Blindness

We don't know the city; we don't know the country. The author provides very few identifiers, and the result is that this could be anywhere. As with other dystopic literature, this adds to the bleak circumstances that befall its characters. It also invites speculation of "would that happen here?" It would. People suddenly go blind; people who haven't (yet) gone blind quarantine those who have. There are those who attempt to establish a functioning society within the abandoned mental institution where they have been placed. There are those who cannot or will not follow the norms of a civil society. And there are the guards who are so frightened of becoming blind themselves that they keep the blind "inmates" at a great distance and will shoot anyone who tries to escape.The first part of the novel deals with the experiences in the mental institution and also with the character development of one particular group of blind people. The conditions are brutal inside: excrement everywhere. Remember, no one can see where they are, and the plumbing doesn't work anyway, even if they could reach the bathrooms in time. There is the wretched stench associated with excrement and dirty clothes on dirty people. There is unequal distribution of rotting food; sexual violence; no fresh water. The second part of the novel is no less brutal. The guards are all stricken with blindness and desert their posts. The "inmates" flee. The environment they enter is no better than the one they just left; in fact, because they have no way to tell where they are and where they're going, and because even if they could find their old domiciles, marauders (these, remember, are people who are struggling to survive with blindness as well) have broken into many of the homes and food establishments.An interesting twist to the storyline is that one woman can see. She keeps that to herself for a long time, wisely realizing the complications and expectations that would befall her, but for the group that she is with, she often assures survival. At the end of the day, life goes on in its various ways, and I'll avoid a spoiler. Saramago's writing style can be challenging, but I feel that if I understood his various literary devices, I'd understand how they enhance this very disturbing novel. And it IS very disturbing. When I finished it, I had to read a book about fairies, just to allow all my foreboding to evaporate. A little.

Like many books that create a buzz in the literary circle, Blindness is not very entertaining, the characters are not the most endearing, there is often something missing in the translation, and in this case, the author doesn't use quotations.Not very appealing, right? Except the book is a little bit genius. It pulls this magic trick that I didn't see coming, that one where a book seems okay, and then grows on me after I walk away. Blindness is an interesting thing to be written as a plague. Like all plagues, it creates fear in society, however; there is no fear of death. Therefore, the stricken go on living, but without the ability to see, or to be cared for by others. The struggle of a society with an epidemic on it's hands and how it can bring out the worst in people was a part of the story from the beginning, but it was after the book was finished that the deeper truth and insight of how chaos and evil are lurking just under the surface of society. It is waiting to come out at the first sign of unrest, and will fully bloom when the government falls. That concept isn't exactly original, but the way in which it is delivered is quite original and done well. So while this isn't one of my favorites of all time, there is a lot to be said for a book that stays with it's reader well after it has been read, and I have a feeling that I will remember the details of Blindness for a lifetime.

I like the premise of everyone in the world losing their sight, and the interactions between people as a result.
I did not like the way the book was set up: no use of quotations, statements by different characters seperate do only by commas. Very difficult to get used to.
Interesting read, but I don't think I'll read anything else by this author.

Blew my mind. Thought provoking novel to say the least.

A terrifying and humbling glimpse at the true nature of the human beast. a compelling mix of 'Lord of the Flies', every zombie or plague apocalypse story, and written by a Nobel laureate.

