José SaramagoLiterary Fiction · Fiction·1922–2010
Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira
Synopsis
Without warning, a man stopped at a traffic light goes blind, his vision swallowed not by darkness but by a blank, milky white. The affliction spreads like contagion, and a terrified government herds the first victims into a derelict asylum under armed guard, hoping to contain what it cannot understand.
Inside, as more and more of the city loses its sight, the thin structures of civilization collapse. Food, sanitation, and dignity give way to squalor, violence, and the tyranny of the cruel over the helpless. Through it all moves the doctor's wife, the one person who inexplicably keeps her sight and hides it, bearing witness to the worst and best of what people become when no one believes they can be seen.
José Saramago's Nobel-honored novel is a stark allegory of how quickly society can unravel, and a hard-won argument for compassion, told in his distinctive flowing, near-unpunctuated prose.
How it reads
- I decided to read this book after one of the men in my book club told me about it. I thought the plot was extremely fascinating so I figured it was worth a read. I wasn't disappointed.<br><br>Blindess is about the sudden white-blindness a city descends into and the madness and inhumanity that follows. Only one person out of the hundreds can see, the wife of a doctor. The doctor is also one of the victims of the sudeen white blindness. It's a white blindness because the victims see nothing but white light when they go blind (as opposed to sudden blackness or darkness). There is no explanation for the sudden onset of this blindness and there appears to be no cure. One minute, you can see and the next, you can't.<br><br>The story focuses on the wife who can see, the doctor, another husband/wife couple, a young woman who wears dark glasses, an old man with an eye patch, a little boy and a dog who befriends the "seeing" wife. In the early days of the blindness, the government locks away all of the victims, hoping that the "epidemic" can be contained. Blind victims are sent to the empty mental hospital and kept there with little food, water and clean bedding. The Government has placed soldiers, with orders to kill, around the perimeter of the hospital, and those soldiers follow orders closely.<br><br>As the hospital fills with the blind, a society of terror and torture develops, when a handful of blind internees decides to horde the meager food rations and make the other blind internees pay for small portions. First the payments are made with valuables the internees brought with them, then, the payments are made with the women. The small group of men demand that the women serve as payment for the meager food supplies. The doctor's wife, devises a plan to stop the atrocities the other women in the building suffer at the hands of these men (monsters more like) and sneaks in with a group of women from another ward. She quickly kills the leader and fighting ensues, with several more men dying while the women escape the brutality of rape and humiliation. Then, the fighting goes outside, where all is still. The Government has finally fallen to the same fate as its citizens, it has gone blind.<br><br>The doctor's wife leads the group out of the hospital and manages to get them safely to the home her and her husband shared before being sent to the hospital for quarantine. She figures out ways to feed the blind group with her, all while crying into the matted fur of the dog, who met up with them as they walked the streets. Then, one day, things begin to change. Slowly, people begin to regain their sight. The sight comes on as unexpectedly as the blindness and the whole time, the doctor's wife has been the only person to witness the descent and subsequent ascent of humanity.<br><br>This book is written without names and without quotation marks. That was one thing that irritated me. I had a time figuring out who was talking as there were no quotations to show that a person was talking and when numerous characters talked, their speeches ran together and it was easy to get lost in who was talking. Other than that minor grammatical nuisance, I found this story very enjoyable and chilling. It was an excellent "what if" type of story, examining what people would become if they lost "way" and by losing the way, were given the freedom to do whatever they wanted. It showed how illness and the unexplained, can lead to fear, loathing and rash judgments by those in power. It also showed how truly powerful love is and possibly, that through blindness can we truly see who our allies and enemies are. There is a sequel to this book and I'm looking forward to reading it. It is called "Seeing" and picks up 4 years after society has regained its eyesight. This is not the kind of book that should be read quickly, but rather slowly so it can truly be absorbed. It is a good book and I really enjoyed it.
- Perdre la vue du jour au lendemain. Être plongé, non pas dans les ténèbres, mais dans une blancheur de lait, dans la lumière. Il est quand même symbolique que la cécité soit confondue avec la clarté, à croire que l'on n'atteint la véritable lucidité qu'en fermant les yeux. Volontairement ou non, ce n'est qu'un détail. C'est comme si l'écrivain cherchait à rendre la phrase de Saint-Exupéry « L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.» plus concrète que jamais. Ce qui m'a d'abord interpellé dans ce roman, c'est le style indéniablement particulier de l'auteur, ces répliques entassées les unes sur les autres, sans retour à la ligne, sans ponctuation, un désordre visuel à l'image du chaos qui règne désormais sur le pays. Les aveugles confinés dans un asile sans eau, sans électricité, avec peu ou pas de nourriture, devront apprendre à cohabiter. Pas simple, et les conditions de vie atroces sont rendues par le registre scatologique, les scènes très graphiques de viol collectif, de meurtre, bref ça va loin dans l'abjection. Les principaux personnages, au sort desquels le narrateur paraît s'intéresser particulièrement, finissent par former un semblant de famille, et il incombe à la femme du médecin de servir d'yeux à ce petit groupe. Elle est la seule à avoir été épargnée du mal blanc. La loyauté de cette femme à son époux, son obstination à aider autrui est rassurante: l'amour et la compassion, dernières traces d'humanité dans ces lieux immondes, existent malgré tout. Ces personnages ne sont jamais désignés par leurs noms, ce sont le médecin, la jeune fille aux lunettes teintées, le vieillard au bandeau noir... Par là commencé leur déshumanisation, à laquelle ils résisteront tant bien que mal. Seul bémol: d'habitude, j'aime les fins heureuses, pourtant, j'ai trouvé celle-ci un peu parachutée. Que tout le monde récupère la vue, tout d'un coup, inexplicablement, me semble incohérent avec le désespoir caractérisant l'intégralité du roman. J'aurais aimé que ça se termine mal, tout comme ça a commencé.
- Je suis sidérée. Review coming up!