A Book Review: Blindness by José Saramago

  An old woman with a walking stick stepped into a morning train and found herself in a carriage jam-packed with people. The old lady could not find a seat, and no one wanted to vacate a seat for her so she stood near the door. The train started moving, and she swayed from side to side like an old tree struggling against a storm. I saw her from my comfortable seat at the upper compartment and a thought came to me: "what would I do if this is my mother?"

"Excuse me, would you like to sit here?" I called out to the old woman and my voice boomed in the carriage. Meanwhile, I stood up and took a step towards her, my hand gestured to the seat that I vacated just a second ago. She smiled and told me there was no need, because she was getting off at the next stop and it was too much hassle for her to climb the stairs.

I turned my head and discovered an astonishing sight; in those passing seconds, an young woman with a pretty face took my seat. Did the young woman hear the conversations between the old woman and I? Did the young woman know I was vacating the seat for the old lady? While I stood and contemplated those questions, I must have had an incredulous and bewildered look on my face, because the young woman looked at me and her beautiful visage suddenly flushed with embarrassment.

"I am so sorry", the young woman said to me and she began to stand up, her tone was sincere and her eyes were downcast with guilt. I felt bad for her. I sighed and told the young woman it was ok and she should just continue to sit there. As I walked away, I caught a glimpse of the young woman squirming in the seat despite my assurance to her that it was fine.

Maybe I over-think everything, but I came away from my train experience with a realization - our society is a complicated web of relationships and its ingredients, such as accountability, empathy, fear, bravery, cowardice, sharing, etc., depend on our ability to see! But more than often, even when our eyes are working properly, we will choose to be blinded to the things that we do not wish to see, so how is that different from being physically blind? Perhaps this is why José Saramago, the winner for Nobel Prize in Literature, wrote Blindness to remind his readers, that we stop cherishing our own souls when we stop cherishing the souls of our fellows, and everyday the human dignity is shredded by those who replace the many truths in this world with an omnipresent lie.

Blindness tells a harrowing story, about a city struck by an epidemic and its people collectively becoming blind. This book is not for the faint-hearted. The story is raw and brutal, narrated in an unusual style where the author wrote VERY long sentences separated mostly by commas, with no quotation mark to indicate the dialogues. It suffices to say, Blindness is no easy reading. Under José Saramago's lyrical prose, the book tackles the worst and the best of human nature, where it presents, mostly, a pessimistic outlook for our species. Yet, in its beautifully rendered characters, we also find traces of what made humanity, humane. This book will give you brain explosions but this is exactly the reason to read it. I highly recommend this book.