Blindness

The blind wake up well before dawn, whether because they are hungry, because their internal clocks are broken, or because others wake them up. Realizing that her watch has stopped because she forgot to wind it up, the doctor’s wife starts crying uncontrollably. At first, the doctor assumes she has woken up blind, but she soon explains herself, and the girl with the glasses comes over to try and console her. The doctor’s wife says that she is alright and still has hope for them all, but the girl thinks that “there is no salvation for us” and continues to blame herself for the car-thief’s death. The doctor’s wife helps the girl back into bed, and then a fight breaks out between two men who accidentally switched beds after coming back from the bathroom.

Anxious for food, which the soldiers have promised to leave outside, some of the patients wait in the hallway and speculate about whether they might get shot. The other ward’s men still haven’t buried their dead but insist that they won’t do so until after they eat. They debate how to ration the food equally, but each side believes that the other’s proposals are unfair.

Over the loudspeaker, “the voice” of the Government announces that the food is being delivered, but that the blind must stay away from the gate or be shot. The internees are afraid, but the voice tells them they have three minutes. They cautiously move outside, and the sergeant guides them to the food containers, which are off to one side. Meanwhile, the soldiers fantasize about shooting the blind, which the regiment’s commander has said would be necessary, sooner or later, to contain the disease. One of the blind men finally reaches the containers, and the others pile on top of him in an effort to carry the food inside for themselves.

One blind man is clinging to the rope out of fear, but he leaves it to join the chaotic mass of internees looking for the food containers. When the sergeant orders everyone back to the main door, this man cannot find his way to the steps, and the soldiers aim their rifles at him. The sergeant tells them not to shoot, but one of the soldiers urges the man to continue toward him—the man takes three steps before realizing that this soldier is looking for an excuse to shoot him. Fortunately, the sergeant reprimands this soldier and tells the blind man to turn around, which he does. The blind man then follows the commotion made by the other patients to the hospital’s front door.

During this man’s near-death experience, some of the other patients ran away with food containers. The rest split the remainder and formed a “committee” to investigate the stolen food (after eating, of course). The patients who have been waiting in bed note that they heard the thieves run past, and everyone agrees to wait in bed after eating until the thieves return, so that they can be identified. But the internees do not catch anyone, and many of them fall asleep.

The narrator comments that the ward is like a  hotel—surely it is better than being blind in the outside world. The narrator even praises the authorities for bringing the blind people together—who “we must organise ourselves,” the narrator says, in order to maintain “self-respect” and avoid getting killed by the guards. The narrator just wishes that the blind had some form of entertainment.

There is gunfire outside: the sergeant is trying to frighten the roughly 200 newcomers who are headed into the hospital. There is not enough space, but rather than massacring the blind, they decide to open up all the empty wards to them. The soldiers direct the chaotic mass of people inside, and the new internees spread themselves around the hospital. The contaminated try to prevent the new patients from entering their wards, first by screaming and then by lashing out violently. With most of the internees inside, the front door is blocked off so that nobody else can enter. The soldiers nearly open fire, but the sergeant again stops them.

Gradually, the new internees find their way to the empty ward in the right-hand wing of the hospital, with the other blind people. But space soon runs out, so the new internees spread out in search of beds. Some fight with the contaminated, and others end up in the courtyard, where they come across the five corpses and begin yelling out to the others in shock. In a frenzy, these newcomers break into the wing of the contaminated, who begin suddenly going blind. Injured internees lie around the hallway, along with everyone’s possessions. An old man with an eye patch “wait[s] for peace and silence to be restored” in the courtyard, and when it is, he starts asking around for a bed.