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Eseu despre orbire

(Blindness #1)

José Saramago

4.14 · Rating details · 212,789 ratings · 17,239 reviews

Eseu despre orbire este un roman cutremurator, o marturie a neincrederii autorului in societatea contemporana, incapabila sa-si gestioneze si sa-si rezolve crizele. Intr-un oras anonim, populat de personaje fara nume, izbucneste o boala ingrozitoare ce provoaca orbirea. Fara o cauza aparenta, in afara de cea morala, oamenii isi pierd, unul cite unul, vederea si barbaria se ...more

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Paperback, 276 pages

Published 2013 by POLIROM (first published 1995)

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Jun 18, 2007 William rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: identity

When you sit in a coffee shop at the corner of two busy streets and read a book about blindness, you find yourself thinking unfamiliar thoughts, and you believe, when you raise your head to watch the people passing, that you see things differently. You notice the soft yellow light of the shop reflecting off the bronze of the hardwood floors. You notice among the people coming from the train two girls who intersect that line, spilt, call back, and go their ways, dividing into the two directions o ...more

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Dec 31, 2011 Nataliya rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Anyone with a conscience.

Shelves: awesome-kickass-heroines, favorites, 2012-reads

This book left me speechless (which is a rare occurrence). Please enjoy the pictures to illustrate the plot while I recover my gift of rambling.

An unexplained plague of "white blindness" sweeps the unnamed country. Initial attempts to hastily quarantine the blind in an abandoned mental hospital fail to contain the spread. What they succeed at is immediately creating the easy "us versus them" divide between the helpless newly blind and the terrified seeing. Before we know, we are immersed in th This book left me speechless (which is a rare occurrence). Please enjoy the pictures to illustrate the plot while I recover my gift of rambling.

An unexplained plague of "white blindness" sweeps the unnamed country. Initial attempts to hastily quarantine the blind in an abandoned mental hospital fail to contain the spread. What they succeed at is immediately creating the easy "us versus them" divide between the helpless newly blind and the terrified seeing. Before we know, we are immersed in the horrifying surreal world of hopelessness, filth, violence, and hate, where the true enemy is not their affliction but people themselves, which we can see through the eyes of the only person who appears immune to blindness.

“Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.”

As the blindness epidemic spreads, we see the disintegration of society just like we witnessed the destruction of humanity in the quarantine area. Excrement covers sidewalks, dogs munch on human corpses, the blind rot in the stores after futile attempts to find food. Even the saints in the churches are blinded. The world is a bleak picture of desolation and destruction.

We don't know why it happened - whether it's a test, a warning, or a punishment. Instead, we get a nagging haunting feeling that the real blindness was there all along - the blindness towards the others, the blindness towards our real selves, and the physical blindness served as a way to unveil it. What was always there but went unseen before because it used to be easy to shrug off. Fear. "Us against them" attitude. Greed. Contempt. Hatred. Selfishness. Love of power. Cowardice. Apathy. Isolation. Filth. Rape. Murder. Theft. Ignorance. Indifference. Blaming the victim. It was all already there, and blindness amplified it. And, as society decays and falls apart, the question of what is means to be human comes up.

“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.”

Things that made us human are gone. Faces don't matter. Names don't matter. Homes don't matter. Possessions don't matter. Shame and modesty are gone. Medicine is useless. Government is useless. Morals seem obsolete. Empathy is gone. Is anything left? Anything inside us?

“The difficult thing isn't living with other people, it's understanding them.”

The vestiges of humanity are the only rays of hope in this bleak world. The girl with the dark glasses taking care of the boy with the squint. The man with the eye patch and his love. And the doctor's wife, the only one who retained her sight. Why? Was it because she was the most human? Or maybe she remained human because she retained her sight? Who knows? She is quiet and caring, leading the blind, washing the raped women, weeping over the dead but killing if she must. She sticks by her morals even if she is forced to violate them. She is the guiding light and the quiet hero in this world of ~~darkness~~ whiteness, keeping her charges from degradation without expecting anything in return.

“If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.”

The style of this book may not be for everyone (disclaimer: I loved it!). The pages are filled margin to margin with solid wall of text. There are no dialogue marks, and the seemingly mundane bits of everyday speech are separated only by capital letters. Sometimes you need to almost read the sentences out loud to get a feel for who is speaking (it's very fitting that the book about the blind is better perceived in a non-visual medium). The sentences are long (in a European fashion), run-on, and beautifully punctuated. It is not a book to skim, it requires concentration, and definitely is not a light read. If all of the above does not scare you, you should give this one a try.

