The novel Blindness The sinners dealt with in our past novels and the present novel Blindness empathetically been assigned the trait of ignorance. Thus, providing the root of sin and degration of lives, as relating to the treatment of people in the short story Somni in the novel Cloud Atlas. Focusing on Blindness, the ungreedy are horribly dealt with by the thugs with a "conscience with teeth to bite" (18). This quality of man is the result of how humans sometimes favor short-term luxuries over long term consequences. This can be related to the car thief of the blind man near the beginning of the novel. So evidently, Saramago uses greed for fuel of ignorance to corrupt reason in this novel, and diagnoses the "sensual appetite" (171) of humans as a natural trait. The desperation of some people described of some people described in this novel such as the thieves, or the careless mad madmen who trampled over the blind relies on a psychological attempt to "escape their black destiny" and the reassuration from future hope(112).
The corruption of reason can also be derived from the development of desperation pursued in the novels Life of Pi, and Blindness. Referring to Life of Pi, Pi's solitary confinement seems to have a psychological effect, driving him to eat feces. This sense of indignation is also described in Blindness, considering a portion of the blind relieved themselves at any given moment. That was also due to a lack of respect for themselves, and everyone else. The logic possessing some of the blind that "the blind have nothing [they] can call [they're] own" ...
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... the greed of "Papa John's" for the degration of lives. In the Luisa Rey short story, money overwhelms the value of everything else. The military's motives in Blindness also illustrates unhealthy dignity. One of the sergeants even perceives that "when the beast dies, the poison dies with it" (84). This also seems to be the motive sparking the cruelty of all the other soldiers. The fear of "poison" effectively changes the value of life. That thesis explains the killings of all the innocent blind inmates who came close to the gate, or on those acted in any other way to cause the soldiers to be possessed with that fear. The un-organization of the military in the novel emphasizes how careless they were towards the "low quality" society the soldiers treated them as. The treatment from the government depicts that the quality of humans relates to a humans worthiness.
The book Blind, written by Rachel DeWoskin, is about a highschool sophomore named Emma, who went blind after being struck in the face with a firework. When she first lost her sight, Emma was placed in a hospital for over 2 months, and once she was released, she could finally go home again. DeWoskin uses the characterization of Emma throughout the beginning of the text to help the reader understand the character’s struggle more. Especially in the first few chapters, it was difficult for Emma to adapt to a world without sight. For instance, DeWoskin writes, “And sat down, numb, on our gold couch. And tried to open my eyes, rocked, counted my legs and arms and fingers. I didn’t cry. Or talk” (DeWoskin 44). As a result of losing a very important scent, she’s started to act differently from a person with sight.
People want to feel unique, but at the same time they do not want their differences to call negative attention to themselves. People can be made to feel isolated from others if they feel that they are different in a hindering way, such as having a disability. In Stephen Kuusisto’s Planet of the Blind, he uses allusions to convey to sighted readers the challenges and joys of being blind. In order to blend in with the crowd, Kuusisto attempts to hide his blindness. In doing this, he denies accepting himself and becomes lonely. Those who do know him cannot truly understand him because he does not express his vulnerability in being blind. Throughout his memoir, Kuusisto alludes to outcast characters, such as the creature in Frankenstein and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, because his “disability” often leads him to feel as an outsider. In his attempt to fit in with friends by hiding his blindness, he is instead left feeling isolated and conveys this through his passion for literature.
The narrator’s prejudice makes him emotionally blind. His inability to see past Robert’s disability stops him from seeing the reality of any relationship or person in the story. And while he admits some things are simply beyond his understanding, he is unaware he is so completely blind to the reality of the world.
I'd like to read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as the odyssey of one man's search for identity. Try this scenario: the narrator is briefly an academic, then a factory worker, and then a socialist politico. None of these "careers" works out for him. Yet the narrator's time with the so-called Brotherhood, the socialist group that recruits him, comprises a good deal of the novel. The narrator thinks he's found himself through the Brotherhood. He's the next Booker T. Washington and the new voice of his people. The work he's doing will finally garner him acceptance. He's home.
When most people think of blind people, they tend to picture a person with dark sunglasses, a seeing eye dog, and a walking stick. These are stereotypes and obviously do not remain true in the case of all blind people. In Raymond Carver’s short story “Cathedral," the main character is jealous and judgmental of his wife’s friend who happens to be a blind man. It is the combination of these attitudes that leads to his own unique “blindness." It is through this initial blindness, that the character gains his greatest vision.
