Blindness

by

José Saramago

The unnamed narrator of Blindness is not quite omniscient, but he or she is also not confined to the limited perspective of the novel’s many blind characters. Full of irony and sarcasm, the narrative voice wanders in and out of characters’ thoughts, to which he or she often has complete access but occasionally has no access at all. To some readers, it may be unclear whether the narrator is faithfully reporting facts or simply speculating about what may have happened. In fact, the narrator’s self-consciously ironic attempts to appear objective—for instance, by rewriting the man with the black eyepatch’s report on the world outside the quarantine zone to give it more “rigour and suitability”—actually make it clear that the narrator really only offers one among many perspectives on the events of the book. Just like the Government’s heavy-handed attempts to control the blindness epidemic (and the public’s beliefs about it) actually backfire by revealing the Government’s incompetence, the narrator’s jokes and criticisms about the novel’s characters make it clear that they do not have answers to the most mysterious and fundamental questions running through the book: where does the white blindness come from, how does it spread throughout the population, and why does it suddenly disappear at the end of the book?

The narrator Quotes in Blindness

The Blindness quotes below are all either spoken by The narrator or refer to The narrator. 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:
Existence, Uncertainty, and Autonomy Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

The amber light came on. Two of the cars ahead accelerated before the red light appeared. At the pedestrian crossing the sign of a green man lit up. The people who were waiting began to cross the road, stepping on the white stripes painted on the black surface of the asphalt, there is nothing less like a zebra, however, that is what it is called. The motorists kept an impatient foot on the clutch, leaving their cars at the ready, advancing, retreating like nervous horses that can sense the whiplash about to be inflicted. The pedestrians have just finished crossing but the sign allowing the cars to go will be delayed for some seconds, some people maintain that this delay, while apparently so insignificant, has only to be multiplied by the thousands of traffic lights that exist in the city and by the successive changes of their three colours to produce one of the most serious causes of traffic jams or bottlenecks, to use the more current term.

Related Characters: The narrator (speaker), The first blind man
Related Symbols: Cars, Blindness and Sight
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:
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.

Related Characters: The narrator (speaker), The first blind man, The car-thief
Related Symbols: Cars
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:
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.

Related Characters: The girl with the dark glasses (speaker), The narrator (speaker), The car-thief, The soldiers
Page Number: 78
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

The soldiers would have liked to aim their weapons and, without compunction, shoot down those imbeciles moving before their eyes like lame crabs, waving their unsteady pincers in search of their missing leg. They knew what had been said in the barracks that morning by the regimental commander, that the problem of these blind internees could be resolved only by physically wiping out the lot of them, those already there and those still to come, without any phoney humanitarian considerations, his very words, just as one amputates a gangrenous limb in order to save the rest of the body, The rabies of a dead dog, he said, to illustrate the point, is cured by nature. For some of the soldiers, less sensitive to the beauties of figurative language, it was difficult to understand what a dog with rabies had to do with the blind, but the word of a regimental commander, once again figuratively speaking, is worth its weight in gold, no man rises to so high a rank in the army without being right in everything he thinks, says and does.

Related Characters: The narrator (speaker), The soldiers
Related Symbols: Blindness and Sight, Guns, The Mental Hospital
Page Number: 101
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

From this point onwards, apart from a few inevitable comments, the story of the old man with the black eyepatch will no longer be followed to the letter, being replaced by a reorganised version of his discourse, re-evaluated in the light of a correct and more appropriate vocabulary. The reason for this previously unforeseen change is the rather formal controlled language, used by the narrator, which almost disqualifies him as a complementary reporter, however important he may be, because without him we would have no way of knowing what happened in the outside world, as a complementary reporter, as we were saying, of these extraordinary events, when as we know the description of any facts can only gain with the rigour and suitability of the terms used.

