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laurentheunicorn 's review for:
Blindness
by José Saramago
When we imagine apocalyptic futures, do we imagine ourselves as still being us, only living in a world that has changed?
In his article Wounded Stories, Patrick Stokes explores the inability "to envisage becoming someone other than who we are" with doomsday preppers- survivalists fantasising about hiding out in bunkers or fleeing into the woods yet still imagining being "the same person, just living in a world that has suddenly changed".
But anyone who has experienced an event like the death of a loved one or pandemic knows that after, who we are is fundamentally changed.
Saramago's blindness is a lesson of society being irreparably altered and people becoming other. Throughout the entire book, we are reminded that the old world is gone and that who these characters were before the white blindness no longer exists.
In this new world, almost everyone is blind. It is through one character, who has not caught the blindness, that we witness violence, injustice and filthy conditions. Saramago's writing is visceral, painting a bleak and repulsive picture, and reading it feels like as much of a burden as our main character's sight.
But much like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the bleakness of Saramago's novel is not in vain. Saramago highlights the fragility of our humanness and the awful consequences of abandoning our kindness and connection. It was scary and crushing to read about a society becoming more and more inhuman. (notes to self- the desperation in this book seemed beastly/animalistic, a breakdown conveyed by crude descriptions of bodily functions).
The group that we follow offers us a space where community and compassion continue to hold on. I think the scene where the unnamed inmates gather around a radio needs to be made into a piece of art, or at least a cover for later editions.
In his article Wounded Stories, Patrick Stokes explores the inability "to envisage becoming someone other than who we are" with doomsday preppers- survivalists fantasising about hiding out in bunkers or fleeing into the woods yet still imagining being "the same person, just living in a world that has suddenly changed".
But anyone who has experienced an event like the death of a loved one or pandemic knows that after, who we are is fundamentally changed.
Saramago's blindness is a lesson of society being irreparably altered and people becoming other. Throughout the entire book, we are reminded that the old world is gone and that who these characters were before the white blindness no longer exists.
In this new world, almost everyone is blind. It is through one character, who has not caught the blindness, that we witness violence, injustice and filthy conditions. Saramago's writing is visceral, painting a bleak and repulsive picture, and reading it feels like as much of a burden as our main character's sight.
But much like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the bleakness of Saramago's novel is not in vain. Saramago highlights the fragility of our humanness and the awful consequences of abandoning our kindness and connection. It was scary and crushing to read about a society becoming more and more inhuman. (notes to self- the desperation in this book seemed beastly/animalistic, a breakdown conveyed by crude descriptions of bodily functions).
The group that we follow offers us a space where community and compassion continue to hold on. I think the scene where the unnamed inmates gather around a radio needs to be made into a piece of art, or at least a cover for later editions.