Their existence has been suspended between being and nothingness, as if it doesn’t matter to those who are still considered civilized, but yet to be thrown in the hell of nothingness. While I laud Nabokov for one sentence that appears to be a paragraph, that is only because that sentence is composed of so many beautiful parts (all punctuated correctly, no less) that work together to create an even more beautiful image. At first there are only a handful of people and then there are hundreds of people crammed into this facility. Though I have a bit of luxury in options- The Plague by Albert Camus and 1984 by George Orwell, to name a few- but Blindness made itself popped up out of sea of indecisiveness with eruption of glamour, the fact that Jose Saramago’ s world have been still elusive to me, must have played a part in it. The unanticipated and unforeseen events often strike us when we least expect them to, so much so that those could afflict you in the middle of a ride, which is still explicable.

We have had moments where our stomachs rumble or experienced a headache due to a missed meal, but true hunger, not eating for days hunger we can only speculate about what that is like. I don't think I would ever read another Saramago because life is too short to struggle through such a difficult writing style. For anyone who has ever had the revelation at the end of the day that this world is full of too many cowards. O ajutase ca să ştie despre oroare mai multe decît îşi închipuise vreodată, o ajutase ca să-şi dorească să fie oarbă, la nimic altceva.

The characters are referred to by descriptive appellations such as "the doctor's wife", "the car thief", or "the first blind man". Anyone who is going to die is already dead and does not know it, That we're going to die is something we know from the moment we are born, That's why, in some ways, it's as if we were born dead, …….

From that point in the story, I was so focused on revenge, I became the goddamned Count of Monte Cristo. Weaving together memories of his Portuguese childhood, Nobel Prize–winner Saramago (1922–2010) presents a lyrical portrait of the artist as a young man. The story then follows the doctor's wife, her husband, and their impromptu “family” as they attempt to survive outside, cared for largely by the doctor’s wife, who can still see (though she must hide this fact at first). After a lengthy and traumatic quarantine in an asylum, the group bands together in a family-like unit to survive by their wits and by the good fortune that the doctor's wife has escaped the blindness.I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see. The major characters of Saramago braved themselves to last extend of their perseverance, which comes out to be most essential of human qualities needed for survival, to remain afloat in this sea of white nothingness. José Saramago’s Blindness can be viewed as an allegory for a world where we see but in fact neglect what is around us.

There are lots of great themes in the novel, exploring the human condition and how we fail ourselves; and yet, eventually overcome the most severe circumstances. I could not believe she was tasked with being the only one who could SEE the problem, and I could not believe how much had been laid at one woman's excrement-covered feet.And if they did so, then resent those who could see and instead of relying on the few sighted people for help despise them for the obvious power they have. She seemingly contracted the “white-blindness” while visiting the doctor due to conjunctivitis (hence the dark glasses). The seeing woman steps in and uses her power to break off the horror show, but it will leave a scar on my reading inner eye forever.

Living conditions start to degrade as the isolated population grows bigger, there is no organization, basic medicine is a luxury not allowed in and hygiene is nowhere to be found. Even after so many factual accounts of mass cruelty, this most sophisticated fiction retains its peculiar power to move and persuade. The sequel novel takes place in the same country featured in Blindness and features several of the same nameless characters. I suppose the voice in my head did quite a good job in reading it as I did not encounter any difficulty to follow the narration.The power of this book was quite overwhelming at times and I had to stop reading for a few days at a time. Not at all disturbing, not at all compelling and not at all interesting, Jose Saramago's Blindness only succeeds in frustrating readers who take a moment to let their imagination beyond the page.