I will finish this review with the plea in the epigraph for this thought-provoking eye-opening (no pun intended) book: "If you can see, look. If you can look, observe." Please, do. Let's try to look past our own blindness and actually SEE. ...more

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Sep 03, 2012 Jeffrey Keeten rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: post-apocalyptic

”The advantage enjoyed by these blind men was what might be called the illusion of light. In fact, it made no difference to them whether it was day or night, the first light of dawn or the evening twilight, the silent hours of early morning or the bustling din of noon, these blind people were for ever surrounded by a resplendent whiteness, like the sun shining through mist. For the latter, blindness did not mean being plunged into banal darkness, but living inside a luminous halo.”

We have al ...more

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May 19, 2013 Emily May rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopia-utopia, 2014

Just imagine that you are going about your daily life as you always do. It's a normal day; nothing out of the ordinary. But then, suddenly, without any forewarning, you go completely blind. One second seeing the world as you know it, the next experiencing a complete and unending whiteness.

Then imagine you go to the trusty health professionals so they can get to the bottom of it... the doctor doesn't know what's wrong with you, but you're confident he/she will figure it out and prescribe accordi ...more

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Oct 01, 2014 Adina rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: portugal, dystopia, favorites, 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 d 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.”
...more

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Mar 28, 2008 Brad rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: most-hated

Not at all disturbing, not at all compelling and not at all interesting, Jose Saramago's Blindness only succeeds in frustrating readers who take a moment to let their imagination beyond the page. Yes, Saramago's story is a clever idea, and, yes, he creates an intentional allegory to force us to think about the nature of humanity, but his ideas are clearly those of a privileged white male in a privileged European nation. Not only do his portrayals of women and their men fall short of the mark, bu ...more

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Sep 10, 2012 Petra-X Off having adventures rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, reviewed

Update. I said I would never read another Saramago because of his writing style. I did though. All the Names and Death with Interruptions. Both brilliant. But I listened to them. I wouldn't have appreciated them as much if I'd had to struggle through Saramago's idiosyncratic writing style.

_________________

In H.G. Wells 'In the Country of the Blind' the only person who can see suffers great discrimination and has to agree to have his eyes removed and become as blind as the rest of the people who Update. I said I would never read another Saramago because of his writing style. I did though. All the Names and Death with Interruptions. Both brilliant. But I listened to them. I wouldn't have appreciated them as much if I'd had to struggle through Saramago's idiosyncratic writing style.

_________________

In H.G. Wells 'In the Country of the Blind' the only person who can see suffers great discrimination and has to agree to have his eyes removed and become as blind as the rest of the people who over the generations have adapted to life without vision. In Saramago's book, the only person who can see is the heroine of the book. This is a device for telling the story which is the collapse of the social order as with just about all dystopian stories. One wonders if, given time, those blinded by the disease wouldn't adapt as in Country of the Blind? And if they did so, then resent those who could see and instead of relying on the few sighted people for help despise them for the obvious power they have. Perhaps even suspect them of exploiting that power for their gain and the blinds' detriment.

I read the book and watched the film. I didn't find Saramago's style easy to read. Extremely long sentences, endless paragraphs and an idiosyncratic grammar made me have to concentrate on the reading more than the subject matter. It was worth it, but written in standard English I think I would have enjoyed it more. The film was a good, standard, Hollywood film meaning it appeals to the masses, has pretty people and no depth and has been designed to make money. I quite enjoyed it, but am glad I read the book first.

Although I found this book interesting, I didn't find it the cutting edge work of genius that I had read about. I don't think I would ever read another Saramago because life is too short to struggle through such a difficult writing style. The book took me about three times as long as if it had been written in a more usual manner. It seems to me to be an ego thing to write in a way that is completely different to everyone else. The reason there is a standard way of writing is that it is easy for us all to understand rather than having to adapt to anyone's idiosyncratic idea of spelling and grammar.

Writing is communication and understanding is key. This applies just as much to the reviewers on GR who don't ever use paragraphs and or/capital letters, but it's one thing reading a review and another a whole book - I'm prepared to go along with someone's style if they write good reviews (view spoiler), but a whole book.... no, not again. ...more

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Jun 24, 2014 Lisa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, unforgettable, nobels, so-good-it-hurts

Imagine the most ordinary situation in the world.

