Before I read Oliver Sacks' article dealing with Virgil's sight recovering, I tried to guess what would happen if an adult who has been blind for a lifetime had recovered his vision. On this paper, I will confront my hunches to what really happened on the article. When I started thinking about what could happen to someone facing a real change like recovering his sight, in the first place I tried to imagine what could it be to be blind, and what are the consequences of blindness on the person. I understood that blindness wasn't a bad thing or a disease. In fact, blind people are not living in a poorer condition than seeing people. It is true that they are bereft of one of their senses, but they are developing their other senses just like touching, Being blind let him the right to imagine and create his own world and doesn't makes him live in a world where the reality imposes itself on him. I thought this because I tried to figure out what could happen on a blind person's mind and what they can imagine and more precisely, how they imagine things. At this point I understood that their imagination was helping them to create their own world. On his article, Oliver Sacks said that by recovering his sight, Virgil felt losing his identity and giving up the world he grew up in. He wasn't blind anymore, he was trying to live with his recently recovered sight as we can see in the text "when they are confronted with the "gift" of sight and with the necessity of renouncing one world, one identity for another" (page I believed that it will be hard for this person to adapthimself to the new world he will discover. This person won't have enough experience to recognize things, and it will be very hard to learn to live in a new world. In the article, Virgil was facing a lot of hardships due to his undeveloped visual memory and his low capacity to recognize trivial things, or something basic such as animals. For example he was always confounding his dog and his cat because he couldn't understand the perspective, the angles ... Seeing people are improving these skills all their life, so they are not making a real effort to see and recognize something. For Virgil, a blind person that recovered vision, he had to practise a lot, to improve these skills that seeing people already acquired "It is no effort for the normally sighted to construct shapes, boundaries (...) they have been making such visual constructs, a visual world, from the moment of birth" (page 68). As we can see in Oliver Sacks' article, Virgil is compared to a baby who is learning to see, to leave in the surrounding world "like a baby just starting to see" (page
The author Edward Bloor utilizes blindness to symbolize how Paul may be visually impaired but can see social injustice, while Erik and his parents’ can see but are blind to the emotional harm they inflict on Paul and others, and the townspeople are blind to their environment and social prejudice. He has been bullied most of his life for being visually impaired. Paul is used to being judged by others. The injury to his eyes supposedly occurred while looking at a solar eclipse, but there is more to this story.
In the short story Cathedral, by Raymond Carver, there is a direct contrast between a blind man named Robert, and the narrator. The narrator has full use of his senses, and yet he is limited to the way he sees things, and the way he thinks. Robert however, has a very different outlook on life and how he sees things, as well as the use of his senses. At the end of the story, Robert has the narrator close his eyes to try and get him to experience the world the way he does. The narrator ends up being able to not only see the way Robert does, but he also is able to feel the world in a completely different way. The author suggests that the mind is most important in how people view things, and the judgements we make are based on what we see in our heads, instead of what is really there.
Within Oliver Sacks, “To See and Not See”, the reader is introduced to Virgil, a blind man who gains the ability to see, but then decides to go back to being blind. Within this story Sacks considers Virgil fortunate due to him being able to go back to the life he once lived. This is contrasted by Dr. P, in “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat”, Sacks states that his condition is “tragic” (Sacks, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat (13) due to the fact that his life will be forever altered by his condition. This thought process can be contributed to the ideas that: it is difficult to link physical objects and conceptualized meanings without prior experience, the cultures surrounding both individuals are different, and how they will carry on with their lives.
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.
His, "idea of blindness came from the movies", where, "...the blind move slowly and never laughed" (Carver 98). These misconceptions of blindness form barriers between the blind and the sighted. Carver breaks down these barriers as he brings the vastly different lives of these two men together. Those of us with sight find it difficult to identify with the blind. This man, like most of us, can only try to imagine what life is like for Robert.
During my childhood I was diagnosed as having poor eyesight and was prescribed glasses to assist with my vision correction. I realize how blessed I am to have had that as an option. I was always in awe of the environment and creatures who inhabited the various areas of nature. The sense of vision is very important and without the ability to see an individual would be missing out on many colorful life experiences. Blindness, which is the lack of the ability to see is a very dark and challenging disability. Without one’s eyes, everyday activities such a walking, reading, eating and identifying people can be a struggle. It has been proven that the brain will adapt to the loss by giving itself a makeover. If one sense is lost,
In the first paragraph, the narrator also reveals his ignorance. He believes that all blind people are based on only what he has seen in movies, "My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they are led by seeing-eye dogs “(104). The narrator was surprised when he noticed Robert was not like this. The narrator is also surprised when Robert lights a cigarette. He believes blind people don’t smoke because “they couldn’t see the smoke they exhaled” (108). The husband starts to feel more comfortable after this. The three of them sit down for dinner and the husbands is impressed with the how Robert is able to locate his food, cut with a knife, and eat properly. This is where the narrator’s outlook starts to undergo change.