I loved Saramago's Blindness right up to the end. I'm not sure if Blindness was written with Seeing in mind; or if Seeing was written after the success of Blindness. I don't really now if Blindness was commercially successful. Nevertheless, I thought Saramago did a great job of creating a realitybased on the characters environment. The reader never really knows if the white-sickness is world-wide, or just a localized event. The time the characters spent as internees was great. Saramago adeptly described what human beings are capable of if they understand that there are not equalizing outside influences-- essentially describing what some people can be like when no one is watching. I also liked the bigger picture issues Saramago wrote about in the novel-- seeing but not seeing, a society that can only see what is important for the individual and not the collective. I also found the church scene close to the end of the book compelling.
Still, there were a few things that were off-putting. First, was the lack of indication of who was speaking. I get that perhaps Saramago did this to illustrate what conversations may be like for the blind-- but we, the reader are not blind and sometimes the conversations were muddled, but maybe that was the point. Next point of issue is with the ending. The book ended too abruptly for me. It seemed a little too nice and neat to have everyone regain their eyesight within the last few pages of the book, and in the order in which they went blind. The ending felt rushed and almost contrived-- sort of like, Saramago ran out of ideas that would propel the book to a more fitting conclusion. Though, I know someone of Saramago's stature doesn't simply run out of ideas. Which makes the ending more confusing and what leaves me wondering if the two novels Blindness and Seeing were thought of as one continuous story.
Anyway, Blindness is a good book that reflects the human condition in all its depravity when order is dissolved. Saramago's characters are believable and his insights about the human narrative are poignant and disturbing at the same time.

yuk. totally unimpressed.

Interessting narrative on how civilssation falls apart. How easy people become animals and just the stronger or smarter survives.

I knew before starting this book that some parts of it would be hard to take (and they were) but that is not the reason for my low rating. First off, I didn't care for the style with which Saramago wrote in technical terms. The dialogue lacked quotation marks & was not in separate paragraphs which at times made it hard to tell who was speaking. This is picky of me, I know, & inconsistent since this style of writing hasn't bothered me in other books. But, as Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" so I am not at the moment going to try to figure out why it bothered me now but just state the fact. Less bothersome was the lack of chapter numbers because at least the writing was broken up in chapters in the way the text was laid out.Secondly, the internment bothered me a lot. Not because of the events that occurred there (though they were gruesome enough). All the time I was reading this section, I had a strong internal resistance to the way the internment was handled. Where were the doctors? Even though blindness isn't in itself an illness, this was clearly an epidemic of something infectious. Hazmat suits or some such arrangement could have been used to protect the doctors & helpers. And the fact that the doctor's wife was immune would have been important in study of this disease. I just couldn't get myself to believe that these people had been dumped into this mental hospital without any provision for their care or even making sure that there was clean water available.Once the story moved back to the city, I began to enjoy it more. However, the ending seemed abrupt. Overall, I prefer Camus' The Plague which covered some of the same ideas.

no se que pensar del libro. al principio no estaba muy convencido de la situacion inicial ni del tono del autor. al final estaba ya muy interesado en como iba a terminar. lamentablemente el final no me fue muy satisfactorio. no estoy convencido de haber entendido la alegoria. el tono del autor es por momentos insoportable y por momentos atractivo. es mi primer libro de saramago. la voz es muy particular, muy propia. creo que es lo que se me va a quedar del libro, la voz del narrador. por momentos bordea en lo empalagoso, pero siempre muy humana. no se por que es particularmente humana pero ese adjetivo me parece apropiado.no se si es justo decirlo pero para describir mundos violentos y sin orden social no hay nadie como cormac mccarthy.

This one was quite a tough read. The style made it quite difficult to get through at times, and I often found it hard to get back into it after leaving it alone for a while.The story in the former mental asylum was quite intriguing, but this came to an abrupt end and it felt a little like the book lost its way after this. Some interesting points and observations throughout, but I'm not sure what the book is trying to say overall.

Harrowing novel about what happens when an epidemic of blindness is spreading in society. People are forced both against each other and together, and both cruelty and dignity feature prominently.

Just finished this today, not sure what I think. Saramago's treatment of women characters seems facile to me, objectifying. Also, maybe the use of the state of blindness as a metaphor for anything is kind of creepy. I need to think more about this. Anybody read it?

