Reader Into A World Of White Blindness example essay topic

Blind Humanity The threat of blindness requires little motivation to strike fear into anyone's mind; where humans, as a society, rely on the visual the concrete to both explain and act upon their world or reality. To be thrown into a state of blindness is to venture into the unknown territories of the mind. Here, all Hell can break loose as the pretty world of the visual shatters completely, leaving only the essence of humanity to fend for itself. In Blindness, Jose Saramago takes this plunge, dragging the reader into a world of white blindness to explore and confront the confines of civilized humanity; to test and go beyond its very limits. He reveals the blindness not of the eye, but of the mind. To evoke the feelings within the mind, Saramago relies upon subtle structural variations to create a labyrinth within a world of allusions.

Using seemingly random use of punctuation, especially the comma, he further adds to the irrationality of the piece; with dialogue and thoughts separated by commas, the reader becomes lost in the details of who and what, and instead muddles through the minds of the characters. This convex style also mirrors his attempt to display how society attempts to adapt to change, and inevitably fails. As each of the characters becomes more and more accustom to their new life, so too does the reader begin to adapt to the "blind style. ' Each in turn must assess their surroundings on a totally foreign basis; yet when another level of society breaks both the reader and the characters find themselves once again in chaos. Therefore the overall combination of Saramago's style plants the reader into the world of the blind, of hopelessness.

Saramago's disoriented "stream-of-conscious style' (Vidimos 1) manifests itself within this disarray of thoughts and dialogue; he effectively molds a world within the boundaries of sanity, where the supposed reality and the true reality collide. The doctors's wife, a "sighted proxy for the reader' (2), exists only as interjected thoughts and phrases that question the sanity within the human mind. She asks if "blindness is to live in a world without hope' (Saramago 145) and concludes that "we are blind, Blind that see' (292). Thus, the mind reigns solely in this novel, "advancing a thought or action and chewing upon it' (Eder 3). Only within this realm can the very basis of society be truly tested. Such confrontations appear between the savage human nature and the once organized visions of the past.

The blinded awake to a world "built on the essence of character in which an individual's personal ethic is magnified' (Vidimos, 2); thus, they are driven to action, enacting things they would have never thought of when they were sighted. Perhaps, then, the blinded can be seen as new societal theorists; they create justifications for their actions based on their current condition a blind women can not see that she has killed and thus convinces herself that she did not. The characters undergo a complete re-defining of morality. Those who are forced to eat "raw rabbit meat' (Saramago 220) and to excrete in the hallways of an abandoned building become not outcasts, but searchers for a new society. In this new society the blind must adapt, every aspect must be redefined. The characters are known as "the doctor' or "the old man with the eye patch' (Saramago 244) they have no names, but, ironically, only physical descriptions.

This paradox, where blind are referred to by visual elements, aids in creating an irrational atmosphere. Thus the doctor's wife, the only sighted character, serves as the eyes for which the reader to see and understand; in an irrational world, however, the visual aspect will exist only as a figment of the mind the reader must visualize not what the doctor's wife describes, but the thoughts of each character. In essence, the visual aspects of the novel do not exist. Instead, the reader is forced to take the journey into blindness with the characters, to feel their confusion and disorder. Saramago utilizes this state of chaos to challenge humanity and its values Shifting between tenses and subjects, the reader glides from "first and third person, between stream-of-conscious and wry objectivity' (Miller 1); the novel's sheer momentum seizes the reader's imagination to reveal a "vision much deeper than a simplistic tale of good and evil fighting' (Vidimos 1). Each character embarks upon a search for the limits of their humanity.

Justice has no place, only the real elements of life, and they become "primitive hordes' (Saramago 229) wandering under "the heavy sky' (245). Only two emotions are allowed to exist fear and the lack of fear. Perhaps then the "fear can cause blindness' (Wayszpolski 2), leaving the human spirit stripped of its fragile shell for support. Saramago, however, concentrates on this shell, rather than the fear itself. As the white blindness infects each individual, the visual shell of ignorance surrounding their humanity collapses.

The falsehoods of the eye fall away to reveal a world which has little care for others. "Darwinian struggles erupt' (Eder 2) where the blind alienate each other rather than uniting together. Thus, Saramago proposes the frightening prospect that "perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are' (Saramago 287). Saramago attempts the seemingly impossible, to craft a novel based on the allegory of blindness. He skillfully weaves a tale in which the lives of a dozen people embark upon a journey from bleak, civilized citizens to the outer reaches of their humanity and beyond into a world of painful reality. His complicated, almost maze-like style contributes to the general chaos that the blindness spawns; serving to illustrate his overall theme that we are no more than "Blind people who can see, but do not see' (292).

This dreary concept finds itself implanted into the reader's mind, as he / she takes a trip through the depths of societal humanity to return into the world of false reality. Eder, Richard. "Sight Unseen. ' Los Angeles Times Archives and Professional Research. Online. Internet.

Available: web Miller, Andrew. "Zero Visibility. ' New York Times. Online. Internet. Available: web Vidimos, Robin.

"Book Review: Blindness. ' Denver Post. Online. Internet. Available: web Jose. Blindness.

Trans. Giovanni Pontiero. New York: Harcourt & Co., 1997. Wyszpolski, Bondo. "Nightmare in White. ' Online.

Internet. Available: http.