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Book Review
Sep. 8th, 2019 08:00 pmBlindness
by José Saramago
In an unnamed city, an epidemic of sudden, unexplainable blindness begins spreading. The government decides initially to forcibly confine the blind to a disused mental asylum. Here we follow a handful of people - a doctor, his wife, the first man to be struck blind and his wife, a young woman with dark glasses, a man with an eyepatch, a boy with no mother - as they make their way. The doctor's wife, however, can still see, and she provides guidance and leadership to this small group. In the asylum, a band of criminals try to seize power, controlling the food rations and committing violent assaults. Eventually the inmates find that their guards have abandoned them and they leave the asylum, finding themselves navigating a city in chaos where everyone has gone blind.
This story is pretty harrowing, as even before the criminals attempt to assert brutal control over their fellow inmates, the neglect of the authorities and the difficulty for the blind of attending to basic needs and functions in an unfamiliar and poorly maintained space make for really unpleasant conditions. Things do improve a bit after they leave the asylum, especially since the city and its people have not descended into utter violent savagery. Nonetheless, despite the horrors of this new reality, I never found it too bleak or horrific. The compassion and competence of the doctor's wife, and the basic decency of the main characters prevents the narrative from becoming too depressing. (Admittedly, I do have a strong tolerance for darkness in my fiction.) Plus, none of the characters ever quite lose hope of improvement in their condition and situation.
There is a lot going on here thematically, and I will be chewing over it all for days. Saramago is clearly commenting on how human nature plays out when suddenly deprived of not just the structures of civilization but also one of the important means of relating to and understanding each other and the environment. However, this is no simplistic Lord of the Flies style demonstration that underneath we are all terrible, violent. unkind savages. Saramago has a much more nuanced and complex take on how humanity and human nature work and how we respond to different kinds of destabilization.
Saramago does have a very distinct prose style, with long sentences forming paragraphs that span pages, and dialog written without line breaks. It can take some getting used to, but since I'd read a few of his novels prior to this one, I had no trouble with it.
by José Saramago
In an unnamed city, an epidemic of sudden, unexplainable blindness begins spreading. The government decides initially to forcibly confine the blind to a disused mental asylum. Here we follow a handful of people - a doctor, his wife, the first man to be struck blind and his wife, a young woman with dark glasses, a man with an eyepatch, a boy with no mother - as they make their way. The doctor's wife, however, can still see, and she provides guidance and leadership to this small group. In the asylum, a band of criminals try to seize power, controlling the food rations and committing violent assaults. Eventually the inmates find that their guards have abandoned them and they leave the asylum, finding themselves navigating a city in chaos where everyone has gone blind.
This story is pretty harrowing, as even before the criminals attempt to assert brutal control over their fellow inmates, the neglect of the authorities and the difficulty for the blind of attending to basic needs and functions in an unfamiliar and poorly maintained space make for really unpleasant conditions. Things do improve a bit after they leave the asylum, especially since the city and its people have not descended into utter violent savagery. Nonetheless, despite the horrors of this new reality, I never found it too bleak or horrific. The compassion and competence of the doctor's wife, and the basic decency of the main characters prevents the narrative from becoming too depressing. (Admittedly, I do have a strong tolerance for darkness in my fiction.) Plus, none of the characters ever quite lose hope of improvement in their condition and situation.
There is a lot going on here thematically, and I will be chewing over it all for days. Saramago is clearly commenting on how human nature plays out when suddenly deprived of not just the structures of civilization but also one of the important means of relating to and understanding each other and the environment. However, this is no simplistic Lord of the Flies style demonstration that underneath we are all terrible, violent. unkind savages. Saramago has a much more nuanced and complex take on how humanity and human nature work and how we respond to different kinds of destabilization.
Saramago does have a very distinct prose style, with long sentences forming paragraphs that span pages, and dialog written without line breaks. It can take some getting used to, but since I'd read a few of his novels prior to this one, I had no trouble with it.
