Blindness (Harvest Book)
by Jose Saramago
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Book Reviews of Blindness (Harvest Book)
Book Review: Forces us to look within.
Summary: 5 Stars
What if everyone in the world were to suddenly start losing their sight, and you were the only one to retain it? That, in a nutshell, is the premise of BLINDNESS, a tour de force allegorical novel by the great Portuguese writer Jose Saramago. This is a work that poses very challenging questions for us as humans. How would we accept such a catastrophe? What would we do to survive? To what lengths would we go? How tenuous is the thread that keeps civilization from disintegrating, and how can a human being maintain his or her dignity and humanity under the circumstances?
The people in this novel are unnamed. They could be anyone and everyone. The white blindness that strikes everyone is just a metaphor for any precious human quality that most of us take for granted. The effect on society is similar to that of a natural catastrophe, and has an almost post apocalyptic feel to it. People become subhuman. Some quicker than others. The fact that a group of 7 survives with a semblance of dignity and humanity is due to the fact that they have a sighted one to lead them. At first we marvel at her, but gradually we begin to pity her plight, for she has seen things no one should see, done things no one should have to do, and it's more than any human should have to bear.
Despite the nightmarish circumstances so graphically described, there is a quality of redemption in here. People who were once blind to their true natures despite physically seeing, gradually find that inner illumination in their physical blindness. They lose the world but find their souls. There is a similarity in feeling to the best of Kafka, and to an extent Borges. Saramago takes us on a wild ride, almost to Hell and back, but we disembark wondering more about ourselves than about the characters we encountered.
One thing everyone mentions is the writing style. The lack of punctuation can be disorienting. Saramago capitalizes only when a different character begins to speak. Paragraphs can run for pages at a clip, and he frequently interjects his own (the author's) thoughts in the course of certain sections of dialogue and action. For this reason, many readers will become frustrated, as they start losing their bearings. Perhaps, this was done on purpose, so that the reader may experience in a different sense, the disorientation posed by the circumstances in the novel. Many great books require patience, and due diligence on the part of the reader. The style of BLINDNESS, is one of it's strengths, not a weakness, and a reason why I am not expecting the movie version (which has been made and will be released this year) to be anywhere near as good as it's source.
Book Review: Opening our lives with blindness
Summary: 5 Stars
BlindnessBy Jose Saramago
Reviewed by Darcie DAugusta
The novel Blindness tells the story of what happens to society when an epidemic of blindness begins to spread across the country. This novel should and can be read by all. In fact its purpose is to make people be blind to our differences. It is overall a well written, eye-opener for mankind as a whole.
None of the characters in this story have a name. They are referred as to what they are. For example, the first person to be infected by the epidemic is called, the first blind man, through out the novel. The heroine of the novel is the doctors wife. She is the only known person to not lose her eyesight. Although, at first she keeps her sight secret to all except her husband, she eventually becomes the crutch for all of the impaired people around her. She is the set of eyes that helps them take care of themselves as much as possible, from finding them food to ending the brutal raping orgies that the women must endure to survive. Although she is tired and worn-out she stays with her friends and helps them until they all overcome their blindness in the end.
One feature of this book that is disliked is the fact that there are no quotes used throughout the novel. Although, it might be confusing, it actually holds symbolic meaning relating to the novel. The people that are blind cannot use their eyesight in order to figure out who is speaking. They must identify each person by the tone, style, and dialect of each person speaking. The reader must also do this to differentiate between speakers. This makes the reader more involved in the novel. I dont think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see. This final statement sums up exactly what Saramago is trying to say. That people today are blind when it comes to knowing people and life as it is on the inside and not what is first viewed. This white blindness was an awakening to mankind. To give people more sight then any pair of eyes could give.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. It grasped by attention because the story was different and held a lot of symbolic meaning at the same time. Although, sometimes Saramago will tend to go off on endless tangents about insightful thoughts on blindness, I learned to see past them and enjoy the book.
In conclusion, I recommend this novel to almost anyone. I think every person belonging to the human race has been blinded from knowledge that is concealed by our own eyes. This book, although not as affective as having the epidemic of white blindness, will open your mind to what the world really is.
Book Review: Juxtaposed
Summary: 4 Stars
I always read the bad reviews of a book before deciding if I want to buy it. You can learn more about the book from the people who hated it than the people who liked it. I'm going to try to address some of the complaints from the 1 star reviews.
1. The writing style. People complained that because the dialog was not set up in the normal way with quotation marks, ending punctuation and the identity of the speaker that it was hard to read and terribly written. It did make it hard to read for the first few pages, but then you get into the swing of things and realize WHY the book was written this way. If you were in a roomful of people all talking at once and you couldn't see and you couldn't recognize the person by voice, it would be a jumble of words. "Follow me," said the doctor's wife would not be an accurate interpretation of what the listener heard. The author is placing you in the situation as a fellow blind person. This is how you would observe the conversations if you had no point of reference.