People waiting at a traffic light. All of us can see that before our inner eyes, relive thousands of similar situations we have experienced ourselves, without ever giving them a moment of consideration. Thus starts Saramago's Blindness. But there is a disruption. One car is not following the rules all take for granted. The car doesn't move when the light switches to green. People are annoyed, frustrated, disturbed in their routines, but not worr ...more

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May 25, 2020 Gaurav rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Those who care for literature, post modernism, dystopian, social commentary

Shelves: owned, modern-classics, dystopian

*edited on 27.05.2020

The word Attention was uttered three times, then the voice began, the Government regrets having been forced to exercise with all urgency what it considers to be its rightful duty, to protect the population by all possible means in this present crisis, when something with all the appearance of an epidemic of blindness has broken out, provisionally known as the white sickness, and we are relying on the public spirit and cooperation of all citizens to stem any further contagio ...more

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Mar 08, 2014 Renato rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: indicacoes-fred, all-stars, saramago, 100-best-books-world-library, absolute-favorites, 2014, reviewed

Blindness is a great novel by Portuguese writer José Saramago that deals with human's individual and collective reactions when in the face of adversarial forces. With gorgeous prose, this thought-provoking book shows us how our world, ever so concerned and consumed by appearances, would deal with the loss of our most relied upon sense: vision. When it's every man by himself, when every man is free to do whatever he wants without the impending fear of recognition and judgement, we start to feel - Blindness is a great novel by Portuguese writer José Saramago that deals with human's individual and collective reactions when in the face of adversarial forces. With gorgeous prose, this thought-provoking book shows us how our world, ever so concerned and consumed by appearances, would deal with the loss of our most relied upon sense: vision. When it's every man by himself, when every man is free to do whatever he wants without the impending fear of recognition and judgement, we start to feel - I was going to say see - what the man's true nature is and the crumbling down of a civilization diseased with selfishness, intolerance and ambition, to name just few symptoms.

Saramago tells us the story of a mysterious mass plague of blindness that affects nearly everyone living in an unnamed place in a never specified time and the implications this epidemic has on people's lives. It all starts inexplicably when a man in his car suddenly starts seeing - or rather stops seeing anything but - a clear white brightness. He's blind. Depending upon a stranger's kindness to be able to go home in safety, we witness what appears to be the first sign of corruption and the first crack in society's impending breakdown when the infamous volunteer steals the blind man's car. Unfortunately for him, the white pest follows him and turns him into one of its victims as well.

Spreading fast, this collective blindness is now frightening the authorities and must be dealt with: a large group of blind people and possibly infected ones - those who had any contact with the first group - have now been put in quarantine until second order. Living conditions start to degrade as the isolated population grows bigger, there is no organization, basic medicine is a luxury not allowed in and hygiene is nowhere to be found. To complicate things further, an armed clique acquires control and power, forcing the subjugated to pay for food in any way they can. The scenes that follow are extremely unpleasant to read, but at the same time they're so realistic that you can't be mad at Saramago for writing such severe events packed with violence that include rapes and murders.

Contrasting with this dystopian desolation, there is some solidarity and compassion in the form of one character: the doctor's wife. The only one in the asylum who miraculously is still able to see, she takes care of her husband and of those who became her new family: the girl with the dark glasses, the boy with the squint, the old man with the black eye patch, the first blind man and the first blind man's wife - the characters' names are never mentioned, which is an interesting choice the author made. When we think of someone, when we hear their name, we always conjure an image in our head; a picture is formed before our eyes. Here we are with a bunch of people who no longer can rely on their sight so, in not giving them names, Saramago also puts us in the dark, forcing us to rely instead on personal characteristics and descriptions given to conjure these characters ourselves.

After an uprising, folks find out the asylum has been abandoned by the army who was until then responsible for it and they're able to leave. Realizing that what they went through in quarantine was only a detail in the huge landscape, now we follow our protagonists as they wander through the city in search of better conditions: water, food, clothes, a way to find their homes and their relatives.

Talking about Saramago's writing style, I should say that it may be a bit confusing at first due to the lack of punctuation; there are many long sentences and no quotation marks around dialogues. But in no time you'll get used to his simplistic style - not in any way devoid of meaning or deepness -, and you'll realize that it actually adds to this reading experience as you'll be going faster through the words; with fewer pauses and breaks, you'll find yourself feeling suffocated and almost breathless, which will only add to the book's atmosphere of urgency, anxiety and despair.

Film adaptation: there is a good film by Fernando Meirelles also called Blindness starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Gael García Bernal, released in 2008. While this adaptation isn't as graphic and visceral as Saramago's novel, it's still worth seeing. It is said that Saramago was in tears when the movie ended and said to director Meirelles: "Fernando, I am so happy to have seen this movie. I am as happy as I was the day I finished the book."

Rating: unfortunately, it seems the late José Saramago - the only Portuguese-language novelist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature - has yet to gain the world recognition he deserves. For his torturing novel, for his fearlessness in going deep and telling a brutal and violent story that makes us wonder, as Virginia Woolf greatly put it, "Why, one asked oneself, does one take all these pains for the human race to go on? Is it so very desirable? Are we attractive as a species?": 5 stars. ...more

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Dec 21, 2015 Lizzy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics-literay-fiction, stars-5, read-years-ago

“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 o
“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.
___ ...more

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Nov 19, 2019 Julie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: buddy-reads, you-ll-need-an-antidepressant, apocalypse-now, portuguese-water-dogs

We don't know what year it is, we don't know what city it is, all we know is that one minute a person can see, the next minute they can't. It's a white blindness that obliterates all vision immediately and is assumed to be highly contagious.