prove to be blind when it comes to the world they are in. By looking
Adaptation to unpredictable conditions is a key force in driving human evolution. The ability to overcome predicaments with poise is one of the greatest assets humans possess. In “The Mind’s Eye”, Oliver Sacks recounts various perspectives of individuals coping with blindness. Each individual took a different path to becoming accustomed to their blindness and each of the case studies showed compensatory mechanism unique to the individual. Throughout the article, Sacks credits each person for playing to their assets because he views adaptability as a person’s capacity to alter their mode of thought in order to fit their circumstance. Although Sacks shows many examples of neuronal plasticity as an adaptation to blindness, he eludes to the impact
The husband in Raymond Carvers “Cathedral” wasn’t enthusiastic about his wife’s old friend, whom was a blind man coming over to spend the night with them. His wife had kept in touch with the blind man since she worked for him in Seattle years ago. He didn’t know the blind man; he only heard tapes and stories about him. The man being blind bothered him, “My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to. (Carver 137)” The husband doesn’t suspect his ideas of blind people to be anything else. The husband is already judging what the blind man will be like without even getting to actually know him. It seems he has judged too soon as his ideas of the blind man change and he gets a better understanding of not only the blind man, but his self as well.
In the story "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver, it tells of how a blind man is open to new experiences and how he views the world compared to the husband (narrator) who is blinded by the material things of life. The husband is given the gift of sight but the true gift comes from seeing the cathedral. At the beginning of the story, the husband’s outlook on others is filled with stereotypes, discrimination, insecurities and prejudice. After interacting with Robert, his wife's friend, his outlook begins to change significantly.
The narrator is extremely judgmental towards the blind and this creates negative preconceived notions about Robert. First, his idea of a blind man comes from movies he has watched and describes that the blind, “moved slowly and never laughed” (Par. 1). The narrator has a horrible attitude towards the blind and because of this he sees himself higher than any blind person. Second, he believes that when Robert’s wife was alive they both had no capability of loving each other solely because of Robert’s blindness. He thinks Robert cannot love because he had never “seen what the goddamned woman looked like” (Par. 16). The narrator then thinks Robert’s wife could not love him because she could “never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one” (Par. 16). This kind of harsh thinking that the narrator has towards Robert is detrimental to himself as well as those surrounding him. The narrator is trapped with judgmental thinking, making him hard to be around and cooperate with.
The anaphora of blindness reveals itself in the two African American novels, Native Son by Richard Wright, written before the civil rights era, and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, written in the mid 1950’s. They are spliced in an effort to center in on the American racial discrimination and segregation through both Wright’s and Ellison’s imagery to show how white supremacists forced African Americans to live a life without progression. Not only are whites responsible for the lack of progression within the black race, but blacks themselves are partially responsible for their own quality of life. Both races have chosen to turn a blind eye and neglect those who are oppressed. Ellison and Wright both depict blindness as a rebellious point of view that plays an important role in the everyday struggle for African Americans against white supremacists. Blindness is the state of refusing to see someone as an individual. The state of being blind is not only exclusive to whites; black and white individuals can both jointly share the state of blindness. Whites tend to see blacks as a whole, rather than each being an individual, making them blind. Blacks are seen as blind because they allow themselves to be mistreated by their oppressors.
When defining the word blindness, it can be interpreted in various ways. Either it can be explained as sightless, or it can be carefully deciphered as having a more complex in-depth analysis. In the novel Blindness, Jose Saramago depicts and demonstrates how in an instant your right to see can be taken in an instant. However, in this novel, blindness is metaphorically related to ‘seeing’ the truth beyond our own bias opinions.
We as human beings utilize the five senses to process information about our surroundings. These senses help keep us safe. For example, we use our sense of touch to avoid picking up a hot pan, while our senses of smell and taste prevent us from cooking any rotten food in the pan. Our sense of sight allows us to see an oncoming train, while our sense of sound makes it possible to hear the train’s horn.
The fixation on the old man's vulture-like eye forces the narrator to concoct a plan to eliminate the old man. The narrator confesses the sole reason for killing the old man is his eye: "Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees - very gradually - I made up my mind to rid myself of the eye for ever" (34). The narrator begins his tale of betrayal by trying to convince the reader he is not insane, but the reader quickly surmises the narrator indeed is out of control. The fact that the old man's eye is the only motivation to murder proves the narrator is so mentally unstable that he must search for justification to kill. In his mind, he rationalizes murder with his own unreasonable fear of the eye.
Several months prior to the opening of the story, the Colonel’s son, Agustín, had been killed at a cockfight for distributing secret political literature. The Colonel is torn between his desire to keep his son’s prizefighting cock in order to enter it into the cockfights in January and his need to sell it to provide food for himself and his wife. The story focuses primarily on the Colonel’s pride in trying to conceal his poverty-stricken state and his ironic and humorous outlook to his situation. The central metaphors in the story are the pension, which never arrives, but for which the colonel never ceases to hope, and the fighting cock, which also represents hope, as well as his son’s, and therefore the whole village’s, political rebellion. Although at the time, he was under political oppression he keeps his pride and dignity.