102 pages • 3 hours read
José SaramagoBlindness
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1995A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The Language of Sight
Even as everyone loses their sight, characters continue to use sighted language. Toward the end of the novel, a group of blind people hear the doctor’s wife say that she does not see anyone in the large grocery store where she initially found supplies. One blind person notes her turn of phrase, but another remarks, “[A] moment ago, when I stumbled you told me to watch where I was putting my feet, it’s the same thing” (312). Throughout Blindness, Saramago emphasizes sight is a necessary part of being fully human. The doctor’s wife implies this to the girl with the dark glasses when she says, “Blind in eyes and blind in feelings […] without eyes feelings become something different […] you say we’re dead because we’re blind, there you have it” (252). Given this, it is unsurprising that once their sight is lost, internees devolve into less human versions of themselves. It also explains why members of the first ward retain most of their humanity with the doctor’s wife serving as their sighted proxy. The consistent use of sighted language throughout the novel shows the innate ableism of society: Not only are towns and cities designed for sighted people, but language as well, with its use of sighted phrases like “I see” versus understand, or “watch out” versus protect. This serves as yet another means of exclusion for the sightless.
Proverbs and Maxims
Proverbs and maxims are designed to encapsulate useful nuggets of wisdom in short, easy-to-remember phrases that teach us about the world and society. Many different proverbs and maxims are cornerstones of civilizations and feature prominently in their foundational myths, usually given to their authors by a divinity, wise figure, or prophet. These pop up more often the longer society remains blind. For instance, when the blind internees head out to find their delivered rations, one person worries they will be shot. Another responds, “[R]emember the proverb, nothing ventured nothing gained” (101). Throughout the novel, Saramago weaves proverbs and maxims into character dialogue to help both readers and characters form a framework around the horror of the asylum. One particularly important use of proverbs and maxims happens when the doctor’s wife comes up with her own maxim for the first ward: “If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals” (116). This phrase positions the doctor’s wife as a spiritual leader for the first ward, solidifies her place as a savior figure, and explains how the first ward can defy the social collapse and savagery so prominent in the communities outside the first ward.
Water
Water takes many forms in the novel: running water, rain, tears, tap water, and stagnant water. Water features prominently in a scene where one of the women of the first ward dies after being savagely raped. After the woman’s death, the doctor’s wife ventures outside the ward with plastic bags to find some stagnant water in the asylum. She returns with her bags full of the tepid water and begins to ritualistically wash the dead woman’s body. After she finishes, she continues to wash the remaining women and herself in a symbolic gesture similar to what Jesus of Nazareth does washing his disciples’ feet in the upper room. Like Jesus, the doctors’ wife is submitting herself in service to the needs of these women and offering to cleanse them.
Excrement
From the moment internees arrive at the asylum, human excrement becomes a central image. Readers realize that the white sickness renders people unable to care for themselves—in terms of both their personal hygiene and the environment around them. Saramago describes the asylum as both dilapidated and, as the novel goes on, covered in “slimy excrement” (152) both inside and out. Initially, readers are led to believe the filth is simply the outcropping of the social anarchy within the asylum, but when the first ward group leaves the asylum, readers discover such filth is everywhere and is indicative of the larger societal collapse. This is clear in the narrator’s description of the town, where “there is litter everywhere” (220), and dead bodies and excrement cover the streets. As a motif, human excrement is a constant presence in the novel; whether characters are trying to wash it off themselves or one another, Saramago’s descriptions of excrement are vivid and omnipresent. As a symbol, excrement shows the ways humans have devolved into animals. Relieving themselves whenever and wherever the need arises illustrates their preoccupation with immediate survival versus long-term cleanliness.
Additionally, the excrement serves as society’s filth made manifest. As society collapses, its true nature is revealed. The doctor’s wife, being the only remaining sighted person, is forced to bear witness to this degeneration in a uniquely horrific way. After leaving the girl with the glasses’ apartment, the group from the first ward makes their way to the doctor’s flat. As they walk down the street, the doctor’s wife witnesses a freshly dead body being eaten by animals, which are tearing “the bone from the flesh” and have meat “caught between their teeth” (263). The sight is so awful that the woman turns and vomits into the street. She even thinks to herself, “I want to die here” (263), so that she would not have to continue witnessing the horrors of the world around her.
That is why it is particularly revealing that her apartment and the group’s accommodations are perfectly clean. When the group walks into the flat for the first time, they realize that outside of a thin coating of dust and a musty smell, the apartment is in perfect condition. They even remove their clothes and walk through the apartment naked so they do not sully it with the filth from the outside world. The cleanliness of the apartment stands in stark contrast to the excrement-covered world outside its doors. The dichotomy suggests that the community the doctor’s wife is building is free from the tainted corruption of the other degenerating social orders.
Related Titles
By José Saramago