An early band of affected citizens is sent to a mental ward, in the hopes of containing this sudden epidemic of blindness. Only one among them can see, a woman as unnamed as anyone else in the story, but we come to know her as “the doctor's wife.”

And, since s ...more

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Dec 30, 2014 Jibran rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, nobel

Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.

Goodness me. The horror. The terror. These two moist pulpy vibratile objects of anatomy, one on either side of the nose, 'the window to the soul', are steering wheels of the body, the basis of all order in the fragile human world, without which the purpose of evolutionary biology is moot. What would it be like if everyone was struck by an epidemic of blindness, sudden and inexplicable, you and I 'catching' blindness from one Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.

Goodness me. The horror. The terror. These two moist pulpy vibratile objects of anatomy, one on either side of the nose, 'the window to the soul', are steering wheels of the body, the basis of all order in the fragile human world, without which the purpose of evolutionary biology is moot. What would it be like if everyone was struck by an epidemic of blindness, sudden and inexplicable, you and I 'catching' blindness from one another? This novel explores the premise to the fullest possibility. Saramago sets the scene with a cast of half a dozen characters who are quarantined in an abandoned army barracks for the purpose of containing the epidemic. And then the chaos ensues.

This novel is as much an exploration of the horrendous possibilities created by the dysfunction of anatomy as it is of the limits of human resilience to resist consummate annihilation. After all the process of evolution has taught us very little; we adapt to external dangers but we fail when something goes amiss inside our bodies. We would live longer had it not been the case.

Our seven major characters go to great lengths to remain floating in a world wherein the social order has suffered a total breakdown. People lost their identity when they lost their eyesight. So the writer doesn't bother to name those phantom-like humans who can't see and be seen. They are first blind man, first blind man's wife, blind doctor, the doctor's wife, the boy with the squint, the girl with glasses, the old man with the black eyepatch. I admire Saramago's other stylistic inventions. Dialogue is not set in quotes; every first-person utterance starts with a capitalised alphabet to separate it from the narrating voice. Full stops come rarely. Paragraphs which run in length into multiple pages chain you to the text that you can't tear your eyes off. This is truly spellbinding.

I'm still reeling from the blind rapes (we don't need seeing eyes to feel the excitement of skin and flesh, the blind men made full use of this truth), half-eaten corpses stuck in abandoned cars and looted foodstores, and squelch of feet on human excrement littering the streets that I will need to clear my head and read something light.

But without doubt it's a brilliantly told story, a fascinating study into human failings, if you allow for the vicarious witnessing of the horror of human degradation to be called fascinating. In-between Saramago manages to create comedy out of tragedy. This is not a new phenomenon in literature but Saramago's treatment has been so light and deadpan that you could deny he ever meant to be ironically humorous in its telling.

In one scene from the quarantine a group of soldiers on duty entered the premises to bring foodboxes to the blind internees who had been ordered to stay out of sight for fear of passing on their blindness to healthy ones. But as chance would have it, the mealtime had passed and the hungry internees moved toward the entrance, crashing into one another with outstretched arms and unsteady steps in the manner of Egyptian mummies, to reach the foyer so that they could shout to demand food. Just at that moment soldiers entered the place and, on spotting a group of staggering and tottering blind men, howled in utter terror, dropped the boxes and their guns and fled the building to be away from the field of vision of the blind internees! This was a powerful and ironic instance of the seeing terrified of the blind and the hapless.

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.

March 2015

Edited 25th July 2015. ...more

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Mar 30, 2015 Seemita rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: drama, sharp_sword, fiction, thriller, psychology, favorites, horror, for_legacy, nobel-laureates, translated

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.

What an irony that a book which holds, loss, filth, loot, stomp, cruelty, disorientation, putrefaction, injustice, helplessness, murder, rape, misery, nakedness, abandonment, death and unimaginable suffering in its bosom, left me with a climactic emotion of beauty, overwhelming beauty! Beauty of what you ask? That of resilience, that of courage, that of insurmountable human spirit which perhaps hits its zenith when it is brutally pinned to the bottommost Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.

What an irony that a book which holds, loss, filth, loot, stomp, cruelty, disorientation, putrefaction, injustice, helplessness, murder, rape, misery, nakedness, abandonment, death and unimaginable suffering in its bosom, left me with a climactic emotion of beauty, overwhelming beauty! Beauty of what you ask? That of resilience, that of courage, that of insurmountable human spirit which perhaps hits its zenith when it is brutally pinned to the bottommost pit.

Blindness has a chilling plot – a city where people start going blind, without a warning or faintest history. A man behind a car, a robber escaping from the back door, an ophthalmologist reading reference book, a call girl in the midst of making love – this moment, they are going about their business and the next, they are blind. As this terrifying infliction gains the proportion of an epidemic in shuddering no time, the state machinery jumps into action by hoarding the blind and the contaminated and dispatching them to a quarantine. The events that unfold thenceforth grow into a numbing testimonial of limits that humankind pushes with the weakest of hands but the strongest of beliefs.

Saramago slits his heart and lets the blood do the talking, for how else does one explain the impeccable conjuring of a land that is crumbling under the consistent attacks of physical needs and rising from the tireless crenellating of mental walls, at the very same instance?

With the passing of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny.”

The blind stay close and maintain proximity akin to a herd of helpless antelopes; always alert but not without a sinking feeling of falling prey, eventually. In the midst of this nebulous blindness, food makes a demand and water makes a cry, shit gets spilled and showers run dry. Bullies emerge from within them, like ugly exhalations of a poisonous body, often unaware of its obvious power of self-destruction.
Arriving at this point, the blind accountant, tired of describing so much misery and sorrow, would let his metal punch fall to the table, he would search with a trembling hand for the piece of stale bread he had put to one side while he fulfilled his obligations as chronicler of the end of time, but he would not find it, because another blind man, whose sense of smell had become very keen out of dire necessity, had filched it.
What do we know what we are capable of? Of the high we can inspire ourselves to? Of the lows we can shovel ourselves to? Do we even know that if thrown into the arms of gut-wrenching starvation and mutilation, our lofty ideals can turn evanescent and the feral desire to survive at any cost can reign supreme?

she knew that if it were necessary, she would kill again,
And when is it necessary to kill, she asked herself as she headed in the direction of the hallway, and she herself answered the question,
When what is still alive is already dead.

But it is from these repugnant ashes of human extremities that the human spirit arises. Like a new-born phoenix, it breathes in short puffs but never stops breathing. A fledgling resilience, no matter how threatened, pervades the blind group, who hobble painfully towards a future that is white in their blindness but imaginable in their collectiveness. When a lonely hand is clasped and a crying baby is cuddled, when a single soul performs vigil and the wasted sacrifices, when the timid find voice and the brave, their clan, the world remains no longer white; it regains its colour.

While reading this book, I felt its power in every page, its vulnerability at every turn. In many ways, it was an allegory of life. For every burden placed on our soul, there is a corresponding lever to dispel it. (view spoiler) And a consistent persuasion is all it takes to become free. Should that come easy, blessed we are. Should that come with unexpected caveats, memories we will have (or be).

We are already half dead, said the doctor,
We are still half alive too, answered his wife.

...more

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Oct 30, 2016 Maxwell rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: translated, owned

This book was brutal in the most literal sense of the term. It looks at how humans can devolve into savages when put in certain situations, in this case when a 'white blindness' epidemic breaks out and causes people to suddenly lose their sight for no explicable reason.

Saramago is a pretty harsh critic, it seems, of organized structures like government or religion—and that's most clearly seen in the ways that the affected people create communities, how they respond to crises, and ultimately how ...more

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May 09, 2010 Megha rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: kickass, reviews

Whether you interpret it as an allegory or otherwise, you will find that most of all Blindness is about being human, and the virtues and vices that define the fundamental human nature.

In a world full of blind people, where the civilization as we know it has completely deteriorated, people are no more identified and judged based on their profession, social status, outward appearances etc. All that remains to distinguish one person from another is one's voice, and the kind of person one is. When ...more

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Dec 27, 2010 Adam Floridia rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1-star-books

It is easier for me to lambaste a book when it is a translation; after all, maybe it is not the author who should be held accountable for the text’s flaws. Whether or not the translator is culpable, Blindness indeed has many flaws.

First: In order, one must assume, to make the reader’s experience as tantamount to the characters’ as possible, there are no names and no quotation marks to indicate speech. That’s fine enough, but he chooses not to use periods either, that makes almost every sentence, It is easier for me to lambaste a book when it is a translation; after all, maybe it is not the author who should be held accountable for the text’s flaws. Whether or not the translator is culpable, Blindness indeed has many flaws.

First: In order, one must assume, to make the reader’s experience as tantamount to the characters’ as possible, there are no names and no quotation marks to indicate speech. That’s fine enough, but he chooses not to use periods either, that makes almost every sentence, whether it is conversation or not, a long-ass run-on, there is no reason for it, it is not like the final chapter of Ulysses, the whole thing just pissed me off and made me hate reading, good books don’t do that.

