Lizzy's Reviews > 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.”

José Saramago’s Blindness can be viewed as an allegory for a world where we see but in fact neglect what is around us. It is a human condition, unquestionable a disease that in contemporary time has only agravated.

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

Blindness is more than a dystopian novel, it is a philosophical work that makes us wonder about our way of living. Moreover, it brings forth the horrifying truth of how the loss of only one sense can almost instantly dismantle our society, our civilization crumbles to nothing. 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, ..."

So, it is all about being human, with its own fundamental virtues and vices. In a world without vision only our voices remain. A revolution, you could say: people are no longer identified by their appearances, now worthless. Outward values are replaces by what kind of person each one is. Social statuses as we knew them are no more. And in a new disorganized world:

"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..."

Saramago’s work reminded me of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, both are about the crumbling of our civilization as we know it. Blindness is a masterpiece and an important reminder for us to be appreciative of several things that we take for granted, to look around and really see. Without an honest and accurate vision our very existence can disintegrate.
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