The idea of being blind scares me quite a bit. Not as much as cancer, maybe, but it's up there. Unfortunately, it's quite likely that I will. Which made reading this very uncomfortable for me, because although I know it won't happen like this for me, still... Anyway, Blindness is a very evocative book: the breathless style, which I now know is typical of Saramago's work, suits the story very well, and so does the namelessness of all the protagonists. All of it serves to create that formless blankness of the blindness described in the book.

If you've read other post-apocalyptic stuff, especially The Day of the Triffids, this will seem familiar in many ways. The decay of society, the lengths people have to go to -- yes, that's all been done before, but it's worth reading Saramago's version for the unique details he picks out, the unique style of the story.

There are some really gorgeous bits as well as the really awful books. Of course, there is a lot of reference to disease, some fairly graphic violence, and there's a pretty horrible mass-rape scene, so if those things might cause you harm, best to avoid this one. I found it worth it, myself.

From my blogI have been sitting on this review for a week, I couldn't find the right words immediately and wanted to see what I would remember with the details not being fresh.A dynamic thought provoking novel that is not for everyone. This is a book I would not know who to recommend to other than those that want to think about what the bigger meaning the author is trying to get you to consider is. What would life mean to you if you and the country was struck by the epidemic, blindness. I enjoyed the real life feeling of this book and would categorise it as an intense thriller.The main character is the wife of an eye doctor who does not go blind but lies to stay with her husband. She is the voice and site of reason, most of the victims trust her without knowing she still has her vision.An interesting style used was there were no formal punctuation used only commas and periods, so there were paragraphs of dialogue and description in a very long paragraph. I found this easy to understand and it added to the effect of the blindness epidemic for me but would confuse or irritate others. All the characters did not go by name but more, the girl with the dark shades, the doctors wife, the first man blind etc. All those infected were put in quarantine and those that were in contact with the blind also but on another ward until their fatal day of becoming blind. With no site, how quickly morals and integrity go which is a complete new reality for humanity. The fear and torture everyone had to go through was amazing. The woman with the site was a powerful character and the book only worked because of her really. To see how humanity had changed was her own torture to deal with.When the epidemic hit everyone they were free to the streets again, I enjoyed this change, it allowed some to have hope and believe again. I am not one that usually enjoys details but I really wanted to know and understand each moment. This book did take me 2 weeks to read, I was engaged but it was a hard dark read and the tiny words on paperback didn't help, wish I had read on my Kindle.I found this to be a mind blowing read, a really good debatable book club read.I have read some debates on the ending, I have to smile as I believe the author achieved what he wanted, discussion, also, for us to make some personal conclusions.

Not entirely sure what to rate this book as. When I started it I was quite tempted to give it a mere 2 stars, as I found the style (run-on sentences with lots of commas) annoying and unengaging. However, as the story progressed (and there was more action) I got gradually more and more into it; at lunchtime today I didn't want to stop reading it until I got right to the end.

It is a startling and dramatic piece of quasi-post-apocalypse fiction. I call it that because it is more closely related to magic realism in some ways; it asks the question of how would we survive under a radically changed post-apocalypse-y situation, but you don't feel like the author is really proposing that it will be this way forevermore. Instead, it's as I saw described when skimming some other reviews of this book - an investigation of what blindness means. Not actual real blindness though, y'understand (otherwise the people who complained about the film giving blind people a bad reputation would be justified). More like blindness about other people and their needs, maybe.

It's also about the fragility of human society, but then that's a staple (if not the raison d'etre) of post-apocalyptic fiction and not a surprising message.

I'd have given this book five stars had it not been for the horrible way this author formats his writing. Lengthy, lengthy paragraphs with no quotes around the dialogue.

Aside from that, it was a great book, detailing a possible outcome to an epidemic of blindness.

Though it's not specifically stated where this happens, one could guess that a similar reaction to an entire population of a given country going blind would occur regardless of geography. This is an interesting look at the human psyche and all of its great pitfalls. It's an immensely difficult read because of the sometimes graphic nature of humans at our worst. Just as fantastic, if not even better, is its sequel, Seeing, which delves more into the lengths a government will go to in order to oppress and keep control and power over its own citizens.

