Blindness Cave

[gibsondodds]

Topic 1 “discuss the idea(s) developed by the text creator(s) about the role that self preservation plays when individuals respond to competing demands?”

The Nature of Synonyms
The nature of preservation is the act of conserving, protecting, and safeguarding something. Pickles are preserved… by placing a cucumber in a glass jar filled with water, a pickle will materialize. A cucumber can’t endure the conditions in the jar, so to take care of itself, it changes its nature. The nature of self-preservation is act of protecting, safeguarding, and defending one’s self. It is a survival instinct. We are forever trying to protect ourselves from the world and keep ourselves intact. José Saramago reflects and develops the nature of self-preservation in his Nobel Prize winning novel, Blindness. Blindness is about a city hit by an epidemic of blindness, sparing all but one. In the novel, the characters are constantly faced with the choice of preserving their selves and fighting against what befalls them, or the alternative: endangering themselves and just giving in to what may happen to them. The nature of self-preservation could be synonymous with trying to preserve one’s sanity in the setting of the novel.
“It couldn’t be, more likely some infinite weariness, a longing to curl up inside herself, her eyes, especially her eyes, tuned inwards, more, more, more, until they could reach and observe inside her own brain, there where the difference between seeing and not seeing is invisible to the naked eye.” (Saramago, 159)

Self-preservation is the act of protecting, safeguarding, and defending one’s self. Therefore, to preserve yourself; you’re keeping intact your body, beliefs, and soul. Your body is an important element to your being; it isn’t the most important. Saramago develops this in the scene where women are gang raped. It wasn’t worth jeopardizing their beliefs in order to maintain their bodies. They were voluntarily raped… which in itself defies the definition of rape… in order to obtain food. Also, they relinquished their bodies in the process. During that scene, the women didn’t preserve any part of themselves. To emphasize this, Saramago had the woman who suffered from insomnia collapse and die immediately after. It dramatized the concept. The author also had another character in the novel understand this. In order to preserve her beliefs that these men were horrible people and a threat to society, a woman that had been gang raped realized that she had to kill them. She found a lighter, and then crawled into the blockade of mattresses that they had set up in front of their ward. Realizing at the last moment that the only way to kill them was to relinquish her own body, she did so. By lighting the mattresses blockade on fire, she killed not only the men, but herself. The author suggests again that the body is not the most important thing; it isn’t the thing that needs to be preserved during hardships. Your beliefs and your soul are far more important. It’s the thing that makes us what and who we are. In Blindness, sanity truly comes through, for only those that have been defined as insane can know what sanity is.
Those who can truly see are truly blind, and therefore do not retain themselves. We live in a manufactured society; what we see is what we preserve to be ‘real’ and to be ‘life’. What we consider to be sanity is distorted by our vision. Saramago reflects this idea in Blindness. For example, in his novel, the Doctor’s Wife is the only character who retains their vision, and can see throughout the novel. By being able to see, she sees what we preserve to be life. She sees the collapse of society, and ruin that can become of us should we all loose our sight. A common cliché states that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Without those windows; do we lose the soul? The Doctor’s Wife sees people defecating on the streets, eating raw meat, and killing each other for a mere morsel of food. In the end, however, is that not what we all do? All of us who try to survive in the world; we ‘defecate’ in the streets by falling prey to the traps of the media. We go out and buy Coca-Cola because it was successful in advertising. We strut around in Converse shoes, because that’s what everybody else is doing. How are we preserving our selves, our dignity, our sanity, by following the crowd? From the beginning of the novel, Saramago reflects this. When the First Blind Man loses his sight, it’s at a red light in the middle of heavy city traffic. Everybody becomes angry and just wants him to get out of the way so they can continue with their days travels. By being able to see, they are blinded with what they consider to be the real world; their world. They do not see that a man needs help, and that it’s more important to be decent human beings than to go grocery shopping. By preserving their day-to-day routine, their rituals, they are failing to preserve their sanity. They are blinded by their sight.
“...in all that blood, who could tell what vapors, what emanations, what poisonous miasmas might not already be oozing forth from the open wounds of the corpses.” (Saramago, 85)

