Textual analysis on "The Blindness" by Jose Saramagio

Authors Avatar by jjiwoojeon0410gmailcom (student)

Textual Analysis on The Blindness

The Blindness is a novel written by Portuguese author José Saramago in 1955. Saramago utilizes blindness as a metaphor to depict moral foulness and social breakdown. He portrays a dystopian city as a result of white blindness, an unknown illness that becomes referred to among the characters as the "white evil." His bizarre allegory explores the ability of humans to prevail in even the most absurdly unjust of conditions through different language choices and techniques.

Saramago’s choice of structure is definitely interesting as it is not an easy novel to read as the novel contains many long-run sentences, dense paragraphs and twisting dialogues.

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“The blind moved as one would expect of the blind, groping their way, stumbling, dragging their feet, yet as if organised, they knew how to distribute tasks efficiently...” (pg.61)

Throughout the novel, these concentrated and dull structure creates a heavy feeling, therefore, creating a distanced effect as if no one is alive. This helps the author to make readers only focus on the society rather than the characters and keep the story moving. This can also create an effect of blindness on the readers as it feels as if we were actually like as though we were blind, we just ...

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