Blindness and Sight
The epidemic of literal blindness that afflicts the characters in the novel symbolizes humans’ metaphorical blindness to what is important in life. Saramago examines what this physical “white blindness” (in which people only see white…
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The Mental Hospital
Saramago uses the setting of the mental hospital to show how circumstances shape people, even to the point of defining their identities. When an epidemic of “white blindness” strikes, the Government in the story…
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Cars
During the epidemic of contagious “white blindness” in the novel, cars represent how perceived necessities in human society are actually unnecessary and wasteful—and how such technologies are particularly irrelevant in times of crisis. Fittingly…
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Guns
Amid the blindness epidemic in the novel, guns symbolize the idea that a person or governing body’s capacity for violence determines how much power they hold. In the quarantined hospital, the blind internees quickly…
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