By trying to preserve sanity through our sight, we are neglecting to see the world around us. In the above quote, the corpses could be referring to the media, and the poison could be media’s manipulation of society. The media is constantly trying to draw us in, to attract our attention. We don’t exactly enjoy looking at corpses, yet we’re still drawn into the intrigue that they give off. Before one should ever look, though, they must first be aware of the dangers. Vapors and poisons might be lingering, ready to infect us. Oftentimes we aren’t aware of these poisons, and that’s what Saramago is trying to convey. The Government in the novel is a prime example of this. The characters are instantly drawn in to thinking that the Government will help, because it should be ethically obliged to. The characters, however, don’t realize that all they hear, that all the good that they think the Government is, is truly just the poisonous vapors succeeding in fooling them. Manipulating them. Also, Saramago reflects this throughout the novel with the concept of food. It doesn’t matter what kind of food the blind people could eat; they were never picky. It’s the fact that food nourishes and fills their bodies that matters. In our manufactured society we eat what we enjoy, not what provides us with nourishment. What are we trying to preserve this way? Certainly not our bodies, for they won’t survive on candy and grease. Yet, the media portrays that it’s okay to gorge on unhealthy foods. They advertise McDonalds, Wendy’s, and Pizza Hut daily. Again, we’re trying to perceive what’s real with our sight. If we couldn’t see the food we eat, like the blind in Saramago’s novel, we would be immunizing ourselves against those poisonous vapors that are constantly infecting us; the media and media’s perceptions of self-preservation, or sanity.
“And those of us who are cooped up here, said the doctor in a deliberately loud voice, as if being struck blind were not enough, we might just as well have our hands and feet tied.” (Saramago, 70)

Only by letting go can we become better people. Letting go, however, is in our society viewed as letting go of sanity, or becoming insane. Saramago suggests that we don’t want to see; we don’t want to be known as insane. For those who can see are often outcasts. They are those who have truly preserved themselves. Not their bodies, but rather their heart and soul. In Saramago’s novel, by retaining her vision, the Doctor’s Wife is an outsider. She can see, and she doesn’t want to be able to. She wishes that she were blind like the others so that she could be ignorant to the chaos surrounding society. She wishes that she were still in the cave, referring to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Plato demonstrates that we do not want to see, because that would mean we’re different, since most can’t see. It shows that in the Cave the individual desires to remain a part of a group, and not as their individual being. However; she can see. By seeing she escapes the cave, she escapes society’s conformist views of sanity. She does what is right and preserves her beliefs and soul. For example, society views murder as a horrible crime, a sin. The Doctor’s Wife, however, seeing when others are blind, realizes that a greater crime than murder would be to let a savage live. So, by seeing she realizes that her beliefs regarding murder aren’t necessarily all right. She realizes that some circumstances warrant it. So, she delves into the realms of insanity and murders the leader of the hoodlum gang, a man who led others to rape countless women and strip them of their dignities. By letting go of some of her beliefs, she became a better person.
In Blindness, Saramago portrays that those who can see are the blindest, and that we try to preserve our sight. He reflects that self-preservation is truly the act of contriving to maintain within societies standards of sanity. Saramago presents that self-preservation is synonymous with the acts of trying to preserve sanity. He shows his readers that what society views as being right, as being the sane thing to do, isn’t always the right thing. By remaining in the cave, we are not seeing, and we are truly blind. When everybody is blind, the one person who can see is enlightened. When everybody is sane, the enlightened one is insane. That isn’t necessarily right. Society views are often wrong. Overall, Saramago is portraying that the nature of self-preservation prevents us from achieving enlightenment.

[Brown Desk]

[gibsondodds]

Well done! Bravo! That's exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for. Now, what didn't you like about the essay or what did you think was kind of obvious or less successful? I'm not asking these questions of you, Brown Desk, but rather of the rest of the class. Is anyone out there or are you just being passive again?

[redcrayon]

[Brown Desk]

Man, I think I just really pissed off my friend. I'm going to have to resort to some self-preservation right now.

[gibsondodds]

Here is another essay on the topic of the author's ideas of how people react to an unfamiliar circumstance. Look at how this essay breaks the topic down into components. Thanks Kira!