Related Characters: The narrator (speaker), The doctor / ophthalmologist, The old man with the black eyepatch, The Government
Page Number: 120
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

Arriving at this point, the blind accountant, tired of describing so much misery and sorrow, would let his metal punch fall to the table, he would search with a trembling hand for the piece of stale bread he had put to one side while he fulfilled his obligations as chronicler of the end of time, but he would not find it, because another blind man, whose sense of smell had become very keen out of dire necessity, had filched it. Then, renouncing his fraternal gesture, the altruistic impulse that had brought him rushing to this side, the blind accountant would decide that the best course of action, if he was still in time, was to return to the third ward on the left, there, at least, however much the injustices of those hoodlums stirred up in him feelings of honest indignation, he would not go hungry.

Related Characters: The narrator (speaker), The doctor / ophthalmologist, The blind accountant
Related Symbols: Blindness and Sight, The Mental Hospital
Page Number: 162
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

She had blood on her hands and clothes, and suddenly her exhausted body told her that she was old, Old and a murderess, she thought, but she knew that if it were necessary she would kill again, And when is it necessary to kill, she asked herself as she headed in the direction of the hallway, and she herself answered the question, When what is still alive is already dead. She shook her head and thought, And what does that mean, words, nothing but words.

Related Characters: The narrator (speaker), The doctor’s wife, The leader of the thugs
Related Symbols: The Mental Hospital
Page Number: 192-3
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

Say to a blind man, you're free, open the door that was separating him from the world, Go, you are free, we tell him once more, and he does not go, he has remained motionless there in the middle of the road, he and the others, they are terrified, they do not know where to go, the fact is that there is no comparison between living in a rational labyrinth, which is, by definition, a mental asylum and venturing forth, without a guiding hand or a dog-leash, into the demented labyrinth of the city where memory will serve no purpose, for it will merely be able to recall the images of places but not the paths whereby we might get there. Standing in front of the building which is already ablaze from end to end, the blind inmates can feel the living waves of heat from the fire on their faces, they receive them as something which in a way protects them, just as the walls did before, prison and refuge at once. They stay together, pressed up against each other, like a flock, no one there wants to be the lost sheep, for they know that no shepherd will come looking for them.

Related Characters: The narrator (speaker), The doctor’s wife, The soldiers
Related Symbols: Blindness and Sight, The Mental Hospital
Page Number: 217
Explanation and Analysis:

She now closed [the door] carefully behind her only to find herself plunged into total darkness, as sightless as those blind people out there, the only difference was in the colour, if black and white can, strictly speaking, be thought of as colours. […] I'm going mad, she thought, and with good reason, making this descent into a dark pit, without light or any hope of seeing any, how far would it be, these underground stores are usually never very deep, first flight of steps, Now I know what it means to be blind, second flight of steps, I'm going to scream, I'm going to scream, third set of steps, the darkness is like a thick paste that sticks to her face, her eyes transformed into balls of pitch.

Related Characters: The doctor’s wife (speaker), The narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: Blindness and Sight
Page Number: 229
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

All stories are like those about the creation of the universe, no one was there, no one witnessed anything, yet everyone knows what happened.

Related Characters: The narrator (speaker), The old man with the black eyepatch
Related Symbols: Blindness and Sight, Cars
Page Number: 265
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

On their way to the home of the girl with dark glasses, they crossed a large square with groups of blind people who were listening to speeches from other blind people, at first sight, neither one nor the other group seemed blind, the speakers turned their heads excitedly towards their listeners, the listeners turned their heads attentively to the speakers. They were proclaiming the end of the world, redemption through penitence, the visions of the seventh day, the advent of the angel, cosmic collisions, the death of the sun, the tribal spirit, the sap of the mandrake, tiger ointment, the virtue of the sign, the discipline of the wind, the perfume of the moon, the revindication of darkness, the power of exorcism, the sign of the heel, the crucifixion of the rose, the purity of the lymph, the blood of the black cat, the sleep of the shadow the rising of the seas, the logic of anthropophagy, painless castration, divine tattoos, voluntary blindness, convex thoughts, or concave, or horizontal or vertical, or sloping, or concentrated, or dispersed, or fleeting, the weakening of the vocal cords, the death of the word, Here nobody is speaking of organisation, said the doctor's wife, Perhaps organisation is in another square, he replied. They continued on their way.

