Blindness

When I say, “I loved this book,” it means there is a pretty good shot you will like it.  This is a keeper!  While it is disturbing and intense, the story is griping and you will be enthralled throughout.  Imagine a new “illness,” one that hits without notice, has started to erupt throughout our communities.  Imagine you are one who doesn’t get it, yet people think you do have it…  you have entered the world of Blindness by Jose Saramago.  Saramago is a Portuguese author and penned this book in 1995. An unexpected mass epidemic has hit the community where people go blind for no known reason.  The story focuses on a few characters, a doctor – who is treating the first patient to go blind, the patient, the doctor’s wife, and a few other patients.  The response by the government is to place the “blind” people together in a quarantined area and then the blindness grows quickly with more and more of the affected being placed in the warehouse of sick people.  The first group of the infected have to learn to live together under less than ideal conditions, with limited food and lack of regularized hygiene conditions.  It is interesting to see how the group interacts and fights for comfort, support, and learning how to get along.  The doctor’s wife is the only member of the community who is not actually affected by blindness, which serves as a critical point of survival for the group later in the story.  The next part of the story involves how the initial community survives when mass infected people move into the warehouse and power struggle to control food sources and other material goods become less and less.  Finally the story moves into life outside the warehouse when the doctor and his wife (and their small group) escape the warehouse and struggle to survive in the “real world.”    How will the group find solace in a world overrun by famine, fighting, and betrayal?  I won’t give out the ending, but it is a nice twist and brings home the message we learned long ago through King Lear… when are we really blind? And when came we really see?  Such great questions, especially when reading this book.  I think this is one of the new classics!  Read it.  Scary, but with a strong deep message.