Life is sometimes filled with unusual contradictions – where we are placed in situations that we are not familiar with, but with which we must learn to get adjusted to. Nothing is familiar for the blind internees without their primary sense of awareness – their sight. Everything seems like a foreign
stage, and even familiar objects and people don’t seem to be themselves any longer. When people are faced with unfamiliar circumstances, they often go through different stages, which they use to aid them with coping with these changes. These stages are periods of panic, fear, anger, questioning, and then acceptance or non-acceptance of the changes. In his book Blindness, Saramago is telling the reader that no matter how fragile we feel at times in our lives, a strong human spirit will prevail through these times of crisis. José Saramago sees the asylum and its internees as a microcosm for society in general, where each character represents an aspect of society with the reactions of peoples and the interactions between different groups.
In this community of the blind, there is still one pair of functioning
eyes … still one strong human spirit. This spirit belongs to the Doctor’s
Wife. Though she sees that the many of the people she is surrounded with’s morals deteriorate as quickly as their eye sight had, she never looses faith in some of her fellow internees, and never gives up hope. This story is peculiarly allegoric in its style and content. It evokes irony, humor, and sympathy all aimed at the human condition.

It is remarkable how fragile the bonds that make up our society truly are. Saramago brings this concept to life in an interesting way. He does not hide the terrible or beautiful aspects of a society in chaos. As this epidemic spreads, the government panics and begins quarantining victims in the abandoned asylum – guarded by soldiers ordered to shoot anyone who attempt escape. From this, Saramago shows how one tragedy can lead to a “domino-effect” of corruptness and alarm in a society. The government panicked, and therefore did not feel any empathy towards any of the victims of the present ailment. Blindness is in many ways a horrific novel, detailing as it does the total breakdown in society that follows upon this most unnatural disaster. Saramago takes his characters to the very edge of humanity and then often pushes them over the verge. His people learn to live in inexpressible filth, they commit acts of both unspeakable violence, as well as amazing generosity that would have been unimaginable to them before the tragedy. The corruption of the structure inside the asylum leads to the crumbling of social conventions – paving way to selfishness and cruelty among the internees. The very structure of society itself alters to suit the circumstances as once civilized urban dwellers become ragged nomads
travelling by touch from building to building, searching for food. The total
breakdown of systems in the asylum ultimately leads to anarchy and chaos outside the prison. These people are now freed from captivity, but not truly free. The society that forms among the blind in quarantine is savage, though clearly it does appear that it is not much better in the outside world. By leaving the characters and locations nameless, Saramago allows the novel a more universal feel and allows characters to distinguish themselves through their responses to issues – rather than their backgrounds.

Characters who never would have dreamt of committing some of the atrocities they did while in the asylum now feel that since their – and everyone else’s – eye sight has departed, it allows them to commit these acts because they feel “shielded” by this blindness. It may be argued that the Doctor’s Wife’s morals have not changed from the beginning to end of this novel – but rather her views on the importance of her morals is truly what has changed. At the beginning of the novel, she never would have dreamed of carrying out some of the actions in which she did in the asylum. Those such as committing homicide probably seemed like such an incongruous concept to her before. From this, the author expresses that the events a person faces may alter the perception of their own morals. Even though the Doctor’s Wife never would have previously thought herself capable of homicide, in the dire circumstances she was placed in, killing the man seemed like the only solution to save herself and the other woman. An issue of the priorities of one’s morals may then arise. It obviously was more important to save the woman from the humiliation of this gang rape than to commit the ultimate sin, and kill the malicious man who offended against her. Perhaps the Doctor’s Wife felt that the actions of this man against her and others justified the murder of him.

On the last page of the novel, the Doctor’s Wife virtually sums up the whole idea behind Blindness. She states “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”. By this, she renders the beliefs that each one of us is blind to others – blind to who they really are. Without the “distorted outer layer” of our physical appearances and social status, we do not truly see the person that lies within. Each one of us is blind to aspects in our society unless they eventually effect us personally. Only then will we care and become interested in the thing that may be involving many other people. Perhaps going blind was the best thing that could have happened to these poor souls, for now they will look deeply into the character of a person. The Doctor’s Wife ponders the theory that none of the internees were really “blind” physically, but instead blind in their values, morals, and ability to see others as they really are. Once the “shell” of a person’s physical appearance, occupation, or financial state is removed, then their true personality, character, positive and negative traits are exposed. The
Doctor’s Wife never let this “screen” hide her perception of people. Her
view of them – her sight – was never altered throughout the whole ordeal. “Only in the world of the blind might things be what they really are” she states, as she watches the corruption of morals and ethics among the internees reign on.