2. Scat, feces, etc. Let's try to be realistic here. There is no running water, no working sewage system, and everyone in the world is blind and displaced. Is it realistic to think that the streets would remain pristine? I read Blindness during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina and guess what, with no infrastructure and displaced persons, people relieve themselves where they can.
3. Rape and violence. Did these people not read Lord of the Flies, have they never witnessed the power of a mob? People ARE animals and when it comes down to survival of the fittest, violence will break out, gangs will form, and the female body will be used as currency. Again, look at Katrina. The looting, the killing, the rapes, the disregard for corpses.
Those that wrote bad reviews live in a world that is different from our own. They can not conceive of life without running water and a police presence. They don't understand that "people will do anything for a potato," as they say in Empire of the Sun
Blindness is a horrifying peek into the savagery of the human animal as well as the good in people and the indomitable will to live. You are not a casual reader but placed firmly into the midst of the action by the writing style. If you aren't squeamish, don't wear rose colored glasses, and can parse out sentences without proper punctuation, get this book. If you can't, move along to something fluffier. And for God's sake, don't turn on the tv.
Book Review: annoying writing style
Summary: 4 Stars
When I finish a book, I come to [...] to see what else I should be reading, I found the review for Blindness about a month ago and was very excited to read it, so I bought it, I also bought The Road by Cormack McCarthy, which was a bit similar both in subject matter and writing style, by the way, do you like this writing style, I hope so because Blindness uses it, there are barely any periods, no quotation marks yet lots of conversations, guess who's talking, I can't!
Anyway, the writing style drove me absolutely crazy. Blindness and The Road apparently don't believe in using quotation marks or periods. Makes it real fun to read conversations by the books characters. Ugh!
As for the Blindness story, I read a lot of reviews where people were turned off by the animalistic lengths to which humans would go had their sight suddenly been taken away. Actually, I had no problems with that. I would submit that if the population's sight was yanked from them, we'd revert to animals. Look what happens when the law, government, health care, and shelter are taken away (Katrina, LA Riots), anarchy abounds. I completely think this would happen. Rape, murder, hording of food, greed, looting would take over. Those that think differently are living in a fantasy world. Especially in the US. Holy smokes, it'd be chaos with guns everywhere. So this part worked for me.
What didn't really work for me was definitely the writing style (already mentioned) but the last third of the book. Without giving anything away, the story just kind of goes flat after the Asylum. The ending also seemed to not be explained well enough. Why did it turn out like it did? Probably for the sequel.
Also, Saramago seemed to get REALLY REALLY bogged down with citing proverbs and philosophies from other sources. It's great to know that stuff, but to go on endlessly about them, trying to relate them to the character's thoughts became an exercise in stamina for the reader. It's great to be descriptive, but keep it relevant for goodness sake.
Also, why this is a Pulitzer Prize winner is also beyond me. It's a good book in an almost Night of the Living Dead type of fashion, but a Pulitzer??? Come on! Maybe we should raise the standards a bit.
Sorry, but I just didn't find this book to be that relevant.
Also, I checked out the sequel to this book. Written with the same, crummy sentence structure. I WON'T be picking that one up.
Book Review: A thought-provoking and chilling novel...
Summary: 4 Stars
Great novel from this Nobel Prize winner.
This novel begins with a strange outbreak of 'white blindness' in an unnamed city (town?). A man goes blind in a fast and weird manner while driving his car, and the disease spreads fastly, terrifying the authorities and members of the community.
In fear of the rapid spread of the disease, the authorities quarantines the blind inside an old mental hospital, where they are to fend for themselves except for them being provided with food from outside. Amidst this series of anonymous characters ("the doctor", "the girl with the sunglasses") lives a woman who is immune to the disease, and who helps the blind without telling them she can see, for fear of abuse and resentment.
The dinamics between the blind inside the mental hospital presents a terrifying picture of human nature, where the strong prey on the weak, despite being in the same predicament, showing unprecedented cruelty. This leads us to wonder about solidarity and abuse of power in different kinds of communities and even in dire circumstances.
At the same time we are witness to the development of strong bonds of affection and taking care of each other between people who might have not taken notice of each other under normal circumstances.
The way in which this novel is written makes its comprehension a little hard, because of the lack of punctuation and sentence structure. It was at times very difficult for me to tell who said what, which creates the impression of blindness also in the reader. Images are very powerful, especially those of olfatory perception, which transmit the environment of rotting and decay that takes place in this world of the blind.
Saramago places us in an extreme situation, which shows how quickly everything decays when faced with an event of this magnitude. I had never before questiones myself on exactly how dependent we are on our eyesight.
This is a story of decay. Human reactions in this situation, how solidarity turns into mistrust and then selfishness when your own people's needs must be put in first place in order to survive. How we cling to life despite the conditions to which we see ourselves reduced, forgetting the dignity that makes us human for the sole purpose to keep on breathing and feeling alive.
(I apologize for spelling mistakes or if ideas are unclear. English is my second language)