Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Blindness, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Existence, Uncertainty, and Autonomy
Good, Evil, and Moral Conscience
Biological Needs and Human Society
Narrative, Ideology, and Identity
Summary
Analysis
Wondering about the state of his office and medical equipment, the doctor decides to visit it with his wife. The girl with dark glasses accompanies them so that she can visit her house on the way back. The doctor’s wife laments the city’s disorder and wonders if the blind could form governments and “begin to have eyes.” The group debates whether blindness will kill them or if it just reflects their inevitable mortality. When they arrive at the doctor’s office, they find that it’s ransacked—presumably by the Ministry of Health. The girl talks as though she is living in a dream. The doctor regrets that he can no longer perform medical “miracles,” but his wife comments that their survival is a “miracle.” The others note that she can still see, but she says that their blindness is affecting her, blocking her from seeing the truth, and that the worst blind people are those who don’t want to see.
Like all the other characters, the doctor wants to return to the space where he used to live his life in order to find out if he will be able to recover it and make sense of the transformations his identity has undergone. The doctor’s wife’s comment about the blind forming governments is also clearly a reflection of her own role in this part of the novel: by comparing physical sight to the kind of collective and moral leadership that an effective leader provides to their citizens, she makes it clear that the true tragedy of the characters’ blindness is the loss of perspective and orientation it has given them—although perhaps they never had this perspective or orientation to begin with. If humans’ ability to form autonomous, consensual communities is similar to the “miracle” of medicine or sight, she notes, then nobody can truly see—or find truth and meaning in their life—unless they are part of such a community.
Themes
After leaving the doctor’s office, the group passes a square where a crowd listens to a blind preacher talk about redemption, the apocalypse, and various mystical powers, signs, and practices. The doctor’s wife comments that this is not the “organization” she was looking for, but things do seem to be coming to an end: there are no more resources, and the streets are littered with corpses. The girl with the glasses comments that her parents might be among them.
The obvious religious imagery of this passage, which includes numerous figures and symbols taken straight from the Catholic tradition of Saramago’s native Portugal, contrasts with the kind of strictly humanistic salvation that the protagonists have found through one another. In other words, Saramago rejects the idea of finding salvation and meaning through religion— he thinks that people must instead do so through one another, through the relationships and societies that they form.
Themes
When the group reaches the house where the girl with the glasses lived, they find the old woman who lived downstairs dead, with much of her body eaten by stray animals, outside. They debate why she came outside into the street, then notice that she is holding the keys to the girl’s apartment. They cannot explain this but resolve to bury the woman and muster all their strength to bring her up and down the stairs to the backyard garden. The doctor’s wife looks for a shovel, realizing that she is reliving the car-thief’s burial, and then she digs a grave for the old woman.
Although the protagonists do not witness or understand the old woman’s tragic, lonely death, they do note that her final act—bringing the girl’s keys outside—seems to represent her yearning for community, a hope to at least symbolically reestablish the social relations she lost in her isolation. As the doctor’s wife buries a dead person once more, she has a bizarre moment of déjà vu and realizes that she has taken over the role of seeing the blind out of the world. Performing burial rites is, of course, usually reserved for priests and other religious leaders, but Saramago has suggested that these figures will not save anyone.
Themes
While the doctor’s wife digs, blind people assemble on the nearby balconies. The doctor’s wife instinctively yells out to them, “She will rise again,” which scares them back inside. The doctor asks his wife why she said that, but she admits that she doesn’t know. They lower the old woman’s body into the grave, and the doctor’s wife fills the grave and ensures that “everything [is] in order,” meaning that “the dead [are] where they should be among the dead, and the living among the living.” The girl with the glasses wants to leave a sign in case her parents come back, so the doctor’s wife cuts off a lock of the girl’s hair and ties it on the apartment’s doorknob. The girl weeps, and the doctor’s wife comments that the dead woman’s hand has turned from a symbol of death into one of life. They return home.
The doctor’s wife surprises herself by acting like a priest and characterizing the old woman into a Jesus-like martyr, but her strange promise to the blind and her ability to put “everything in order” shows that she truly does fulfill a priest-like role in the novel, as the other protagonists’ practical and spiritual guide through a deeply uncertain and anxious time. By drawing and enforcing the line between “the dead” and “the living,” as well as honoring the old woman’s dying wish and enabling her to commune with the living through the girl’s keys, the doctor’s wife at least gives meaning to the woman’s death.
Themes
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Back in the doctor and his wife’s flat, the group again passes the evening listening to the doctor’s wife read. The others enjoy it, but the man with the eyepatch wonders if there’s anything more to life than this. He and the girl with the glasses debate whether it is still worth hoping that they will get their sight back someday, and their conversation quickly becomes tense because of their ongoing romance. The old man declares that he loves the girl with the glasses, and she says that she loves him too and wants to live with him as a couple, although he does not believe her and thinks she will soon change her mind. They reach out and hold each other’s hands, and that night they move into the living room together, as a couple.
The book that the doctor’s wife reads to the group is not just a sign that the protagonists are now comfortable enough to have leisure, but also a clear allusion to the blind writer from the book’s previous chapter. Just like the man’s writing sustained his voice and kept him sane in a time and place that were anything but, the doctor’s wife gives her new family something to focus on and a new perspective through which to interpret their experiences by reading to them. The old man allows himself the indulgence of hope and reveals his greatest fear: that his relationship with the girl will end when she finally sees him. Fortunately, love proves to be blind, and by finding romance and connection in the darkest of circumstances, the old man and the girl with the glasses demonstrate how no conditions are so horrific that they destroy people’s capacity for the most fundamental human emotions.
Themes
