Category: Prized Fiction
Guide Created By: Lorrie Gorg
Discussion Leader(s): Sarah Thomas
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Guide Description

Background Information

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 raping 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. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses-and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit. ...from the Publisher

Questions

1. Do you find yourself gripped by fear of a similar epidemic affecting our society?

2. What, besides the literal effects of blindness on a society, is Saramago trying to convey?

3. Saramago doesn't name his characters. Why not? Does it hamper your reading? Make the characters all the more memorable?

4. Why is the blindness a white blindness and not a black blindness (as I've always imagined blindness to be)?

5. What do you think of the proposition that society (especially urban society) always teeters on the brink of disaster, and that one small event can throw things completely off balance?

6.Have you ever thought of something like an epidemic of blindness happening in society? Does it surprise you how quickly society breaks down? Or is this something you would have suspected?

7. Is there any other disability as profound as blindness? Would society degenerate in the same way if people were afflicted some other way?

8. There is something very intimate about reading this book. It feels like a nightmare - and nightmares are never shared. Do you find it different to talk about this book with others than to experience it on your own?