Adina (notifications back, log out, clear cache) 's Reviews > Blindness
Blindness
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Adina (notifications back, log out, clear cache) 's review
bookshelves: dystopia, favorites, portugal, w-mwl-alternative
Oct 01, 2014
bookshelves: dystopia, favorites, portugal, w-mwl-alternative
I finished this masterpiece last week and I let it to sink in a little bit before reviewing it. The power of this book was quite overwhelming at times and I had to stop reading for a few days at a time. I do not think there are many books that disturbed me like this one. Maybe Never Let Me Go but there the message was much more subtle.
Some say that the structure of the book makes it very hard to read. I suppose the voice in my head did quite a good job in reading it as I did not encounter any difficulty to follow the narration. What made it difficult to read at times were the images and smells that were projected into my brain. At some point It seemed that excrement odor was rising from the pages in front of me.
Short version of the plot. One day people start to go blind without any prior symptom. Frightened, the Government tries to restrain the blindness epidemic by isolating the blind people. The quarantine is not successful and more and more people go blind. The book focuses on the life of a few "patients" locked and guarded into a mental institution, among who lives the only person immune to blindness. The loss of sight reduces people to their primal instincts (good or bad) and soon we are witnesses of some unimaginable horrors in the fight for food/supremacy/life and to the demise of all social and moral institutions. However, there are people that still try to help and to keep a bit of humanity and decency.
“If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.”
I thought that the book is a metaphor of the people that are walking through life without thinking about the violence and cruelty that is in front of them, their ignorance of anything that could menace their civilized life. I believe the book brings forward our fear/avoidance to see our mortality and the insignificance of our lives.
“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.”
“Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.”
“This is the stuff we’re made of, half indifference and half malice.”
Some say that the structure of the book makes it very hard to read. I suppose the voice in my head did quite a good job in reading it as I did not encounter any difficulty to follow the narration. What made it difficult to read at times were the images and smells that were projected into my brain. At some point It seemed that excrement odor was rising from the pages in front of me.
Short version of the plot. One day people start to go blind without any prior symptom. Frightened, the Government tries to restrain the blindness epidemic by isolating the blind people. The quarantine is not successful and more and more people go blind. The book focuses on the life of a few "patients" locked and guarded into a mental institution, among who lives the only person immune to blindness. The loss of sight reduces people to their primal instincts (good or bad) and soon we are witnesses of some unimaginable horrors in the fight for food/supremacy/life and to the demise of all social and moral institutions. However, there are people that still try to help and to keep a bit of humanity and decency.
“If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.”
I thought that the book is a metaphor of the people that are walking through life without thinking about the violence and cruelty that is in front of them, their ignorance of anything that could menace their civilized life. I believe the book brings forward our fear/avoidance to see our mortality and the insignificance of our lives.
“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.”
“Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.”
“This is the stuff we’re made of, half indifference and half malice.”
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Reading Progress
October 1, 2014
– Shelved as:
to-read
October 1, 2014
– Shelved
March 27, 2015
– Shelved as:
dystopia
September 15, 2015
–
Started Reading
September 30, 2015
–
56.75%
"“Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.”"
page
185
October 8, 2015
–
Finished Reading
May 5, 2017
– Shelved as:
favorites
October 8, 2018
– Shelved as:
portugal
August 30, 2019
– Shelved as:
w-mwl-alternative
Comments Showing 1-50 of 52 (52 new)
message 1:
by
Ammara
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rated it 5 stars
Nov 21, 2016 02:49PM
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Thank you. I could have quoted so much more but I decided to stop to the ones that impacted me the most.
You should try it. However, you should probably be in a certain type of mood to read it.
P.S. Well, thank you for accepting my friendship request!
P.S. Well, thank you for accepting my..." Thank you Muchelle. I would like to re-read this at some point as well but I will probably prefer reading another of his works.
Adina, any assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
you where i found the quotes because my book is in Romanian. I found the translation in GR quotes or I translated them. Unfortunately, even if tell you the page you will not find them in the same place. And as this book does not have chapters....