Having trouble with the star rating system for this one. It's such a grim read in many ways that I feel dishonest saying that I 'really liked it'. On the other hand, 'I liked it' is too lukewarm a rating for a remarkable, if harrowing, book.

Whichever way you interpret it, you will find that most of all Blindness is about being human.

In a world full of blind people, where the civilization as we know it has completely deteriorated, people are no more identified and judged based on their profession, social status, outward appearances etc. All that remains to distinguish one person from another is one's voice, and the kind of person one is. When people are struggling for survival, trying hard to hold on to life, they drop all the outward pretenses and reveal their true nature. Their actions and behavior mirror the person they are on the inside. And this is how Saramago lets us see every shade of human nature and manages to effectively convey the psychological impact of the epidemic by describing the actions of the people in this blind world.

We, as the human race, take pride in the civilization we have built for ourselves and how we have changed the world in a way that no other life forms could. Blindness brings forth the horrifying truth about how soon the entire system and entire civilization crumbles to nothing if we lose just one of our senses. People are reduced to living in unimaginable filth and rummaging for food and water like animals.

"We're going back to being primitive hordes, said the old man with the black eyepatch, with the difference that we are not a few thousand men and women in an immense, unspoiled nature, but thousands of millions in an uprooted, exhausted world, And blind, ..."

"There must be a government, said the first blind man, I'm not so sure, but if there is , it will be a government of the blind trying to rule the blind, that is to say, nothingness trying to organize nothingness. Then there is no future..."

On the positive side, even in times of utter hopelessness people do all they can to survive. The spirit which keeps them going and struggling to go on living commands respect.

The narrative voice comes across as very honest. The narrator gives a transparent description of what is going on, without ever trying to mitigate the horrors of the situation or to poetize people's misfortune. The narrator maintains an emotional distance and does not offer any judgements on what it observes. The narration, however, is not dry by any means. There are tender moments with love and compassion, and several darker ones which leave one gasping in horror. The writing, though simple, is laden with meaning. And many of those ideas are easy to identify with and understand, since they are not too far from the human nature that we encounter in real world too, they are often things we already know and understand, but haven't looked at them in the way Saramago presents them.

"....since we know that human reason and unreason are same everywhere."

As a dystopian novel, Blindness is a very convincing one. I remember reading another novel, Lord of the Flies, about complete break-down of civilization. I could never understand what could possibly give rise to murdering instincts in those innocent kids. With Blindness, on the other hand, it is difficult to imagine how things could have been any better than how they are shown in the book.

"No, I am not an optimist, but I cannot imagine anything worse than our present existence. Well, I am not entirely convinced that there are limits to misfortune and evil."

Saramago does not try to provide justifications for the course things take, but everything we read about there is very possible and does not leave room for doubt. It was specially the section about people in the asylum which makes this book memorable for me. One can't possibly read through that section without a lump in the throat. The feeling of hopelessness that prevails is haunting.

"..blindness is also this, to live in a world where all hope is gone."

Most of all, Blindness reminds us how fortunate and blessed we all are and to appreciate the little things that make our lives a wonderful experience.

"..when the experience of time has taught us nothing other than that there are no blind people, only blindness."

"..I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see."

"If you can see, look. If you can look, observe. (From the Book of Exhortations)"

This book was exceptional. Adjectives would only detract from the reality. It better captured the essence of the human condition than any other book I have read. Reading it, I felt on the verge of tears at several points, lost in its lyric beauty (and a translation at that!) at others. It made me look differently at people, places, and life. I know of no one who has deserved his Nobel prize more than Jose Saramago.