Related Characters: The doctor’s wife (speaker), The doctor / ophthalmologist (speaker), The narrator (speaker), The girl with the dark glasses
Related Symbols: Blindness and Sight
Page Number: 298
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Blindness LitChart as a printable PDF.
Blindness PDF

The narrator Quotes in Blindness

The Blindness quotes below are all either spoken by The narrator or refer to The narrator. 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:
Existence, Uncertainty, and Autonomy Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

The amber light came on. Two of the cars ahead accelerated before the red light appeared. At the pedestrian crossing the sign of a green man lit up. The people who were waiting began to cross the road, stepping on the white stripes painted on the black surface of the asphalt, there is nothing less like a zebra, however, that is what it is called. The motorists kept an impatient foot on the clutch, leaving their cars at the ready, advancing, retreating like nervous horses that can sense the whiplash about to be inflicted. The pedestrians have just finished crossing but the sign allowing the cars to go will be delayed for some seconds, some people maintain that this delay, while apparently so insignificant, has only to be multiplied by the thousands of traffic lights that exist in the city and by the successive changes of their three colours to produce one of the most serious causes of traffic jams or bottlenecks, to use the more current term.

Related Characters: The narrator (speaker), The first blind man
Related Symbols: Cars, Blindness and Sight
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:
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.

Related Characters: The narrator (speaker), The first blind man, The car-thief
Related Symbols: Cars
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:
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.

Related Characters: The girl with the dark glasses (speaker), The narrator (speaker), The car-thief, The soldiers
Page Number: 78
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

The soldiers would have liked to aim their weapons and, without compunction, shoot down those imbeciles moving before their eyes like lame crabs, waving their unsteady pincers in search of their missing leg. They knew what had been said in the barracks that morning by the regimental commander, that the problem of these blind internees could be resolved only by physically wiping out the lot of them, those already there and those still to come, without any phoney humanitarian considerations, his very words, just as one amputates a gangrenous limb in order to save the rest of the body, The rabies of a dead dog, he said, to illustrate the point, is cured by nature. For some of the soldiers, less sensitive to the beauties of figurative language, it was difficult to understand what a dog with rabies had to do with the blind, but the word of a regimental commander, once again figuratively speaking, is worth its weight in gold, no man rises to so high a rank in the army without being right in everything he thinks, says and does.

Related Characters: The narrator (speaker), The soldiers
Related Symbols: Blindness and Sight, Guns, The Mental Hospital
Page Number: 101
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

From this point onwards, apart from a few inevitable comments, the story of the old man with the black eyepatch will no longer be followed to the letter, being replaced by a reorganised version of his discourse, re-evaluated in the light of a correct and more appropriate vocabulary. The reason for this previously unforeseen change is the rather formal controlled language, used by the narrator, which almost disqualifies him as a complementary reporter, however important he may be, because without him we would have no way of knowing what happened in the outside world, as a complementary reporter, as we were saying, of these extraordinary events, when as we know the description of any facts can only gain with the rigour and suitability of the terms used.

Related Characters: The narrator (speaker), The doctor / ophthalmologist, The old man with the black eyepatch, The Government
Page Number: 120
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

Arriving at this point, the blind accountant, tired of describing so much misery and sorrow, would let his metal punch fall to the table, he would search with a trembling hand for the piece of stale bread he had put to one side while he fulfilled his obligations as chronicler of the end of time, but he would not find it, because another blind man, whose sense of smell had become very keen out of dire necessity, had filched it. Then, renouncing his fraternal gesture, the altruistic impulse that had brought him rushing to this side, the blind accountant would decide that the best course of action, if he was still in time, was to return to the third ward on the left, there, at least, however much the injustices of those hoodlums stirred up in him feelings of honest indignation, he would not go hungry.

