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Blindness in literature
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Without blindness could we really see? Everyone has blindness and everyone is blinded by different things. Blindness in literature allows us to see the perspective of others peoples blindness and realize the blindness of our own. We are blinded by things we are unaware of and of blindness as to how we see it or what we hear. Reading about something you are blinded to can change your perspective and the way you view it... essentially taking away our blindness. In my novel “The Help” you read about the life of a black maid in the 60s how and discriminated and poorly treated they were. When Aibileen writes a book about her experiences the white people see the things they were previously blinded to and taught to believe. They realize the way they
have been treating the black people is wrong, leading to change and giving hope to the black people to fight for change. When you’re blind you are lost and confused. You can’t see what you don’t understand and only know what you recognize and know. Just like in our blind walk we were lost and only recognized voices we knew or places we have been before. When we could see we could see everyone and everything and were no longer lost or confused. This is exactly how it is in life they things we have been told and brought up to know can blind us from what life is really like. Blindness limits us. When we are growing up we have no limitations we see everyone the same and believe anything is possible, as we grow up limits are given to us. Our parents tell us what we should believe and we began to judge other who were told different and look down on them blinding us from the truth in society through politics, money, and equality. Limiting us to the things we could see if we not blind.
The opening scene of the novel introduces the theme of blindness. As the narrator says, “When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination-indeed, everything and anything except me,” (Ellison 3). This quote shows how people do not see the narrator. The narrator says that people “refuse” to see him. An example of this is when he bumps into a white man at night. The narrator says, "…when it occurred to me that the man had not seen me, actually, that he, as far as he knew, was in the middle of a walking nightmare!” (Ellison 4). This quote is an example of how people are blind and do not see the narrator. The narrator realizes that the man had insulted him because he did not see him. Blindness is a recurring theme in the novel, and shows how people refuse to see the truth in their community. Another example of blindness in the beginning of the novel is the battle royal that the narrator is forced to take part in. All of the fighters are blindfolded, and therefore are blind to see how the white people are taking advantage of them. Blindness is shown as a negative theme in the novel.
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.
prove to be blind when it comes to the world they are in. By looking
Blindness is defined as the lack of visual perception. Blindness can also be defined as not being able to see things for what they really are. One may be able to see but may not be able to see the true meaning of something. Black communities often refuse to see the way that white people treat them. In Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man many events contribute to the overall theme of sight vs. blindness.
People can be “blinded” to the truth. The answer to their question or solution to their problem may have been obvious. Yet, they could not "see" the answer. They were blinded to the truth. Associations have been made between being blind and enlightened. A blind person is said to have powers to see invisible things. They "see" into the future. The blind may not have physical sight, but they have another kind of vision. In Sophocles' King Oedipus, Teiresias, the blind prophet, presents the truth to King Oedipus and Jocasta. Oedipus has been blinded to the truth his whole life. When he does find the truth, he loses his physical vision. Because of the truth, Oedipus blinds himself. Jocasta was blind to the true identity of Oedipus. Even when she found out the truth, she refused to accept it. In this case, those who are blind ultimately do have a higher vision - the truth.
One thing I saw a lot of in this novel is people willfully looking past instead of confronting the truth. The narrator repeatedly states people’s inability to see what they don’t want to see, their inability to see what their prejudice doesn’t allow them to see, has pushed him into a life of effective invisibility. But prejudice against others is not the only kind of blindness in the book. Many characters also don’t acknowledge truths about themselves or their communities, and this refusal is shown in the imagery of vision and invisibility. For example, the boys who fight in the “battle royal” wear blindfolds, symbolizing their powerlessness to recognize their corruption at the hands of the white men. The Founder’s statue at the college has empty eyes, signifying his failure to see the racist realities. Blindness also afflicts Rev Homer A. Barbee, who romanticizes the Founder, and Brother Jack, who is missing an eye which he conceals by wearing a glass eye. The narrator himself experiences blindness, such as in chapter sixteen when he addresses the ...
In literature, blindness serves a general significant meaning of the absence of knowledge and insight. In life, physical blindness usually represents an inability or handicap, and those people afflicted with it are pitied. The act of being blind can set limitations on the human mind, thus causing their perception of reality to dramatically change in ways that can cause fear, personal insecurities, and eternal isolation. However, “Cathedral” utilizes blindness as an opportunity to expand outside those limits and exceed boundaries that can produce a compelling, internal change within an individual’s life. Those who have the ability of sight are able to examine and interpret their surroundings differently than those who are physically unable to see. Carver suggests an idea that sight and blindness offer two different perceptions of reality that can challenge and ultimately teach an individual to appreciate the powerful significance of truly seeing without seeing. Therefore, Raymond Carver passionately emphasizes a message that introduces blindness as not a setback, but a valuable gift that can offer a lesson of appreciation and acceptance toward viewing the world in a more open-minded perspective.
