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Chapter 3
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 minister has ordered that all the patients be quarantined until the Government figures out what has caused their blindness. Of the city’s vacant buildings, the minister chooses an empty mental hospital as the quarantine site. There will be one wing for the blind and another for those who are undiagnosed but who likely have the disease. In the middle, there will be “a no man’s land” where the newly blind will pass through to join the others.
The minister seemingly chooses the abandoned mental hospital because it is the most convenient and least disruptive site for the government to use—not because it has any advantages for the quarantined patients themselves. Still, it is a deeply symbolic choice: first, it further establishes that the blindness is as much a psychological illness as a physiological one. Second, it gestures to social ostracism and isolation that the quarantined patients will face, similar to how mentally ill patients are often cast out from general society.
Themes
That same day, the Commission of Logistics and Security sends all the blind patients, their families, and their colleagues to the hospital. The doctor and the doctor’s wife are the first to arrive. They pass the soldiers guarding the main gate and then follow a large rope that has been strung up like a handrail to guide them to the front door. They enter their ward, which is full of grey beds with grey sheets. The doctor sits on one of them while his wife explores the rest of the ward. Among the dilapidated facilities, she finds padded rooms and a cupboard full of straitjackets. The doctor’s wife is not really blind at all—the doctor knows this, and he insists that she leave. But his wife declares that she will not be let out, since doing so means that she will catch the blindness anyway. In the meantime, she will try to “help [the doctor] and the others.”
It is clear that the blind are having their rights stripped away and being turned into prisoners: even though the doctor is the one who reported the threat to the Ministry of Health in the first place, now he and his wife are seen as a threat to be contained. The padded rooms and straitjackets further underline the way that the blind are being pathologized and confined. Although they clearly can infect others and should be quarantined, the government seems to be treating them as collateral damage rather than part of the society that needs to be protected. This shows how easily even ostensibly democratic and fair governments can turn against a portion of the population by declaring them a threat and defining them in opposition to the nation at large.
Themes
Soon, the “others” arrive together: the first blind man, the thief who stole his car, the girl with dark glasses, and the little boy from the doctor’s office, who cries out for his mother. The doctor’s wife describes them all to the doctor, who confirms that he remembers all of them from his office, except the car-thief. Then, the doctor’s wife calls out that she and the doctor are there, and the others also establish their presence. She notices some tension between the first blind man and the car-thief, but she does not understand it.
Because the white blindness is contagious, all the characters who arrive are already somehow connected to one another, largely by chance. In other words, the disease traces their social networks, revealing connections that would have never seemed important otherwise. These networks center on the doctor, reinforcing the ironic fact that the white blindness outbreak centers on an office that people visit to fix their vision problems.
Themes
Suddenly, the Government broadcasts a message over a loudspeaker, declaring that this quarantine is necessary to protect the population from the disease that the Government is calling “the white sickness.” The blind people’s participation in the quarantine is “an act of solidarity with the rest of the nation’s community.” The Government then announces a list of 15 rules, which include: the lights will always be kept on, anyone who leaves will be killed, and the patients must care for and organize themselves. They must also burn everything they use—although nobody will help them if they start a fire, nor if they get some other disease. They should bury their own dead, and anyone who goes blind must be moved to the proper wing. Finally, the same announcement will play every day as new people arrive at the hospital.
The Government’s narrative is dangerous because it mixes elements of truth and fiction: while the quarantine clearly is necessary to protect the rest of the population, this does not mean that the patients imprisoned in the hospital are willingly acting in “solidarity” or that the Government’s rules are necessary or helpful. Indeed, these rules seem cruel and arbitrary, designed to draw as sharp a line as possible between the patients—who might as well be prisoners—and the outside world. In short, the Government seems to be treating the patients as dangerous criminals simply because they were unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This calls into question the Government’s authority to make such sweeping decisions about who is guilty or dangerous, all in the name of the “the nation’s community.”
Themes
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The people in the ward begin to talk: the girl recognizes the doctor, who in turn recognizes the girl, the boy, and “the first blind man.” The doctor asks the car-thief about his identity, but the man simply says that he went blind randomly, while walking down the street. The doctor’s wife kisses him and contemplates the fact that she will also soon go blind. The doctor declares that the group should organize itself before new patient start arriving, and the girl suggests that he “take charge of the ward.” But the doctor protests: new patients won’t want to be ordered around by authority they haven’t chosen.
