Blindness (film Tie-In)

There's likely to be a battle, a war, The blind are always at war, always have been at war

I found "Blindness" to be very thought provoking read and made me consider how people can be treated in a time of uncertainty and confusion. Even losing sight halfway through life would be a challenge to adapt too, let along experiencing it alongside others who have lost sight as well. The story grabbed my attention right from the beginning and held on until the every end.

However, I did feel that the time in quarantine to be a little too long, but I also found this to be an uncomfortable section to read. The infected people left to their own devices gradually saw humanity slip away and become more like animals. I was almost as relieved as those interned there when the story went to a different location.

The run on sentence writing style was a little tricky to get in to but the effect it caused of paying attention to what was being said instead of who was saying it helped the immersion in to the story.

If one can say anything about this book without spoiling some of the elements, I’d say you cannot even move past the first page, so for those paranoid, read no further!

This is an absolutely marvellous book on a seemingly rampant blindness that leave its victims in a visual sea of milky white. Saramago delves into what this blindness means on many levels, foremost individually as well as for society in large, and shows humanity from within its core in a variety of ways.

To me, this book displays humankind and the surrounding world at the base level. When stripped of sight, our senses are shocked, and then, as through cooking, reduced to display our core values.

I haven’t read Saramago prior to this novel, but I hear his way of writing is the same almost everywhere: long sentences, few punctuations and no quotation marks to show who’s saying what in dialogue. It’s very interesting, yet I think some may dislike it.