Second: The narration, or rather the narrator, is not consistent. It/he/she/they shift from third person omniscient, to third person limited, to first person seemingly present in the scene, to first person removed and either omniscient or limited, to first person plural all of the above. This is not like Mitchell’s books in which different characters narrate different sections—this is just one voice that paradoxically and capriciously changes. Oh, and that has reminded me that the tense suddenly shifts from past to present then shifted back to past then shifts again all arbitrarily. Pathetic!

Third: Unfortunately, the only constant that the narrative voice does have is a meaninglessly verbose style. While I laud Nabokov for one sentence that appears to be a paragraph, that is only because that sentence is composed of so many beautiful parts (all punctuated correctly, no less) that work together to create an even more beautiful image. This writing is more akin to the wandering, rambling speech of Grandpa Simpson which, while hilarious on The Simpsons, has no place within this story.

Finally: The countless instances in which suspension of disbelief is just impossible. A whole city/country/world suddenly goes blind? Okay, sounds like an interesting premise—I’ll buy it. How the author has these newly-blinded people speak and act, well that’s just too much. My main gripe is actually with the primary protagonist, the Doctor’s wife, the only one who does not lose her eyesight. Her utter lack of action and sense of responsibility for the majority of the book almost made me quit reading. I would suggest that one of the themes evident is how readily civilization/morals/mores/humanity/meaning can deteriorate when something changes (like, for instance, being stranded on a desert island with only your schoolmates or Camus' The Plague). My contention is the seeing-woman, who is clearly supposed to be portrayed as the hero, is responsible for many of the injustices and just downright abominable acts that happen. Does she cause them? No. But does she prevent them from happening? No. After all, there’s some saying like “with great eyesight comes great responsibility” or something like that, but for all the trite aphorisms she spouts she must not have heard that one. Hers read like lines in a “B” (at best) grade movie: “We are already half dead, said the doctor, We are still half alive too, answered his wife,” “The woman I was then wouldn’t have said it, I agree, the person who said it was the woman I am today, Let’s see then what the woman you will be tomorrow will have to say…” and “it is his duty to follow her, one never knows when one might have to dry more tears.” All stagy, affected drivel. Finally, hey woman who can see: why not grab a damn flashlight when going down a dark hall or worrying about night setting in? Yes, silly things like that bothered me. They are the things I can overlook in that “B” action movie, but not in a good book.
...more

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Aug 14, 2019 Steven Godin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: spain-portugal, fiction

I was lent this book back in the late 90's, when I wasn't really an avid reader, barely scraping through five to ten books a year, and I soon quit, because of the annoyance of page after page of run-on sentences, un-paragraphed dialogue and zero quotation marks, What the hell! I thought, I'd never come across this before. I can't be doing with this. Here, have your book back.

Two decades later, and after thoroughly enjoying both 'The Double' and 'All the Names' in the last year or so, I got my ha I was lent this book back in the late 90's, when I wasn't really an avid reader, barely scraping through five to ten books a year, and I soon quit, because of the annoyance of page after page of run-on sentences, un-paragraphed dialogue and zero quotation marks, What the hell! I thought, I'd never come across this before. I can't be doing with this. Here, have your book back.

Two decades later, and after thoroughly enjoying both 'The Double' and 'All the Names' in the last year or so, I got my hands on Blindness again, only this time, having grasped Saramago's writing style by the horns, I was well up it, and wanted to be terrified by the thought of white blindness. I can't say that I was truly terrified, that would make me look like a big softy, but the novel did spook me, especially the middle third where the blind are quarantined in an abandoned mental mental asylum. It is that great feeling of powerlessness, and the insult to human dignity that really got under my skin. Ordinary everyday people, terror-stricken at finding themselves and everyone else blind, normal order breaking down, and everything getting out of control. There is no expertise, no hierarchy, no politics, no electricity, no water. In such a world, nothing can be assumed. Garbage and sewage collect on the streets and food supplies are endlessly fought over. Under these extreme circumstances, Saramago simply asks: what now constitutes a human being?

There is behaviour of such selfish brutality by a gang of thugs who seize power, terrorise the wards and abuse the weaker inmates, flushing all self-respect and human decency down the toilet. I didn't think I would come across the need for sex in this novel, seeing as the inmates would have more important things to worry about, like food and drink, and just staying alive, but a sick and twisted few, obviously feeling they can't keep their dicks in their pants, sight or no sight, had other ideas.

