H Blindness example essay topic

Magic Realism"h As Encyclopedia. com says, ! SS Works of magic realism mingle realistic portrayals of ordinary events and characters with elements of fantasy and myth, creating a rich, frequently disquieting world that is at once familiar and dreamlike. !"h Magic realists usually spawn from South American cultures. "h Saramago chooses to turn blindness, a common disability, into an airborne disease and has an entire country split away from Europe. Only a magic realist could create such fantastical stories. Connections"h Before the entire society goes blind, people blame the infected for the sudden outbreak even though they do not know the actual cause. Europe believes that it is Spain's fault for separating when it is really a geographic catastrophe. "h There is a proverbial continental separation between those who are blind and those who are not. There is a literal continental separation between Spain and the rest of Europe. "h Both novels deal with denial and anger and the psychological results of change". h Like Camus!

| The Plague, Saramago uses disease as a way of representing social and political crisis. Both authors emphasize the human response to social catastrophe. However, there is a problem with the representation of historical events by means of a medical model. In this representation, nature displaces the social and replaces it with an image of fate. As a consequence, blindness is defined as a physical condition. "h Since Saramago's writings have often been discussed as an example of 'magic realism', he can be compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie. "h Blindness is also like Lord of the Flies. The children seem helpless and savage without their parents just as the blind are helpless and savage without their sight.

Blindness Quotes"h! SS! The doctor took him behind the scanner which anyone with imagination might see as a new version of confessional, eyes replacing words, and the confessor looking directly into the sinner's soul! K!" (14). Saramago plays on the idea that the eyes are the windows to the soul"h!

Stand so, from bed to bed, the news slowly circulated round the ward!" (150). The childhood game of! SS telephone!" is used as a basic survival skill for the blind. "h The doctor's wife asks if! SS blindness is! K to live in a world without hope!" (145) and later realizes that! SSw e are blind, Blind that see!" (292)". h The characters are known as 'the doctor' or 'the old man with the eye patch' (244)!

V they have no names, but, ironically, only physical descriptions. This paradox, where blind are referred to by visual elements, aids in creating this magic realist irony". h Near the end of the 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' (292). This indicates (but does not disclose) the political and philosophical intention of the novel. Stone Raft Quotes"h!

SS! From time immemorial, it was believed that when these canine creatures that had always been silent [blind] started to bark [wail], the entire universe was nearing its end!" (1). "h! SSThe prime minister said, ! yen our country has been subjected to pressures which, without exaggeration, I consider unacceptable through no fault of ours these developments have exposed the serious internal contradiction in the debates among the governments of Europe to which we no longer belong! Kas we drift away! |!" (146).

Those on the peninsula are in denial just as some of the blind are in denial in Blindness". h! SS Pedro Rock measures the dimension of the ocean and at that moment finds it small! K Pedro does not know if he is man or fish!" (167). The change has disillusioned Pedro". h! Samaria Guavaira woke up in her bed, a man asleep at her side! K!" (166).

Even after the change, people still manage to fulfill their needs. Sexual relations also happen in Blindness, but in a more aggressive manner. "h! SST here are ways of showing how difficult it is to uproot people from places where they have been happy. All the more so since these people are not fleeing in panic. Maria Guavaira is now closing the doors carefully.

She sets free the hens that are being left behind, releases the rabbits from their hutch, now left to god's mercy if not to the wiles of Satan!" (191). This holds true in Blindness as well". h! SS Unaware of the political intrigues being played out behind the scenes, the peninsula continues sailing westward!" (249)". h! SSThe peninsula [blindness] is descending, but descending slowly.

The experts [eye doctors] albeit with the utmost caution predict that the movement [blindness] is about to stop, trusting in the obvious and universal truth that if the whole, as such, never stops, the constituent parts must stop at some time, this axiom being demonstrated by human life itself [and vision too]!" (286). "h! SSA man dies, and then what. His four friends weep, he rubs his eyes furiously with clenched fists!" (289). The characters in Saramago's novels seem indifferent to death. The blind had to bury the blind several times in Blindness. This seems to show that Saramago does not fear death. "h!

