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Chapter 5
Themes
and Colors
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
In the morning, the blind have to bury the car-thief’s body in the courtyard. Only the doctor’s wife sees the corpse, which is horribly disfigured. She can’t find anything with which to dig a grave, although she does glimpse “the terrified faces” of the infected patients across the hospital. She and the doctor consider asking the soldiers for a shovel. Meanwhile, the girl with the glasses cries because she blames herself for the car-thief’s death. The narrator comments that, while it is technically her fault, people can never think through or control all the possible consequences of their actions.
In a society of blind people, it becomes increasingly clear that the doctor’s wife’s ability to see is as much a curse as a blessing: she is forced to confront the horrors of the patients’ internment more fully and viscerally than anyone else. The Government’s failure to provide a shovel is somewhat ironic, since one of its rules is that the internees must bury their own dead—its failure to coordinate its response demonstrates that it is making up its policies as it goes along, which suggests that its power is arbitrary rather than deserved. The narrator’s commentary on causality and moral responsibility further draws out the tension that Saramago sees at the heart of moral thinking: people’s actions (whether good or bad) seldom produce the consequences they intend, so to what extent should they be held responsible for these consequences?
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Themes
The girl joins the doctor and his wife to ask the soldiers for a shovel. When they reach the front door, the soldier on duty yells and fires a warning gunshot into the air. The three patients return inside, and then the doctor’s wife comes to the doorway and asks for a spade. However, the sergeant declares that there isn’t anything of the sort at the hospital, and he tries to dissuade the doctor’s wife against burying the body. The doctor’s wife suggests that the car-thief’s body could infect the air and therefore the soldiers. The narrator reveals that this sergeant is new: the first one went blind and is now in the army’s quarantine zone. This sergeant promises to ask for a spade, and the doctor’s wife also asks for more food—but the sergeant replies that this isn’t his responsibility and then disappears.
The soldiers’ warning shot demonstrates that they see the internees as inherently threatening, and they’re willing to respond with unjust and brutal violence (as they did to the car-thief). Of course, the nature of infectious disease is such that merely being in someone’s presence can constitute a risk, and the doctor’s wife clearly understands this when she turns the sergeant’s logic back against him. The fact that the previous sergeant went blind shows that the soldiers’ attempt to contain the infection is futile and that there is no fundamental distinction between the people on either side of the hospital’s gate. In this way, the soldiers’ fears—if not their actions—are justified.
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Later that morning, over the loudspeaker, the Government reports that there is a spade for the patients outside the front door. The doctor’s wife goes to retrieve it—at first she pretends to be blind, but eventually she just grabs the spade and walks straight back to the front door, and the sergeant remarks that the blind are quickly able to adapt and navigate their surroundings.
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The blind dig a shallow grave in the courtyard’s firm soil and toss the car-thief’s body inside. The girl with the glasses proposes putting up a cross, but the others dismiss her idea and go back inside. Everyone has learned to navigate the hospital. The narrator comments that those who are “gifted” even develop “frontal vision” like the doctor’s wife. The doctor and his wife talk lovingly, unlike the first blind man and the first blind man’s wife, who seldom speak. The little boy with the squint continues complaining of hunger, and the girl keeps giving him her food. In fact, there was no breakfast this morning, and now that it is lunchtime, some of the blind are awaiting the next meal in the hallway—they know that food is “first come first served.”
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Eventually, the soldiers come inside and drop the food containers in the hallway, but they’re terrified when they see the blind patients waiting nearby. Two of the soldiers “react[] admirably” by firing indiscriminately at these patients, whose bodies pile up outside the ward. The soldiers sprint outside, where one insists that he will never go back in. Ironically, the narrator reveals, this man soon goes blind himself. The sergeant, who secretly wishes that the blind would just starve to death, declares over the loudspeaker that the soldiers have subdued a “seditious movement” by killing the patients in the hall—they can’t be blamed for their actions. In the future, the sergeant says, the army will simply leave the food outside the hospital and shoot anyone who gets too close to them.
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During the shooting, the blind internees are frightened because they assume that the Government has decided to kill them. When those who aren’t yet blind but are assumed to be “contaminated” run out of their wards into the hallway, they see a pile of bodies and a pile of the blind’s food boxes, the latter of which they decide to take. They pause in terror when they realize that they might get infected by the blood of the deceased, whose spirits might come after them, but they take the food anyway. Some blind patients also come to the hallway for food, frightening the contaminated, who feel that the dead are seeking revenge. But instead, these blind patients retrieve the food containers and drag the corpses to the courtyard. One blind woman (the doctor’s wife) seems to be leading the others and often looks over at the contaminated as though she could see or otherwise sense them. Frightened, the contaminated return to their wards.
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The blind assemble to decide whether to first eat or bury the nine dead, whose identities they do not know. (In fact, they are the man who from the hotel, the taxi-driver, the policeman who took the car-thief home, the policeman who took the girl home, and five people from the other ward.) The group decides to eat first, as this will give them strength to bury the dead. But they struggle to divide the rations: some pretend that they have more people, and ultimately many people get double portions of food. The doctor’s wife sees this but doesn’t say anything: she fears that the others will turn her into a slave if they find out that she can see. She recognizes that the patients need to organize themselves, but she knows that any authority among them will be tenuous.
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After eating, the patients flatly refuse to bury the dead. At night, the doctor convinces two men from his ward to join him in burying half the corpses, and his wife secretly helps him select the bodies of the four men from their ward. Three more men join to help dig. Meanwhile, the daily announcements that play over the loudspeakers start to sound more sinister. After the doctor’s team finishes burying their dead, the other ward’s patients refuse to do their part but promise that they will do so tomorrow.
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On his way back to his ward, the doctor goes to the bathroom, where he steps on feces left by someone who missed the toilet. He wonders what the place looks like; there is no toilet paper. Disgusted, the doctor starts to cry. He finds the door and makes his way out, but he feels that he is dirty and “becoming an animal.” Back in the ward, his wife helps him clean up while everyone else sleeps. She wonders when she will go blind and why she has been spared so far. She and the doctor hear moaning and labored breathing across the ward, and someone calls the couple making these noises “pigs.”
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