Blindness does not work as a novel. There is no character development, nor a real plot. There is no explanation, either explicit or implicit, of why just a single character avoids the plague of blindness. The only reason appears to be a mechanical need for an observer/narrator who can see. Conversations are not set off by quotation marks, and there is no specific indication of which character is speaking. It does not matter, however, because the characters are not particularly differentiated in the story, so it does not really matter who is speaking. The author does not even bother to name the characters. Instead he simply gives each some type of relative description: "the doctor's wife," "the boy with the squint." If it is a parable, it is too long, and too simplistic: The point seems to be that humans are often brutal; humans shit; modern society is complex. So what?The author seems to have an adolescent boy's delight in describing violent sex scenes. The author idealizes the women who sacrifice everything for the men. He uses the stereotypes of the all-understanding and forgiving wife; the woman who sacrifices her life to save the village; the prostitute with the heart of gold. The references to Milton's Paradise Lost just emphasize how far short Blindness fall from greatness. Paradise Lost describes a great battle in heaven, and then man's fall from grace. Despite the downward trajectory, Paradise Lost invokes a nobility in man, and gives one a sense of higher aspirations despite a fallen nature. The battle in the asylum, invokes Paradise Lost by describing an opposite situation--a battle in Hell. The asylum is obviously meant to be Hell (complete with fire and "archangels" p.184). The battle results in the release of the inmates from their hellish surroundings, and eventually their redeemed sight. However, despite its apparent positive trajectory, the reader is left only with feelings of disgust and despair about the human condition. Books that make his points with better storytelling ability are Camus' The Plague, and Goldings' Lord of the Flies. This book is just scatological and pornographic.

In the novel Blindness Saramago uses a quotation from the Book of Exhortations as the epigram: "If you can see, look. If you can look, observe". Near the end of this novel, when the blind people are getting their vision back, he has one of his characters remark:" I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see" (p 292). These two quotations suggest the political and philosophical intention of the novel. The greatest problem with an allegorical novel like Blindness is that it grants too much freedom to the reader. It allows too many interpretations. Saramago uses blindness as a metaphor for both personal misfortune and social catastrophe. The story begins when the first blind man loses his vision in his car while waiting for a traffic light to change. The man who helps him get safely home goes back and steals his car. The next day the wife of the first blind man takes him to see the eye doctor. Within a few days, the wife of the first blind man, the car thief, the doctor and all of the patients in his waiting room also go blind. The only character in the novel that miraculously avoids the affliction of blindness is the doctor's wife. Saramago's writings have often been discussed as an example of "magic realism". However, it has been suggested that Blindness has more in common with Kafka's allegorical novels than it does with works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Salman Rushdie. The fundamental problem posed by allegorical novels is how to locate their political and social meaning. Saramago provides his readers with few clues to guide interpretation.

I don't mind Jose Saramago's contemporary, experimental writing style. The premise, however, was unoriginal. The dialog was overly simple and bland. The characters were boring and flat. I liked the theme overall, but felt that Saramago's writing was on the nose and preachy.

This was an amazing read. Beautifully dark, but alive with hope that we, as people, have true souls and humanity, when all is apparently lost. Unless you read the book, that statement makes no sense at all. It still probably means nothing, but it does sum up my general feelings after experiencing this incredible story. A plague of sorts has hit society, making the entire population suffer a white blindness. People are reduced to wander the streets with nobody to care for their needs. Filthy and desperate, there seems to be little hope. The main characters ban together to form a family as they navigate this new world. Saramago's writing at times is like poetry, startling in its presentation. At other times, he is brutal and cold. But truly, this will be remembered by me as one of my best reads of this year.

