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| Plot Summary of Blindness |
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"A man goes blind at the traffic lights. Then everyone he has been in contact with that day also goes blind. Fearing an epidemic the Government interns the blind people in an empty mental institution. At first the squalor is bearable as food is delivered by the guarding soldiers. However as more internees arrive the asylum fills and the nervous guards shoot some of the internees as they feared a breakout.
Next blind thugs arise with a gun and cudgels and take over the food distribution. All the other inmates must hand over their valuables in return for food. However this isn't enough for the thugs and they next demand sex from the women. The woman are raped and degraded horrifically.
However one of the inmates who can still see, the wife of a blind doctor, murders the leader of the thugs. Then another woman sets fire to the ward the thugs are in and they are incinerated. The rest of the internees escape outside to find the guards have disappeared. Wandering the city they discover that now everyone is blind.
The wife of the doctor leads a small group back to her old house to recover from the squalor. The wife finds food in a supermarket basement and brings it back to the group. Everywhere the city is in chaos. Dead bodies, excrement and refuge litter the streets and dogs roam in packs. The book describes the degradation and horror that ensues as society disintegrates with Saramago's wonderful gift of insights into humanity. "
John Marcel, Resident Scholar
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"Blindness is the tale of a city stricken by a inexplicable "White Blindness". It starts with a single person and soon everyone who makes contact with him goes blind. Trying to contain the epidemic, city officials quarantine the blind and those who had contact with the blind in abandanonded hospitals and institutional buildings. Society degrades quickly as the epidemic progresses, and this story focuses on a group of seven individuals including the original blind man, the doctor who tried to treat him, and the doctor's wife, who for some reason can still see. The doctor's wife hides this fact for much of the story, in order to remain with her husband and care for him, but eventually she is forced to reveal this as she and the others strike out from quarantine only to find that the entire city has gone blind and they must somehow find a way to survive the horrible conditions that have resulted."
H. Armstrong, Resident Scholar
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| Review Analysis of Blindness |
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Our unique search engine provides a wealth of detail about books by breaking them down into many different literary elements, all of which are searchable (click here).
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Tone of book?
- thoughtful
Time/era of story
- 1980's-1999
- near future
Internal struggle/realization?
Yes
Is this an adult or child's book?
- Adult or Young Adult Book
War/Revolt/Disaster on civilians
Yes
Coping with loss of loved one(s)
Yes
Brain/Body disability?
- physical disability
Conflict:
- Environmental Disaster
Main Character
Gender
- Female
Profession/status:
- homemaker
Age:
- 40's-50's
Is this an ordinary person caught up in events?
Yes
Ethnicity/Nationality
- Hispanic/Latinic
How sensitive is this character?
- sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor
- Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence
- Average intelligence
- Smarter than most other characters
Physique
- average physique
Main Adversary
Identity:
- natural phenomena
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in:
- throughout most of the book.
Setting
How much descriptions of surroundings?
- 5 ()
City?
Yes
City:
- dirty, grimy (like New York)
Misc setting
- prison
Style
Person
- mostly 3rd
Accounts of torture and death?
- explicit references to deaths
- very explicit references to deaths and torture
Sex in book?
Yes
What kind of sex:
- descript. of female anat. (the big B's)
- descript. of nude males (the big P)
Unusual Style:
- a lot of stream of consciousness
Amount of dialog
- roughly even amounts of descript and dialog
- significantly more descript than dialog
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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s). | |
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