Theme Of Blindness In The Country Of The Blind

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Blindness Blindness can be so much more than the state of being unable to see (Dictionary.com). Both the 2008 movie Blindness, directed by Fernando Meirelles and based on a novel by José Saramago, and the short story The Country of the Blind written by H. G. Wells in 1904, put blindness at the center of the plot. What can blindness mean in our society? And what can blindness mean regarding my future profession in design? In the movie Blindness, to be blind leads to losing all that’s civilized; in H. G. Wells’ The Country of the Blind, blindness can be interpreted as a symbol for ignorance; finally, in graphic design, blindness could be to only focus on the aesthetic part of designing and forgetting the practical aspect of the design. To …show more content…

G. Wells, for its part, paints blindness as a symbol for ignorance in The Country of the Blind. The story starts off with a hiker falling into an enclosed valley. He finds out that not only is the valley inhabited, but its inhabitants are also all blind. Right from the start, the hiker, Nuñez, is certain that he’s superior to all the blind villagers. He repeats in his head that “In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King.” (WELLS 4) Unfortunately, he quickly realizes that the inhabitants of the Country of the Blind can’t seem to imagine what “sight” is and they start to believe he has a mental illness. Just before they make him go under surgery to get his eyes removed and cure his “illness”, he finally escapes the Country of the Blind, despite having fallen in love with one of the villagers. Many have analyzed The Country of the Blind as a satire of the political scene of the time when it was written (early 1900s), representing “[…] a free-thinking, non-conformist hero in an oppressive world where all others are metaphorically as well as literally blind.” (BUCHANAN 17) Here, blindness isn’t necessarily related to a lack of humanity or civility, but more so of sign of close-mindedness and ignorance. The blinds in the short story are either unable or unwilling to even imagine there is more to their world that they can’t see or

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