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.
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.
Everyone has a different perception than another, such a different perception that should be taken into account by other people. Whether people are blind or crazy, some people of this world are impaired so their lives are limited. The unknown can be very mind-boggling to these impaired people. Though at the same time there is a strong possibility that there are also even more unknown things to unimpaired people. Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” and “Seeing” by Annie Dillard suggest that knowledge and reality are both a matter of perception based on experiences; and as such, great care should be taken by anyone who attempts to redefine the perceptions of another.
Many people view blindness as a disability, but could these people be blind to their surroundings? Even though the narrator can perfectly see with his eyes, he lacks in understanding awareness. The narrator blindness isn 't physical, like many vision impaired people. His blindness is psychological, and his blindness causes him to become jealous. His blindness blocks his perception of viewing the world in a different way. This only causes him to see the physical attributes of humans, and thus shut off his mindfulness of viewing human personalities. As a result of a closed mind, the narrator doesn 't understand how Robert was able to live with the fact that he was never able to see his wife in the flesh, but the narrator fails to see that Robert vision of his wife was intimate. On the other hand, Robert blindness is physical. This causes Robert to experience the world in a unique manner. Without Robert eyesight, he is able to have a glimpse of a human personality. He uses his disability to paint pictures in his head to experience the world. By putting his psychological blindness aside, the narrator is able to bond with Robert, and he grasps the understanding of opening his eyes for the first time, and this forms a new beginning of a
References to eyesight and vision, both literal and metaphorical, are very frequent in all three of the Theban plays. Quite often, the image of clear vision is used as a metaphor for knowledge and insight. In fact, this metaphor is so much a part of the Greek way of thinking that it is almost not a metaphor at all, just as in modern English: to say “I see the truth” or “I see the way things are” is a perfectly ordinary use of language. However, the references to eyesight and insight in these plays form a meaningful pattern in combination with the references to literal and metaphorical blindness. Oedipus is famed for his clear-sightedness and quick comprehension, but he discovers that he has been blind to the truth for many years, and then he blinds himself so as not to have to look on his own children/siblings. Creon is prone to a similar blindness to the truth in Antigone. Though blind, the aging Oedipus finally acquires a limited prophetic vision. Tiresias is blind, yet he sees farther than others. Overall, the plays seem to say that human beings can demonstrate remarkable powers of intellectual penetration and insight, and that they have a great capacity for knowledge, but that even the smartest human being is liable to error, that the human capability for knowledge is ultimately quite limited and unreliable.
...ts any responses that refute this idea. Then he would have to open his eyes to the reality that nothing is ever truly lost.. sacks writes “to release their own creative capacities and emotional selves, and both have achieved a right and full realization of their own individual worlds”(317). Therefore each individual blind human being is content with the way they experience life. For Carr this might be a bitter truth that deep reading will survive just not in the quantity that he desires. Unfortunately the removal of technology is not a simple solution. We need people to experience certain losses so that the human race can progress and prosper. The blinds ability to adapt and live on with a sense of comfort and peace because of this pseud sight. Is proof that even when you lose something significant you might just get something in return you never thought you would.
The theme in the story of being able to see without sight is revealed through the characters in the story "Cathedral." The husband is very judgmental, self-centered and shows a lack of knowledge about blind people. This is obvious when he states, "My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind move slowly and never laugh (1152). The husband is so quick to judge and thinks he already knows everything about blind people and how they are, so he makes it clear he was not looking forward to the blind man being in his house ...
In Jorge Luis Borges’s essay, “Blindness”, the author writes to teach how blindness can be seen as an opportunity and not a curse. Though his primary audience is people that share his connection, his secondary audience could be seen as those who judge blindness to be a disability. His purpose is to prove wrong stereotypes and show his first hand experience about blindness. Borges does this by rooting out to his own and family history and lessons that he learned about his blindness. The prevailing tone is a transition from sadness toward strength and happiness.