Tag Archives: Blindness

LITERATURE: Blindness – Oh Shit! – Metaphor!

This may well be the oddest metaphor in a story, but with all the emphasis Saramago has put on human excrement in this book, it bears following it down. While it is understandable that even in the beginning of our … Continue reading Continue reading

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LITERATURE: Blindness – Symbolism (or) “They say it’s all happening at the zoo…”

The doctor's wife has found food in a supermarket cellar and has gone through a time of blindness herself in the darkness of the place until she found matches. Once more we see her face a moral dilemma of keeping … Continue reading Continue reading

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LITERATURE: Blindness – Compare & Contrast

I've never particularly cared for this form of critique since I hope that no two stories or writing styles are so alike that dissection via this method would be satisfying. In reality, however, I find myself quite often going back … Continue reading Continue reading

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LITERATURE: Blindness – Borders of Another Kind

After (I don't know) days of living confined to the institution, a purposely-set fire kills some inmates but the others must somehow escape or burn to death and it is at this point where the doctor's wife tells the others … Continue reading Continue reading

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LITERATURE: Blindness – What’s the Impetus, What’s the Straw?

As with all apocalyptic or disaster stories the characters face obstacles that force them to face themselves first. The name of the game is always survival. The ethics involve personal versus community, wrong versus right considering circumstances (something that ethics … Continue reading Continue reading

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LITERATURE: Blindness – Poking the Reader in the Eye with a Sharp Stick

Cormac McCarthy does that; just when you round a bend you see a tree that looks a little odd… What Saramago does however is to get the reader riled up on his own and then calm him down. I have … Continue reading Continue reading

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LITERATURE: Blindness – Struggles and Morals

With a small group of men–all from one ward–taking over the distribution of food and demanding payment of all valuables (and, they have a gun), there naturally comes about a societal structure different from the outside world as well as … Continue reading Continue reading

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LITERATURE: Blindness – Credibility

Maybe it's just because I'm in a pissy mood, but I'm not buying this story. For one thing, Saramago is rather particular about numbers and distances and yet I can't quite grasp how two wings of three wards each, each … Continue reading Continue reading

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LITERATURE: Blindness – Themes

There is, of course, as with all stories about epidemics or devastation of some sort, the ethical and moral questions that come up when man's nature is questioned in a survival situation. From the very beginning of the book when … Continue reading Continue reading

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LITERATURE: Blindness – The Unreliable Narrator

Another stumbling block here for me; this story is told in third person omniscient which enables (and answers my question of the previous post) him to tell the story from his own frame of reference and abilities. However, he is … Continue reading Continue reading

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LITERATURE: Blindness – The IF Factor

Just posted an entry on Hypercompendia when the thought occurred to me that the storyworld of the mental institution and a bunch of blind people trying to find their way around within it was perfect for the Interactive Fiction mapping … Continue reading Continue reading

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LITERATURE: Blindness – Accuracy

UPDATE: Okay, a page or two further explains that the guards possibly missed the transfer of five folk from one ward to the other, but it doesn't explain why the five meals for the original six. Unless…knowing there is one … Continue reading Continue reading

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LITERATURE: Blindness – Voice

Saramago's narrative voice sounds almost unnaturally formal and prissy following Junot Diaz's Oscar Wao, but this particular eloquence in describing a very ladylike prostitute's meeting in a hotel with her client is, well, a hoot. Two guests got out [of … Continue reading Continue reading

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LITERATURE: Blindness – Opening Thoughts on Conflict and Style

Saramago starts off the story in a familiar place, in traffic stopped at a red light. We begin to feel the restlessness of the drivers, the pedestrians, the anxiety that comes naturally with watching movement that at intervals, comes to … Continue reading Continue reading

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