Because the patients are blind, they can choose what to reveal and what to hide about their identities, and they can only recognize one another through their voices. They have to make collective decisions with incomplete and unreliable information about one another, but this is the case in any social interaction. On another note, the doctor’s selflessness comes into conflict with the morally ambiguous and contradictory demands of politics: even in relatively free democracies, people are ultimately governed by others whom “they have not chosen,” and the doctor’s hope for everyone else’s unanimous consent might turn out to be unrealistic and counterproductive.
Themes
The car-thief yells out that the first blind man is “to blame for our misfortune.” But the first blind man reveals that the thief stole his car—which the thief denies. The doctor’s wife tells them that they need to reconcile, but the first blind man refuses and proclaims that the car-thief’s blindness is “justice.” The first blind man resolves to go to another ward and finds his way to the door, where the car-thief jumps on him and starts “tak[ing out] his revenge.” The doctor and his wife separate the two men, who are fighting on the ground, and they insist that the men must put their personal conflict aside and start working together. The two men keep taunting each other, but the first blind man agrees to stay in the same ward with the others.
Having initially committed his crime under the presupposition that he would never again meet his victim, the car-thief is now forced to admit and confront his actions. But there is no established authority to enforce “justice,” and it becomes clear that the car-thief is uninterested in repentance—his immoral actions, in other words, will go acknowledged but unpunished. However, his theft seems almost trivial now, since nobody in the quarantine has any use for a car. In fact, the car-thief punishing the first blind man for unwittingly passing on his syndrome completely inverts the normal parameters of justice: the willfully evil are punishing the unwitting victims of a contagion. This blurs the distinctions between guilt and innocence, perpetrators and victims. To make sense of the senseless epidemic, everybody searches for someone to blame: the government settles on the blind themselves, while the blind are left with no clear target.
Themes
The car-thief announces that he is going to bed, and the boy reveals that he has “to do a wee-wee.” Everyone else does, too, and fortunately the doctor’s wife knows how to find the lavatory. The other patients form a line behind her and start following her there. On the way, the car-thief starts groping the girl, who kicks him in the thigh with her heels. He is bleeding profusely, and the doctor’s wife brings him and the doctor to the kitchen. The doctor’s wife washes the thief’s wound, quickly makes a bandage out of his vest, and ties it on his leg. The patients return to the ward, where the boy has already peed his pants, but the doctor’s wife pretends not to notice and the patients form their line again. She leads them to the lavatory.
Nature calls, so the blind internees must shift away from trying to form some kind of political structure or resolving the dispute between the first blind man and the car-thief. Now, they have to figure out the equally important and logistically difficult challenge of using the bathroom while blind. The doctor’s wife is the natural leader, but she does not yet reveal to the others that she can see. The car-thief proves his morally unscrupulous character by groping the girl with the glasses, who shows that she is not willing to tolerate men objectifying her. However, she likely did not expect to seriously injure the man by kicking him—in fact, her response is ethically confusing and indeterminate, much like the Government’s quarantine: it is arguably justified but extreme.
Themes
The men enter the lavatory while the doctor’s wife and the girl wait outside and tell each other how they went blind. The girl says that the doctor’s wife is lucky to be able to stay with the doctor, but the doctor’s wife tells the girl that the blindness can’t be permanent—that would be too horrible. The girl has to use the bathroom, so they go find another lavatory. After they return, the patients re-form their line and return to the ward. The doctor’s wife tells everyone to count how many beds they pass on the way to their own, so that they can remember their spot in the future. Once everyone finds their bed, the boy asks for food, but there is none, and the girl starts putting in the eyedrops that the doctor prescribed her before she went blind.
Able to pause and reflect for a moment while the others are in the bathroom, the girl and the doctor’s wife draw out the fundamental question that all the internees must confront as they struggle to adapt to their new circumstances: will this ever end? The internees do not understand why they went blind in the first place, so it’s unclear how they should rationally view their futures. It remains to be seen, then, whether they’ll hold out hope, succumb to despair, or try to forge a new way of living while also expecting to stay blind forever.
Themes
