The police sergeants are the officers who command the soldiers that guard the hospital and who generally communicate with the blind internees when they request resources or assistance (but typically deny their requests). Like the soldiers they command, the sergeants are frequently replaced: in some parts of the book, there is a new sergeant virtually every time the internees go outside, and the sergeants range from unnecessarily cruel (like one who hopes the blind will die and make his job easier) to reasonably empathetic (like one who directs the blind to safety rather than letting one of his soldiers shoot them for sport). Nevertheless, all of them willingly advance the Government’s cruel and unnecessary policies, and they therefore represent the way the Government anxiously persecutes the weak in order to try and cope with the blindness epidemic, a crisis it does not understand any better than the public does.
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The police sergeants Character Timeline in Blindness
The timeline below shows where the character The police sergeants appears in Blindness. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5
...taxi-driver goes outside and yells that there are 11 of them now, but the police sergeant dismisses him. Back inside, the patients divide up their rations while the injured car-thief, who...
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...soldiers arrive, the car-thief is dead in a pool of his own blood, which the sergeant warns could be infectious. A group of the blind has followed the commotion outside, and...
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Chapter 6
...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...
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...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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...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...
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Chapter 7
...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...
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...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...
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There is gunfire outside: the sergeant is trying to frighten the roughly 200 newcomers who are headed into the hospital. There...
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Chapter 12
...without food, a group led by the doctor’s wife goes outside and asks the new sergeant for an explanation. The sergeant insists that the soldiers aren’t responsible—there is simply no food...
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