Blindness

In Blindness, an unknown contagion caught by one individual (the first blind man) sets in motion a chain of events that causes total social collapse. While the contagion is simply a catalyst, Saramago demonstrates it is actually a society full of self-absorbed individuals that is too easily toppled. For Saramago, it’s the government that is ultimately culpable in this collapse. While they may be trusted to handle basic day-to-day governance, they are ultimately unequipped with the right values to manage effective quarantine programs and public health policies. Their complete mismanagement and self-service only speed up the unraveling of society.

This idea is echoed in the asylum itself. In the beginning of the internment polices, the government implies the internees will be able to set their own leaders and representatives, but this offer is ultimately hollow. No leaders can build consensus for any effective leadership or mandate within the asylum, and in this leadership vacuum, tyranny reigns supreme. However, tyranny is ultimately just another fragile system of power brought down by one woman with a cigarette lighter. Any hope that the blind could organize seems short-lived once the group finds their way into town, although the doctor suggests such organization is the only way to benefit the blind. However, the reality is the blind only manage to form very small impermanent groups with no real hope of higher organization. They roam the town in small groups with individuals coming and going. The fragility of society is ultimately a major contributor to the horror of the novel, serving as a reminder that the institutions humanity puts so much faith into are ultimately brought down so easily by our crueler, more selfish nature.

As soon as the epidemic of blindness begins, the blind are treated like they are less than those with sight. This behavior starts almost immediately, and it does not discriminate based on gender, age, or profession. The doctor is treated just as poorly as the prostitute once they are infected, and they are rounded up and placed in a dilapidated asylum. Readers see how quickly the blind are treated differently when the doctor tries to report the epidemic to the government. He is summarily—and rudely—dismissed, which prompts him to remark, “This is the stuff we’re made of, half indifference and half malice” (32). This sentiment holds true as the blind internees are underfed, abused, and told that leaving “the building without authorization will mean instant death” (43) during their time in quarantine. The blind are treated like “another breed of dog” (57) because their illness labels them not just different, but a threat.

The process of using a point of difference as justification for systemic oppression and abuse is known as Othering. Othering is the process of labeling a group of people as different from the normative whole, which creates a system that discriminates against and/or oppresses them. The concept of Othering certainly defines the relationship between the sighted and the sightless in Blindness. To have sight is to be superior, and being blind makes a person subhuman (or Other). When a group of people is Othered, it also codes those people as both different and dangerous. This connection is what fuels the mistreatment of an Othered group. One of the clearest instances of Othering in Saramago’s novel happens when the blind are slaughtered by a pair of soldiers delivering their rations. The blind, who by this point in the novel are starving, hear the soldiers approach and leave their wards. When they creep too close, the soldiers open fire on the internees, killing four people. The soldiers later insist that “they acted in legitimate defence,” and even the military insists they “were not to blame” (83-84). This scene makes it clear that the soldiers no longer think of the ill as human—they are now just a threat and treated as such. In treating the blind like Others, the soldiers lose their humanity, too. As blindness overtakes the world, Saramago shows how arbitrary these divides really are. In the end, Saramago argues, everyone is the same.

Unfortunately, everyone becomes “the same” in Blindness by being rendered helpless. When people become blind, they can no longer care for themselves. For instance, readers see this when the doctor tries to use the lavatory on his own. The bathroom is filthy, and the doctor ends up covered in his and others’ excrement. He breaks down because of the experience, but he still considers himself privileged because his sighted wife “did not mind cleaning him” (93). Critics have rightly pointed out that this depiction of blindness, regardless of context, is ableist. That is, Saramago’s description of what it means to be blind is discriminatory; it emphasizes that being able-bodied is ideal. Modern readers should be aware that even as Saramago addresses Othering in his novel, he also uses ablest language and ideas to create prejudiced images of disability—which is a type of Othering, too.