José Saramago was one of the most significant writers of the modern novel. Blindness is a haunting story written with great skill and authority. The characters are quirky, and yet the book is contemporary and boldly portrays the human condition.

The story reads like one of Dante’s apocalyptic fables. However, Saramago’s purgatory has its roots in real life. The interest of the story centers on an unnamed town whose citizens, except one, are blind. We follow the path of the “first blind” (no one has a name in Blindness, and even the city is unidentified) as he loses his sight while driving his car. Distraught, the first blind man is comforted by a stranger.

The good Samaritan, who helps him get home, eventually steals his car. However, “the thief” soon loses his sight. Later they meet at the doctor’s office and ‘the first blind man’ rages at ‘the thief’ for stealing his car. But, ‘the thief’ replies: ‘If you think you’re going to get away with it, then you’re wrong, okay, I stole your car, but you stole my sight, so who’s the biggest thief?‘

Thus, being all victims and guilty, the slaughter of the blind begins. The doctor examining the ‘first blind man’ could not find the cause or injury of his blindness. “who would have believed it. Seen with the naked eye, the man’s eyes appear healthy, his irises bright, luminous, his white sclera as compact as porcelain.Later, even the doctor succumbs to the growing epidemic of blindness. Soon almost, the whole city goes blind. The Minister of Health recommends quarantine for all those who have been blind or have been in contact with them until a cure is found.

From this environment of the blind leading the blind a tragedy unfolds where the world becomes a dangerous place, a ‘hell of hells’ where even soldiers fear blind citizens. With their blindness, the citizens had transported the war from the countryside to their streets, with the man more fearsome than the beast.

It is at this point that the reader may cringe and even walk away in disgust at the carnage that unfolds. The dark streets are covered with dirt; there is no food or running water; the dead lie unburied: the city is full of scavengers; there are multiple accidents with planes falling from the sky because the pilots are blind. It seems that there are no limits to the misfortune of the blind. However, the magnificence of the story transcends evil, and even makes it a light that illuminates the universal tragedy of ignorance.

At the end of the book one of the characters asks: ‘Why we go blind, I don’t know, maybe one day we’ll find out, you want me to tell you what I think, yes, I don’t think we’ve gone blind, I think we are. blind, Blind but seeing, Blind who can see, but do not see.‘

None of the tragic events in the book are superfluous, and they show that human dignity is insulted every day by the corrupters of the truth in our world. Unfortunately, these are the ones that barely appear in the book. In Saramago’s refreshingly tragic fantasy lies the truth, and in his condemnation lies a grudging respect for man’s instincts and will to survive, and even thrive.

The strangest passage in Blindness occurs when the inmates manage to escape from the asylum after a battle between two gangs of the blind: ‘Tell a blind man, you are free, open the door that separated him from the world, Go, you are free, we tell him one more time, and he does not leave, he has remained motionless there in the middle of the road, he and the others are terrified, they don’t know where to go, there is no comparison between living in a rational labyrinth, which is by definition an insane asylum, and venturing out without a guide. hand in hand or on the dog’s leash, in the insane labyrinth of the city, where memory is useless.‘

Blindness is common to many, and what Saramago urges us to do is light a match as an escape route from the disease and pathology of darkness. Blindness is masterfully written, an incredible book that surpasses all of Saramago’s other work.