Related Characters: The narrator (speaker), The doctor / ophthalmologist, The blind accountant
Related Symbols: Blindness and Sight, The Mental Hospital
Page Number: 162
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

She had blood on her hands and clothes, and suddenly her exhausted body told her that she was old, Old and a murderess, she thought, but she knew that if it were necessary she would kill again, And when is it necessary to kill, she asked herself as she headed in the direction of the hallway, and she herself answered the question, When what is still alive is already dead. She shook her head and thought, And what does that mean, words, nothing but words.

Related Characters: The narrator (speaker), The doctor’s wife, The leader of the thugs
Related Symbols: The Mental Hospital
Page Number: 192-3
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

Say to a blind man, you're free, open the door that was separating him from the world, Go, you are free, we tell him once more, and he does not go, he has remained motionless there in the middle of the road, he and the others, they are terrified, they do not know where to go, the fact is that there is no comparison between living in a rational labyrinth, which is, by definition, a mental asylum and venturing forth, without a guiding hand or a dog-leash, into the demented labyrinth of the city where memory will serve no purpose, for it will merely be able to recall the images of places but not the paths whereby we might get there. Standing in front of the building which is already ablaze from end to end, the blind inmates can feel the living waves of heat from the fire on their faces, they receive them as something which in a way protects them, just as the walls did before, prison and refuge at once. They stay together, pressed up against each other, like a flock, no one there wants to be the lost sheep, for they know that no shepherd will come looking for them.

Related Characters: The narrator (speaker), The doctor’s wife, The soldiers
Related Symbols: Blindness and Sight, The Mental Hospital
Page Number: 217
Explanation and Analysis:

She now closed [the door] carefully behind her only to find herself plunged into total darkness, as sightless as those blind people out there, the only difference was in the colour, if black and white can, strictly speaking, be thought of as colours. […] I'm going mad, she thought, and with good reason, making this descent into a dark pit, without light or any hope of seeing any, how far would it be, these underground stores are usually never very deep, first flight of steps, Now I know what it means to be blind, second flight of steps, I'm going to scream, I'm going to scream, third set of steps, the darkness is like a thick paste that sticks to her face, her eyes transformed into balls of pitch.

Related Characters: The doctor’s wife (speaker), The narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: Blindness and Sight
Page Number: 229
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

All stories are like those about the creation of the universe, no one was there, no one witnessed anything, yet everyone knows what happened.

Related Characters: The narrator (speaker), The old man with the black eyepatch
Related Symbols: Blindness and Sight, Cars
Page Number: 265
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

On their way to the home of the girl with dark glasses, they crossed a large square with groups of blind people who were listening to speeches from other blind people, at first sight, neither one nor the other group seemed blind, the speakers turned their heads excitedly towards their listeners, the listeners turned their heads attentively to the speakers. They were proclaiming the end of the world, redemption through penitence, the visions of the seventh day, the advent of the angel, cosmic collisions, the death of the sun, the tribal spirit, the sap of the mandrake, tiger ointment, the virtue of the sign, the discipline of the wind, the perfume of the moon, the revindication of darkness, the power of exorcism, the sign of the heel, the crucifixion of the rose, the purity of the lymph, the blood of the black cat, the sleep of the shadow the rising of the seas, the logic of anthropophagy, painless castration, divine tattoos, voluntary blindness, convex thoughts, or concave, or horizontal or vertical, or sloping, or concentrated, or dispersed, or fleeting, the weakening of the vocal cords, the death of the word, Here nobody is speaking of organisation, said the doctor's wife, Perhaps organisation is in another square, he replied. They continued on their way.

Related Characters: The doctor’s wife (speaker), The doctor / ophthalmologist (speaker), The narrator (speaker), The girl with the dark glasses
Related Symbols: Blindness and Sight
Page Number: 298
Explanation and Analysis: