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Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Blindness, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Existence, Uncertainty, and Autonomy
Good, Evil, and Moral Conscience
Biological Needs and Human Society
Narrative, Ideology, and Identity
Summary
Analysis
The narrator notes that the thief who stole the first blind man’s car offered to help him out of genuine selflessness—he’s not a “hardened criminal[].” He only thought to steal the car when he got the chance, and if the blind man had invited him to spend the afternoon, the thief might have chosen to remain generous. The narrator notes that “moral conscience […] has always existed” and reveals that the thief’s conscience—a mixture of fear and remorse—gets the better of him as soon as he steals the car. Terrified of the police, the thief drives carefully, but he grows so flustered that he decides to park the car on a side street and take a walk to try and calm his nerves. But after just a few steps, he goes completely blind.
It becomes clear that the mysterious white blindness is contagious. The car-thief’s infection might seem like divine punishment for his evildoing, but it could also just as easily be random, or even the product of his own fear. Indeed, the narrator’s analysis of his motives complicates the idea that this man was simply a remorseless criminal looking for someone to rob. In fact, the man only thought to become a criminal because of the situation in which he found himself. This does not mean he is not responsible for his actions, but rather that people are not inherently good or evil: rather, circumstances influence whether they decide to behave morally. So while “moral conscience” is universal, people can choose to follow or ignore it in different situations.
Themes
Back in his office, the doctor treats an old man with an eyepatch for cataracts, then starts going over the blind man’s file repeatedly and calls a colleague to discuss the case. The man’s blindness cannot just be psychological, nor can it be mere agnosia (“the inability to recognize familiar objects”) or amaurosis (seeing “total darkness,” not total whiteness). Washing his hands in the bathroom after this call, the doctor ponders how to apply the great body of established science to this individual, totally unique case. The doctor explains the case to the doctor’s wife over dinner, then spends most of the night assiduously leafing through all of his medical books. But he reaches no meaningful conclusion. Soon, he starts to fear going blind himself, and in a matter of minutes, he does.
The doctor is clearly dedicated to his profession, but science remains unable to explain the mysterious case of blindness. As the man’s blindness is neither obvious to a trained doctor nor explainable through medical research, the novel implies that the man’s blindness has a spiritual origin rather than a bodily one. And yet the affliction is still contagious—the doctor is a benevolent character thus far, so the fact that he also catches the white blindness suggests that it may not have to do with morality or guilt, as it may have seemed when the car-thief was struck blind. The doctor’s astonishment that the vast knowledge base of medicine provides nothing meaningful about the blind man’s case reflects a more general aspect of the human condition: namely, that people are able to draw upon historical precedent but still face unique and unprecedented circumstances.
Themes
One of the doctor’s patients, a young woman wearing dark glasses, smiles at the doctor after her appointment. Her smile is “a trick of the trade,” and her trade is prostitution. However, the narrator warns readers against judging the girl because she only takes the clients she wants to take, so she’s in control of her own life. After her appointment, the girl buys eye drops at the pharmacy, where the pharmacist’s assistant hits on her. Then she takes a taxi to the hotel, where “an old acquaintance” is waiting to visit her. On the way, she fantasizes about sleeping with the man in the hotel. When she arrives, she has a soft drink at the hotel bar and then goes upstairs to room 312. Here, over the course of 20 minutes, the girl has sex with the man and feels intense pleasure. Afterward, she realizes that she has gone blind.
Saramago’s narrator explicitly rejects the presumptions of immorality that are conventionally tied to prostitution. For the girl with the dark glasses, prostitution is a source of freedom and autonomy, not a reflection of immoral character or a sign of victimization. This further shows how conventional beliefs about morality fail to capture the complexity and ambiguity of people’s actual inner lives. The fact that people like the pharmacist’s assistant still objectify the girl shows the damage that this conventional morality can create when it is not challenged. Like the car-thief and the doctor, the girl with glasses loses her sight while working, and her character description reveals itself to be willfully ironic: just as the doctor’s training cannot help him address the man’s blindness, the girl’s glasses become useless.
Themes