In the last paragraph of the novel, the Doctor’s Wife looks up into the sky
and briefly suspects that she has gone blind. “It is now my turn” she fears. This is almost a reference to Book 7 of Plato’s Republic, where in Socrates uses the metaphor of the cave to illuminate the soul’s journey into light. The Doctor’s Wife mistakes the light for the onset of blindness. It is as if this light – or knowledge of everything she has experienced – temporarily blinds her. At the end of the novel, when everyone once again regains their eyesight, the “leader” role of the Doctor’s Wife, as being the only person who could see, is now over. As society changes, she too must change. She must now, once more, rearrange her morals and ethics from the time that she spent in the asylum. Since she is no has the advantage of eye-sight and of being an observer of the blind, she must amend to not being the sole “eyes” of the people any longer. Her leadership role is changing, so she must adjust to not being the director any longer, but to conform with the rest of society in order to be a good citizen.

José Saramago uses many paradoxes to better exemplify aspects in his novel. For instance, there is a great paradox between the Doctor’s occupation and his fate in Blindness. He is not simply a general practitioner or any other type of specialized physician. Instead, ironically, he is an ophthalmologist: an eye doctor. This leaves him feeling particularly helpless and venerable when he goes blind, since he was always the one people who had troubled vision had gone to hoping to be healed. Another incongruity of the book is the presence of the internee who had been blind previous to the “white-blindness” epidemic. Even though for all of his life he has been at a disadvantage to those who could see, he now has a leg up on others because of his ability to recognize things using his other senses. It is ironic how, when certain circumstances change, those who were previously in a disadvantaged position may be elevated to an advantaged position over others. The already-blind man already has the upper hand because of his abilities to use other means of surviving without his eyesight. This interesting twist on disablement in society, reflects Saramago’s ideas that if someone has the benefit in one situation, they may no longer be at that same advantage when the conditions are altered. We as humans must learn to adjust to the circumstances as best we can.

In Blindness, Saramago is telling the reader that no matter how fragile we feel, that a strong human spirit will prevail. People must “make lemons into lemonade” when faced with an issue that they feel is negative or beyond their control. People in general must not loose our hindsight. We must focus on the positive qualities of each other and of the situations in which we are faced with – no matter how much they might be out numbered by the bad traits. We may be blind the very way people may react to a situation, just as the first blind man probably had no idea about the contagion that had been started and society’s overall reaction to it. This thought-provoking book should help one to discover the blindness in each one of us. It also would help one to face squarely and boldly the dread created by the confusion and disorientation of the modern civilization. In a sense, the novel is like a work of science fiction in that it lays out a premise (contagious blindness that plagues a city) and then follows it logically. We may be far-sighted as to how inhuman people can become when the situations to be cruel to others better suits them. Fear and intolerance of the blind people ultimately lead to the prejudice and imprisonment of them. As humans, we all have our “blind spots”. We do not notice some aspects of each other until something happens and our lives are affected. Only then will we notice the things that we have lost sight of before.

[gibsondodds]

What are Saramago's ideas about dealing with the unfamiliar.

Each day, most people in our society spend time looking at themselves in the mirror. Whether it to be to fix one’s hair, brush one’s teeth, or examine the blemish on one’s face, it is something that we naturally do. The mirror permits ourselves to see the exterior shell, but is that who we truly are? Our society has become one that praises self-infatuation and physical appearance, and there is no longer any emphasis on our true personalities. But what if one day, one was to experience a shift in their systematic life? Suddenly, one would cease to live in their predictable life, and would instead be faced with an unfamiliar situation. This is the case in the novel Blindness written by Jose Saramago. We follow the story of a society that is unexpectedly overtaken by what seems to be an epidemic of blindness. It is by finding oneself in an unfamiliar situation and responding to this unfamiliarity, that an individual is able to discover the truth about oneself. By our initial response to an unfamiliar circumstance, one is able to learn about one’s inner personality. This unknown situation may also lead to a change in a person’s morals, which will allow their true personality to emerge.

