half-sleep, like an animal settling down for hibernation -goodbye world. Therefore it wasn’t uncommon that the listeners gently lowered their eyelids, force themselves to follow the eyes of the soul, the vicissitudes of the plot until a more energetic passage shook them from the torpor.

Exactly my experience!

I loved the writing and will end with a quote which shows Jose Saramago’s use of both imagery and repetition. The companions have sought shelter in a church when the woman who could see was fatigued and feeling ill. She sat and her husband the doctor put her head down between her legs, and when feeling less dizzy she sits up and is shocked to discover and cannot believe what she can see. It’s a long quote - just read enough to get what I’m saying. The doctor’s wife sees
That man nailed to the cross with a white bandage, covering his eyes and next to him a woman, her heart pierced by seven swords, and her eyes also covered with a white bandage, and it was not only that man that woman who were in that condition all the images in the church had their eyes covered statues with the white cloth tied around the head, paintings with a thick brushstroke of white paint, and there was a woman teaching her daughter how to read and both have their eyes covered and a man with an open book in which little child was sitting, and both had their eyes covered and another man, his body spiked with arrows and he had his eyes covered And a woman with a little lamp, and she had her eyes covered and a man with wounds and his hands and feet in his chest, and he had his eyes covered and another man with a lion, and both have their eyes covered and another man with a lamb and both had their eyes covered and another man with an eagle and both had their eyes covered and another man with the spear standing over a fallen man with horns and cloven feet, and both have their eyes covered. And another man carrying a set of scales, and he had his eyes covered and an old bald man holding a white lily, and he had his eyes covered and another old man leaning on an unshaved sword, and he had his eyes covered and a woman with a dove, and both had their eyes covered and a man with two ravens and all three had their eyes covered There was only one woman who did not have her eyes covered because she carried her gouged out eyes on a silver tray. The doctor’s wife said to her husband you won’t believe me if I tell you.

I highly recommend this book, reflected in my 4.5 star rating.

2025
https://www.librarything.com/topic/370242#8833297 show less

If one can say anything about this book without spoiling some of the elements, I’d say you cannot even move past the first page, so for those paranoid, read no further!

This is an absolutely marvellous book on a seemingly rampant blindness that leave its victims in a visual sea of milky white. Saramago delves into what this blindness means on many levels, foremost individually as well as for society in large, and shows humanity from within its core in a variety of ways.

To me, this book displays humankind and the surrounding world at the base level. When stripped of sight, our senses are shocked, and then, as through cooking, reduced to display our core values.

I haven’t read Saramago prior to this novel, but I hear his way of writing show more is the same almost everywhere: long sentences, few punctuations and no quotation marks to show who’s saying what in dialogue. It’s very interesting, yet I think some may dislike it. show less

My second Saramago confirms my view that his whole schtick was "lit-fic for thickos". Early on in this one he drops some self-justifying b/s about why his characters don't need names, but it does nothing to alleviate the tedious agony of reading 325 pages about "the girl with the dark glasses", "the doctor's wife", "the first blind man", "the boy with the squint", etc etc:

The doctor's wife brought the glass to the boy with the squint's lips and said, Here is your water, drink slowly, slowly, and savour it, a glass of water is a marvellous thing, she was not talking to him, she was not talking to anyone, simply communicating to the world what a marvellous thing a glass of water is.

"The boy with the squint's lips" is just fugly prose. show more And writers who do dialogue "creatively" like that will be first against the wall when my literary revolution comes. It's especially annoying in English because of our capitalised first-person pronoun, so when a line of dialogue begins with "I", you don't know whether it's the same person speaking or someone else. Another translation issue is the lack of an English noun meaning "cego", a blind person, resulting in the clunky rendering "blind person/people" taking up ~2% of the damn book. I mean everyone is fucking blind, that's the point of the story, so I'd have just translated it as "person/people", but OK that's not Saramago's fault. What is his fault is the frequent fatuity of the narration, e.g.:

...her husband only stole cars, goods which on account of their size cannot be hidden under the bed.

On account of their size! Fascinating. And what is also his fault is the wholesale adoption of the comma splice as a cheap device to keep the eyeballs moving. It's deplorable, but it worked on me as I rushed — to hasten its end — through this vacuous book, blatantly written to draw thicko blurbs like the one on the back of mine ("a powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses — and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit") without actually saying anything at all beyond "wouldn't it be fucked up if everyone went blind".

No wonder he got a Nobel. show less

What a book! When an epidemic of sudden blindness happens, the blind and those contaminated by them are quarantined in an old asylum where they are left to fend for themselves. This situation rapidly changes from quarantine into imprisonment and squalor as the blind fumble about - they befoul the corridors as they can't find the toilets, people get injured and die from infection. The army don't deliver enough food and everyone gets gaunt and hungry. When an armed gang of blind men take over the food distribution demanding first valuables and then women in payment, you are truly horrified where before you were revolted by the conditions. I can honestly say it makes you feel dirty.

But there is one person in the asylum who can see - the show more eye doctor's wife - rather than leave her husband she pretends to be blind, and secretly and subtly tries to help the others around her without giving her secret away. It is through her eyes that we see everything that is going on - and it is a huge burden for her which she bears with grace and dignity.

Eventually the armed gang is overcome, and the internees realise the army outside is gone too and they escape to find a world which has rapidly become a barbarian place as the entire population is now blind. Bodies litter the streets, everyone is searching for food, there is no clean water, dogs and rats scavenge everywhere.

Later there are some marvellous scenes which relieve you temporarily from this grim vision - the cleansing powers of a shower of rain and the friendly dog who licks the tears away. An astonishing and powerful book and powerful commentary on the denial and removal of basic human rights. It was easy to read, although Saramago's largely punctuationless style takes a while to get used to. It is one that will stay with me for a long time. show less