His central characters are as anonymous as those in an obscure play, referred to only as 'the man who first went blind' or 'the boy with a squint', initially connected by the coincidence of attending the ophthalmologist's surgery, and throughout the narrative, once white blindness takes control, only one character (an ophthalmologist's wife) remains sighted, and after claiming to the brutal military that she too is blind so she can stay by her husband's side, she eventually becomes the guide and protector for an improvised family whilst locked up, so it's good to see through the horror and mass cruelty that love and compassion also exists in the novel.

His bleak apocalyptic vision really did attack the senses, and the only thing that bothered me was the optimistic finale (obviously it had to be that way when you take into account the sequel 'Seeing'). Although this was great to see, part of me was wishing things had ended on a downer.
Whether I read Seeing remains to be seen. ...more

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Sep 25, 2007 Paul Bryant rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

What kind of a person is it who relishes reviewing the books he hates and quails at the thought of reviewing his five-star books?

It would appear that that could be a description of me. Well, the reason's obvious - it's great fun to boot a bad book and some bad ideas all around this site, a chance for a few jokes, a laugh, a song and a hand grenade, a couple of pints of Scruttock's Old Dirigible and everyone goes home with a smile on their face, no harm done. Not so easy to describe greatness, s ...more

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May 29, 2007 Sammy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: b-the-good

This is definitely a book that people will either love or hate. It's just that kind of book. Not everyone is going to pick this up and like it. Even the people who end up really liking it, while reading it keep finding themselves putting down the book, looking around the room and sighing in discomfort, wondering if they should really continue. They will though, and they will once again find themselves fully immersed.

Jose Saramago writes this specific story in such a way that you are one of the b ...more

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Apr 07, 2017 Stephan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, special

This is not just a book you read, it reads you too. It is not a book that you can shelve, once it is read - it stays with you. Will you dare pick it up, let it stare into your soul?

I read this over 10 years ago and it is still very present in my mind. It has repeatedly come back to me, I have been recommending it and thinking about it. Yes, also worrying a bit more.

Without spoiling it the story is quickly told: blindness spreads like a disease. It is terrifying in that it just happens, suddenly ...more

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Mar 15, 2007 spencer rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Like Stephen King without all the punctuation.

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Nov 14, 2017 Ram Alsrougi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shocking and enormous the universe of the Portuguese writer - the bright universe you are called to live through a fantastic story that is horribly unlikely to real.

This famous book begins with a pandemic of blindness somewhere-anywhere, which is unexplained and extremely unprecedented, rather transmitted, so that in a few days the society of suddenly and abruptly blind and helpless people is created.

This society is quarantined by prominent governmental actors and the rule of law that is still n ...more

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Jul 21, 2017 Bradley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017-shelf, dystopia-yes-pls, sci-fi

I can *almost* slip this book into that enormous category that is zombie-fiction, but alas, no. There are no zombies here.

There are, however, an increasingly large number of people going blind until there is only one left.

Chaos ensues... one heartbreaking step at a time.

Simple concept, of course, but in this case, it is brilliantly executed. The writing is clear and transforms us every step of the way from our modern society into a cold cinder of civilization, with the fall of humanity experienc ...more

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Aug 03, 2020 Em Lost In Books rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 1990-99, 5-star, 2020, translations

"You never know beforehand what people are capable of, you have to wait, give it time, it's time that rules, time is our gambling partner on the other side of the table and it holds all the cards of the deck in its hand, we have to guess the winning cards of life, our lives."

Finished it few days back and yet am not over it. ...more

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Apr 15, 2011 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literature

Whoa! This will be a bit scatterbrained. Maybe I will come back later and try to really give this the long, well-thought-out review that it deserves, but right now I am too busy basking in a mix of discomfort and disorientation.

Somewhat important fact concerning this book and my review and rating of it: I saw this movie first, and felt that it (to be totally clear) fucking sucked*, but was fascinated by the plot enough to randomly pick up this novel one day when I so happened to pass a faced-ou Whoa! This will be a bit scatterbrained. Maybe I will come back later and try to really give this the long, well-thought-out review that it deserves, but right now I am too busy basking in a mix of discomfort and disorientation.