It is only human nature to attempt to hold onto that which is familiar to us. Initially, when the characters are faced with the blindness, they try to carry on their life as they had known it. They are afraid of the unknown. When placed in the asylum, the girl with the dark glasses continues to wear her dark eyeglasses that shield her eyes, and carries on putting her eye drops in her eyes to cure her conjunctivitis. Ironically, she still values her outer appearance even though no one around her can physically acknowledge her. The old man with the eyepatch also continues to wear his eyepatch to cover his already blind eye, even though no one has eyes to see his face either. These two characters respond to the unfamiliar situation by using what is secure and familiar to them to help them adjust to the unknown. The gang in the asylum continues to value materialistic possessions even when they cannot see them. In exchange for food, they demand jewelry, money and anything valuable. The author is implicitly asking what good is jewelry or money when no one can see you and there is nowhere to spend it? Once again, ironically, they attempt to carry on the emphasis on material possessions that they had known in their familiar life, even though they now live in what seems to be a whole new world. Even money could not buy them help or salvation from the horror and unfamiliar life they lived in.

As we let go of what is familiar to us, often one may experience a transformation in their morals and beliefs. As more people suffered from blindness, chaos began to erupt in the asylum. The gang began to dominate the psychiatric ward and enjoyed the power they maintained over the asylum. As the story develops and the rape scene takes place, we as a reader are able to see what people might attempt to do when there is no government and no laws to control them. Organization and structure no longer have any meaning when there is nobody present to punish them: “Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are”(p.126). The blind were able to do whatever they pleased. The doctor’s wife also commits a crime that would have once betrayed her morals. She murders the leader of the gang in the asylum, yet we see her murder as justifiable because she was protecting others and attempting to regain some order in the ward. Therefore, Jose Saramago leads us to believe that perhaps our morals are based on context. Do our morals slip when the context is changed? From the doctor’s wife’s actions, this possibly could be true. And even though the doctor’s wife attempted to maintain control and order in the mental hospital throughout the unfamiliar circumstances, chaos and corruption eventually took over. The characters’ lives turned into a disturbed nightmare in which no one could predict what would happen next. They began to live as savages: no longer worrying about personal hygiene, relieving their bowels in the streets, and killing animals in order to provide food for themselves. Their overall quality of life decreased immensely, and they began to act as a whole different society of people.

As the characters experienced a metamorphosis in their beliefs, we were able to see their true personalities emerging and how unimportant physical appearances truly are. At the beginning of the novel, the girl with the dark glasses is introduced to us and we assume her to be a prostitute. We automatically start by judging her and we are ignorant towards her true inner personality. While the story continues, we learn more about her and begin to see that she is internally a caring person for becomes a mother figure to the boy with the squint. We find that she does have the capacity within herself to truly love. A relationship develops between her and the old man with the eyepatch; a relationship which at the beginning of the novel we would have thought unimaginable. However, from their relationship, we understand that because of their blindness they were truly able to see each other’s personalities. What they were on the outside no longer prevented them from sharing their love. From this, we see that our outer appearances are merely a façade: “Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are” (p.276). Saramago suggests that names, titles, professions, and social status are truly of no importance. Even though our society has taught us to value these superficial things, we must be able to look beyond the stereotypes and the outer shell of an individual in order to discover their true self.

As the novel concludes, and the characters regain their sight, they begin to return to their familiar life. Being blinded and put into a circumstance beyond familiar experience was in fact a miracle for their society. And as we followed the story of their harrowing experiences, we realize that we too were put into an unfamiliar situation. We were forced to look at ourselves in a different light. This novel opens our eyes to seeing things in a different way and seeing other people in a way we never thought imaginable. We see that when submerged in an unfamiliar situation, we learn the truth about ourselves. It may be easier to carry on life in our familiar world, but we truly free our inner selves when we must react to unfamiliarity. Jose Saramago proves that we do have the capacity to change the way in which we live. Inside each of us, there is something more important than what appears on our outer shell. There is hope and power that will salvage us and lead us to discovering the truth. If we are able to learn from our reactions to circumstances beyond familiar experience, and honestly value our inner personalities, then our society will be able to live in truth.

[Brown Desk]

I think that writing an essay on blindness is one of the most difficult books you could write an essay on. (especially in only 2 hours). There's so much to write that in 2 hours, I just found myself bogged down in a hopeless soup of yada yada. Not a pleasant experience.

[Knuckles]

I don't know about you or anyone else, but I had a hard time trying to come up with stuff to put in my essay. I found the topics a little hard to work with in regards to what I got from the novel. I didn't do so hot on my essay either. It was probably one of my worst.