names are not needed in the world of the blind

Music: background noise from the TV

I finished reading Jose Saramago's Blindness in roughly two weeks' time.

It may or may not be a feat, depending on which perspective I use. It is not, if I consider the fact that I can finish books of more or less the same number of pages as Blindness in less than a week's time--two days, even, depending on how interested/addicted I am with the plot/character/author. On the other hand, it is, if I take into consideration my earlier claim that I can only read a maximum of three chapters from that book per night, before my brain automatically shuts down from exhaustion.

I don't even know how to begin talking about Blindness.

I guess I could start by quoting The Washington Post:

"This is an important book, one that is unafraid to face all the horrors of the century."

And it is. The plot is intriguing enough: A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and assaulting women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers--among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears--through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing.

That the book showcases man's worst appetites and weaknesses is evident the moment the man who helped the first blind man to his house steals the latter's car, and is further emphasized on as the inmates in the mental hospital increase in number. Saramago gives new definition to "dog-eat-dog"--the strong preying on the weak; hording the food and forcing others to pay for them by giving their valuables, and later, the women in the wards. Loss of morals and simple hygiene are shown in all chapters as well--urine and excrement in the hallways, and later, when the epidemic spread to the whole country, the streets and sidewalks; more hoarding and stealing of food; and the general deconstruction of what the modern-day world view as "proper."

But despite the hopelessness that comes with the milky blindness, Saramago shows proof that humanity is not all lost. He leaves evidences of these here and there--the women carrying the woman with insomia back to the ward after their brutal rape by the hoodlums; the blooming romance between a girl with dark glasses and an old man with a black eyepatch; the unity amongst the inmates against their abusive ward-neighbors. It is these little pockets of hope that keeps the reader's attention--that little funny feeling in the chest that, amidst the chaos and anarchy around, there is still some sense of humanity left, that not everyone who had gone blind has succumbed to the bases of animal's instincts (no offense meant to the animals).

One of my favorite parts of the book is the scene in the church, where the doctor's wife, the only person in the entire city who could still see, looks up from fainting, and sees that the saints, both sculpture and painting, are all blind. As in blindfolded (in case of the statues) and eyes painted over with white paint (for the paintings). It's symbolism in the most literal of terms, and still, still, I love it, love the hopelessness it depicts, love the reality and non-reality it presents, love the way the scene was told in the book:

She raised her head to the slender pillars, to the highest vaults, to confirm the security and stability of her blood circulation, then she said, I am feeling fine, but at that very moment she thought she had gone mad or that the lifting of the vertigo had given her hallucinations, it could not be true what her eyes revealed, that man nailed to the cross with a white bandage covering his eyes, and next to him a woman, her heart pierced by seven swords and her eyes also covered with a white bandage, and it was not only that man and that woman who were in that condition, all the images in the church had their eyes covered, statues with a white cloth tied around the head, paintings with a thick brushstroke of white paint, and there was a woman teaching her daughter how to read and both had their eyes covered, and a man with an open book on which a little child was sitting, and both had their eyes covered, and another man, his body spiked with arrows and he had his eyes covered, and a man with wounds on his hands and feet and his chest, and he had his eyes covered, and another man with a lion, and both had their eyes covered, and another man with a lamb, and both had their eyes covered, and another man with an eagle, and both had their eyes covered, and another man with a spear standing over a fallen man with horns and cloven feet, and both had their eyes covered, and another man carrying a set of scales, and he had his eyes covered, and an old bald man holding a white lily, and he had his eyes covered, and another old man leaning on an unsheathed sword, and he had his eyes covered, and a woman with a dove, and both had their eyes covered, and a man with two ravens, and all three had their eyes covered, there was only one woman who did not have her eyes covered, because she carried her gouged-out eyes on a silver tray. (pp.316-317)

I did find myself pretty much detached from the overall story though. I mean, I read the lines, I understood how the characters feel, but somehow, it felt as if there's a wall separating me from their world. I'm not sure if it had something to do with the author's style of not giving them names--because you don't need names in a world where only the blind exists--or for some other reason I cannot quite explain.

Oh don't get me wrong. When I say I feel detached, it doesn't mean I don't sympathize with the characters, it just means I'm having a hard time empathizing with them. Even when the doctor's wife fainted from seeing the mass grave in the supermarket basement. Even when the first man hid under the blankets when his wife left with the other women to give turn themselves to the hoodlums in the third ward.

Still, I'm glad I finished the book. It's a tough read, all right, but worth it. It made me think of things, deep things, that I'd rather not discuss here so as not to sound weirder than I already do. Blindness sort of forces one to be on the philosophical/theological side of things for a bit, and if not, at least to reflect on certain things that people might not normally reflect on.

I just realized most of what I said didn't make sense, but maybe it's because I'm still reeling from the aftereffect of the novel. Maybe I can write something half-coherent next time, when my thoughts aren't so jumbled, my feelings aren't so messed up, and my understanding of what's right and what's wrong isn't so over the edge.

(Oh, and I just have to say this: MARK RUFFALO IS LOVE. Him, and Yusuke Iseya. If you don't want to read a 326-page book, just watch the movie. Seriously, watch it. I did not, could not, talk about the movie yet, because my brain is still trying not to explode from the awesomesauceness that is Mark Ruffalo and Yusuke Iseya.

Potch, I HAVE A COPY OF THE MOVIE. WATCH IT, FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING GOOD AND PROPER IN THE UNIVERSE, WATCH THE FILM!!!)