Is your life at risk and endangered if you are driving with your eyes off the road? Is it safe to walk down a dark and dangerous alley where you cannot see what is in front of you? Would it be a good idea to walk across the street without looking both ways first? The answer to all these questions are no. Why? Because in all three situations, there is a lack of vision. So, one can conclude that vision is of great importance to the visible world. Nevertheless, vision is also equally important in the invisible world. Because the most important things in our lives are invisible, vision into the invisible world is greatly needed to make life richer. The essentials to life: love, happiness, even grief and sorrow, are invisible now and forever, but vision allows us to see these and other intangible things. Vision allows us to draw the invisible world out. Unfortunately, the invisible world has always existed, except we were just too blind to see it, our visions were fogged. Likewise, the narrator from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is also blind. He lacks the vision he needs to realize that he is invisible to the world around him because he is naive and inexperienced. His inability to see outwardly parallels the inability to understand inwardly. However, the narrator's travel through the hero's journey is one of success. Although the narrator is invisible because he is naive, unclear of his own identity due to his fogged vision, and he assumes a series of false identities through his journey into the unknown, in the end, the narrator realizes his invisibility and begins to develop his own identity as his vision clarifies.
There are other instances where Richard Wright uses 'blindness' as a symbol. Bigger considers the whites 'blind' of blacks and blacks 'blind' of freedom after he kills. During the entire story, the reader senses that Bigger is lost in life. He never understand why he acts the way he does until his lawyer, Max, explains to him why whites seclude blacks and why blacks naturally push back. In the end, everyone is 'blind' for one reason or another.
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.
In today’s society, people are more concerned with their own “little world,” rather than looking at the extensive perspective of life. One reason why people can sometimes be classified as being “blind” is because people fear the unknown, and rejects the unfamiliar. Many people are not comfortable with stepping out of their shell and exploring their surroundings, let alone trying to look through the eyes of the segregated minority. In the novel Blindness, Jose Saramago metaphorically uses the word “blindness” as a term meaning, the truth that we cannot bear to see. To avoid the outside world, many people tend to shelter themselves from the obvious reality, and tend to focus of their “own” meaning of reality.
Throughout biblical scripture, an implicit correlation between eyesight and judgment exists – not God’s judgment, but a human’s ability to pass judgment in a certain situation. Matthew 6:22 states, “the eye is the lamp of the body. So, if [the] eye is healthy, [the] whole body will be full of light.” One of the miracles of Jesus provides another example pertaining to eyesight: “Then Jesus laid his hands on [the man’s] eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly” (Mark 8:25). Jonathan Swift and Jane Austen both had ties to the church, and their experiences influenced their texts. In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver notes the importance of his spectacles. Without them, he would not be able to see clearly, and he later mentions that his spectacles protect his eyes from the Lilliputians when they try to attack him. Throughout the text, however, Gulliver makes poor decisions concerning his family and his loyalty to England. He is blind to his own faults and blind to the corrupt nature of his homeland. I argue that these ideas are related. In a sense, Gulliver’s inability to see the flaws in his own life parallels his poor eyesight. Furthermore, Elizabeth Bennet demonstrates this idea through the description of her “fine eyes.” Though Elizabeth correctly judges each character in the novel, she fails in her attempts to read both Darcy and Wickham. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth is the sole character to discern the true natures of each of the other members of the novel correctly, thus a representation of her “fine eyes.” However, her ability to read the actions and motives of each character fails in reference to Wickham and Darcy. She falls prey to her first impressions of each of these men an...
The novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut displays a strong theme of sight, and lack thereof. The protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, is an optometrist by trade. He deals with trying to make people see. However, after he goes to war, he becomes blind to the real world. One may speculate that the entire subplot of the Tralfamadorians, the aliens that supposedly kidnap him and keep him in a zoo, could be a figment of his imagination. Whether it is real or not, Billy learns many things from them. He learns about the fourth dimension, time, and tries to help other people to see like he does.
Incapable by nature of being seen, inaccessible of view, or hidden will not be any of the reason for the protagonist in Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man not be seen. In an analysis of Ralph Ellison story readers can see how blindness has a role in developing a black man place in society. During the 1940’s the majority of black people had a hard time to be noticed and even accepted. In this time, several of blacks were subjected to harsh treatments and due to this being an everyday thing many felt shamed, a loss of dignity and betrayed, even by there own kind, while only seeking that they be recognized in society. Ralph Ellison, a black man, believed that blacks were not seen, invisible, because white society did not want to accept them.
In literature people cannot notice how much fiction or real life is in a story, even though, sometimes writers base their stories with personal events or people who have marked their lives in many ways, that inspires them to write their books. Real life experiences in literacy can be known as non-fiction stories. According to Hoover Library “Fiction refers to literature created from the imagination. Mysteries, science fiction, romance, fantasy, chick lit, crime thrillers are all fiction genres”. As well as “Nonfiction refers to literature based in fact. It is the broadest category of literature” (CITATION). How does an author real experiences affect their literacy work? Authors usually based experiences into their fiction, when the writer incorporates