SS From our distant vantage point, we know little about the twist and turns of the present crisis, the breaking away of the peninsula [going blind], when the ignorant masses trampled on law and order! K no one can see [see?] how to resolve the situation in the immediate future as the higher interests of morality and justice dictate!" (184). Personal Reaction What is this odd book of Jose Saramago (Blindness)? Is it an allegory? If so a metaphor of what? Is it a condemnation of humans as being only on the edge of civilization and that if chaos emerges, people will plunge back into barbarism?

Is the tiny group of seven the hopeful core that even in such catastrophic circumstances would maintain humanity and re-create a safer environment? Were this latter the case then I have a difficult time understanding the presence of the doctor's wife, the only sighted person. Does this suggest that leaders are essential to the continuation of the human species? Or, is this simply an astonishing imagination, the investigation of the logic of life when something such as sight disappears and the sighted woman is necessary as a sponge since no other believable mode of survival would accessible. This view would agree with the direction one finds in The Stone Raft. Saramago seems to have a passion for playing with alternative realities (magic realism).

I believe I lean much more to this notion that we are to understand Blindness not as an allegory, but as an exploration of an alternative reality. On his view we are freer to remain inside the story as given and just gawk at how he unravels the story and develops not only the physical details, but especially how he deals with the inner realities and psychological changes in the character. However, on this view we are left with the curious status of the doctor's wife's sight, and then the even more curious recurrence of the 'special' dog that is in The Stone Raft as well. Saramago seems to like dogs in nearly obscure roles in his fantasies. This one, however, plays no pivotal as the dog in The Stone Raft. Rather, it gets its name by licking away the tears of the doctor's wife when she breaks down once seeing what has happened to the blind city.

The dog of tears remains with the group the rest of the tale, but seems to have no other role. After the first few pages of Blindness, I was intrigued but could not foresee how the story would play out. Where could this go? What is there to build on? I was surprised to see how it ended up. The whole rape scene baffled, disgusted, and irritated me.

I guess Saramago put that part in there to show the barbarian side of the blind, but it disturbed me. I also was not pleased with the ending. I think Saramago could have been more creative with it. It makes sense that the blindness disappears just as quickly as it came with no explanation, but I don not like it being that simplistic. I did like how well he portrayed the terror that would be experienced if one were to try to survive in a city with no sight at all. 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 gets 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. As the narrative of Blindness progresses, the conditions of the blind continue to get worse.

They find themselves in a society that no longer functions. People relieve themselves where ever they are when they! SS get the urge. !" Blind people roam the streets looking for food and shelter. While they are at the edge of despair their vision miraculously begins to return. The novel abruptly ends without making clear in what ways people have been transformed by the horrific experience of collective blindness.

Blindness is clearly a sign of limitation in this novel. It causes the entire society to no longer function. It also places blind people in the condition of physical jeopardy and psychological torment. The sign 'blindness', no matter what his intention, has a real meaning. The pun exists in the relationship between the 'symbolic' (magical) and the 'real' (realistic). Saramago writes as if his metaphorical depiction of misfortune and catastrophe could somehow be innocent of the cultural meanings that are associated with visual impairment.

I loved reading Blindness. I have never read anyone quite like Saramago and it was fulfilling to delve into this South American writing. The fantasy of The Stone Raft is also utterly. But for me the greatest reward of the book is the subtle philosophical part, a complete skepticism about our ideas about nature and natural laws. In Saramago's eyes (irony), we make up these laws on the basis of our limited and approved sets of experiences. Yet the world may well operate and be operating according to different rules, whose logic we cannot perceive, or perhaps, by no logic at all.

In the novel some Europeans beyond the Pyrenees welcome being freed of the Iberian peninsula as a chance finally 'to know what Europe is,' to discover 'the quintessence of the European spirit. ' Both Stone Raft and Blindness grant the reader too much freedom. This allows for too many interpretations that intermingle with each. This leaves the reader even more baffled than when he or she first closed the book.

AND I LOVE IT!