Previous
The narrator
Although the car-thief initially appears to be a “good Samaritan” when he drives the first blind man home at the beginning of the book, he turns out to be an opportunistic criminal: after dropping off the first blind man, he drives off in the man’s car. However, he soon starts feeling a creeping sense of fear and then, as soon as he pulls over in the stolen car to take a walk, he suddenly goes blind. In the quarantined hospital, the car-thief initially makes trouble by arguing with the first blind man and groping the girl with the dark glasses, who kicks him with her high heels and punctures a hole in his leg. This wound gets infected, but since the internees have no medicine, the car-thief’s infection progressively worsens in the days that follow. Eventually, he crawls out of the hospital to make a desperate appeal to the soldiers for help, but one of them instead shoots the thief dead within seconds. Afterward, the other internees struggle to bury his “hideous,” disfigured body. The car-thief is a study in moral ambiguity and contradiction: although an unsavory and unsympathetic character, his punishment is far worse than his crimes. In fact, the narrator notes that the car-thief did offer to help the first blind man out of genuine “generosity and altruism,” and while the car-thief blames the first blind man for his own blindness, he does not harbor any ill will toward the girl with the glasses, which suggests that he at least partially takes responsibility for his own misfortune.
The car-thief Quotes in Blindness
The Blindness quotes below are all either spoken by The car-thief or refer to The car-thief. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2
Quotes
The moral conscience that so many thoughtless people have offended against and many more have rejected, is something that exists and has always existed, it was not an invention of the philosophers of the Quaternary when the soul was little more than a muddled proposition. With the passing of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny. Add to this general observation, the particular circumstance that in simple spirits, the remorse caused by committing some evil act often becomes confused with ancestral fears of every kind, and the result will be that the punishment of the prevaricator ends up being, without mercy or pity, twice what he deserved.
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Chapter 6
Quotes
It was my fault, she sobbed, and it was true, no one could deny it, but it is also true, if this brings her any consolation, that if, before every action, we were to begin by weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probable, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt. The good and the evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much-talked-of immortality, Possibly, but this man is dead and must be buried.
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The car-thief Quotes in Blindness
The Blindness quotes below are all either spoken by The car-thief or refer to The car-thief. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2
Quotes
The moral conscience that so many thoughtless people have offended against and many more have rejected, is something that exists and has always existed, it was not an invention of the philosophers of the Quaternary when the soul was little more than a muddled proposition. With the passing of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny. Add to this general observation, the particular circumstance that in simple spirits, the remorse caused by committing some evil act often becomes confused with ancestral fears of every kind, and the result will be that the punishment of the prevaricator ends up being, without mercy or pity, twice what he deserved.
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Chapter 6
Quotes
It was my fault, she sobbed, and it was true, no one could deny it, but it is also true, if this brings her any consolation, that if, before every action, we were to begin by weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probable, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt. The good and the evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much-talked-of immortality, Possibly, but this man is dead and must be buried.
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