Somewhat important fact concerning this book and my review and rating of it: I saw this movie first, and felt that it (to be totally clear) fucking sucked*, but was fascinated by the plot enough to randomly pick up this novel one day when I so happened to pass a faced-out used copy of it. Basically, I went into it with my judgments high, readier than you could believe to just really hate all up on it. I've been holding on to it for several years, and started reading it the other day for no discernible reason other than the fact that my current poverty, unemployment, and general constant state of having "the Fear" have been driving me toward post-apocalyptic horrorscapes. I can only assume that this is so that I can comfort myself with several different somewhat subconscious thought-patterns, such as "Ehhh, it could always be a lot worse. You could literally be living in rags and surrounded by shit, rather than just figuratively." Well, this novel definitely takes that notion to a whole new level, through the hideous descriptions of the living quarters of the confined blind people, slipping in diarrhea, crawling on all-fours through piles of diarrhea, fucking in diarrhea, sleeping in diarrhea, eating food sitting in crates surrounded by diarrhea, vividly depicted rape scenes with descriptions of all manner of sex fluids mixing with blood and screams of terror and, of course, diarrhea; umm, this is an ugly book. I have a strong stomach, and there were actually 3 or 4 times while reading that I faintly felt like I was going to hurl. It takes a powerful writer to invoke such an emotional response as to actually elicit physical bad feelings, and he does not handle it with disrespect or embrace it simply for its shock value like, for example, that chicken rape scene in Pink Flamingos (aside: fuck that movie). Every element of terror in the book is carefully placed there in order to highlight the tenuous divide between man and beast. I won't bore you or insult your intelligence by explaining the metaphor of "blindness," but I will say that it is used well, and doesn't feel trite despite how sort of terribly obvious it seems.

Be forewarned that the writing style may bother some people. If you were annoyed by the lack of punctuation distinguishing dialogue in The Road, then this book is most certainly not for you, as Saramago gives no formal names to his characters and frequently shifts who is talking in the middle of a sentence along with refusing to punctuate any of the dialogue. I can fall into the stream-of-consciousness style of writing as it is similar to my sloppy, random "thinking style," but I can also see how it is not for everyone. In this instance, it communicates the universality of the experiences the blind are facing, how they are all in the same boat (well, technically mental institution), all victim to the same needs to eat and sleep and defecate and piss and fuck and fight, so it is really of no concern who is speaking, as they are all screaming out the same frustrated banshee yell.

This book is fantastique. Sorry for all the swearing and whatnot, but if you couldn't make it through this review without getting all fussy and wound-up, then you won't make it 50 pages into this kick in the balls of a novel. Consider this coarse review as my way of sparing you.

*To be fair, I think part of me was just really pissed that THIS GUY was the big, mean, evil, rapey, sadistic, sociopathic creep in the movie. Come on! He just makes awkward boob jokes and has no social graces, but he's sweeeeeeeeet and imaginative and stuff, too. Okay, the silly girly-girl in me is done taking over this review, as she has made that nausea I was previously speaking of suddenly return.

...more

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Jul 14, 2014 Hugh rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, modern-classics, read-2002-05, read-2020, borrowed, translations

New review after rereading in October 2020
Returning to this book 18 years after first reading it was a rewarding experience - the book has lost none of its power and it is still probably Saramago's greatest masterpiece.

Like its sequel Seeing, Death at Intervals and to some extent The Stone Raft, it is a sort of modern parable in which Saramago imagines the consequences for society of something we normally take for granted disappearing - in this case he imagines a city in which everyone succumbs ...more

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Sep 03, 2014 Algernon (Darth Anyan) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014

I’ve read more than my share of post-apocalyptic novels where humanity is suddenly wiped out by a sudden plague or enslaved by aliens, attacked by zombies, buried under snow or under volcanic ash. I have even read one about people going blind overnight in The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. Yet, none of them managed to touch me so deeply and to disturb me out of my comfortably numb daily routine as Jose Saramago’s account. There are no teenage chosen ones to pull us back from the brink of e ...more

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Feb 18, 2016 Gautam rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: haunting, nobel-winners, portugese-lit, favorites

I had been idle on goodreads for several months due to a form of torpor arising from being workaholic. I had been toiling hard at my work to impress my superior and, concomitantly, get a hike or promotion (God knows why! No matter how much I get persistent in shunning the beaten track of life, I again get sucked back to it as if the common-place life is a giant blackhole, always ready to engulf back those who go astray from it). One day, 18th feb 2016, I started reading Blindness by Jose` Sarama ...more

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Aug 13, 2015 Rakhi Dalal rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: compelling, nobel-prized-author, haunting, powerful-stuff

I read somewhere that this work of Saramogo, when published, was compared to Camus’ The Plague by many critics. Perhaps it is owing to the portrayal of a city facing an endemic in both works. On this account, the comparison is permissible. However, in my view, both works stand apart from each other. The reason primarily being that whereas The Plague, through an endemic, successfully brings forth the idea of solidarity among humans for a survival in an otherwise absurd world, Blindness on the oth ...more

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About José Saramago

José Saramago

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José Saramago is one of the most important international writers of the last hundred years. Born in Portugal in 1922, he was in his sixties when he came to prominence as a writer with the publication of Baltasar and Blimunda. A huge body of work followed, translated into more than forty languages, and in 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Saramago died in June 2010.