I'm extremely conflicted about this book. The story is amazing. The narration follows the first dozen or so victims of a blindness epidemic, who are forcefully quarantined in an abandoned mental asylum to keep the rest of the population from going blind. It's so perfectly apocalyptic and ambiguous that I just wanted to eat it all up! There are no names of places or people given, and no descriptions outside of one or two identifying features from the brief contact the victims had before the blindness - the girl with the dark glasses, the old man with the eyepatch, the car thief, etc etc. The ending is great and there's a sequel called Seeing which I really want to read because I want to know what happens next.HOWEVER, the way the book is written is TERRIBLE. There are no paragraph breaks anywhere, and no quotation marks to denote the start/end of dialogue or the changing of speakers. There are lots of swift back-and-forth conversations with groups of 3 or more people, and the only way to tell when a new person is speaking is with a comma and a capital letter. But there are also commas in the sentences, and sometimes phrases start with "I" which is always capitalized! Then where are you!? I almost gave up on this twice because I was just so frustrated with trying to read the dialogue. I'm sure it's supposed to be some allusion to the chaos and confusion and frustration of becoming blind, but it completely ruined the story for me.I'm wondering if the sequel is written in the same annoying way. And if Saramago does weird stuff like this in all of his books.I guess I'm rating this a 3? Five for the story, one for the way it's written.

I was convinced that this was one of the best books I had ever read even before I finished this Nobel Prize-Winning author's masterpiece. It's unbelievable how such a simple concept can be so terrifying, engaging, and enjoyable. It has some deeply dark, nasty moments, and is definitely not for the easily offended. Poignantly, through an epidemic of blindness the author opens our eyes and minds to the brutality and animalistic instincts of our race. Also, the sheer dependency of society on the contributions of the people in it, and how fragile it all actually is.The scary thing about this book is that the depiction of the degradation of the world as we know it is so damn believable. In his writing, Saramango is bold enough to break traditional storytelling methods; the characters do not have names and are referred to with simple descriptions like 'the old man with the black eye patch', speech marks are completely absent even though there is a lot of speech in the book, and many sentences roll on for a long time, punctuated only by the occasional comma and capital letter.I can't recommend this book enough!

Impressed, but not totally convinced: Saramago's technique and his not-quite-detached irony work very well with this subject-matter; the English translation (as with all the Saramago I've read so far) is elegant but unobtrusive. What bothers me a bit is the appropriateness of using a magic-realist conceit as the central plot element in a book like this. Magic-realism on the edges of a story is very good for making familiar situations strange, and forcing us to see the absurdity of things we normally take for granted. However, if you put it in the centre as Saramago does here, doesn't it have the counter-productive effect of making it easier for the reader to step aside from the book and say "This is just a fable: this sort of thing could never really happen. It doesn't apply to me"?I suppose the question is, in a world where we have first-hand accounts of Auschwitz and Bosnia and Rwanda and AIDS, why do we need a fantasy about a nicely symbolic but physiologically implausible epidemic? And that implies the answer: because Saramago felt he had something to say about how human society breaks down under extreme circumstances, but didn't want to put himself in the false position of writing about the horrors of something he only knew at second hand. The trouble is, I'm not really sure that what he has to say is interesting or original enough to justify all the hoops he has to jump through to get there.

Read the novel when the movie adaptation was announced despite my apprehensions about the author's personal politics. I found the novel quite good and, while a bit heavy on the symbolism and allegories, still very touching and thought-provoking. Peeve: His very annoying stylistic antics of not using quotation marks or periods is still there and still annoying.

This is a must-read book for everyone. Its a favorite of mine not because it was a happy book but it was actually a sad book that shows us the evils of men. It showed me that men (and maybe women too ;p) are beasts. It was only observed/SEEN when the characters were BLIND. It taught me that we are currently SEEING things but not really SEEING. We are BLIND to the evil society to the point of taking part in it. It takes a sickness in the form of BLINDNESS to really SEE the world for what it is. This book is a big paradox. I thought I wouldn't enjoy it since Saramago hates periods and quotation marks (hehe) but I got used to it. Saramago was also able to convey the feelings, the smells, the taste of the blind. THIS BOOK WILL MAKE YOU THINK. THIS BOOK WILL MAKE YOU SEE.