Blindness by Jose Saramago

Jose Saramago’s Blindness is probably up there with Albert Camus’ Plague when it comes to comparing present COVID-19 pandemic situation.

The horrendous tale of sudden White Blindness spreading amoung humans with only single Doctor looking out for a group of sufferers in a quarantine zone deteriorating day-by-day, captures all the practical fears most of us now have when it comes to isolation and helplessness.

This book from Saramago is among my favourites.

There is also a namesake movie adaptation with Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. However, I haven’t seen it and hence wouldn’t recommend it over the book.

Context: A man suddenly loses sight while waiting at Traffic Junction. A nearby person tries to help however with a malicious intent to steal the sufferer’s car.

On offering to help the Blind Man, the man who then stole his car, had not, at that precise moment, had any evil intention, quite the contrary, what he did was nothing more than to obey those feelings of generosity and altruism which, as everyone knows, are the best two traits of human nature and to be found in much more hardened criminals than this one, a simple car-thief without any hope of advancing in his profession, exploited by the real owners of this enterprise, for it is they who take advantage of the needs of the poor. When all is said and done, there is not all that much difference between helping a blind man only to rob him afterwards and looking after some tottering and stammering old person with one eye on the inheritance.

It was only when he got close to the blind man’s home that the idea came to him quite naturally, precisely, one might say, as if he had decided to buy a lottery ticket on catching sight of a ticket vendor, he had no hunch, he bought the ticket to see what might come of it, resigned in advance to whatever capricious fortune might bring something or nothing, others would say he acted according to a conditioned reflex of his personality. The skeptics, who are many and stubborn, claim that, when it comes to human nature, if it is true that the opportunity does not always make the thief, it is also true that it helps a lot.

As for us, we should like to think that if the blind man had accepted the second offer of this false Samaritan, at that final moment generousity might still have prevailed, we refer to his offer to keep the blind man company until his wife should arrive, who knows whether the moral responsibility, resulting from the trust thus bestowed, might not have inhibited the criminal temptation and caused the victory of those shining and noble sentiments which it is always possible to find even in the most depraved souls. To finish on a plebian note, as the old proverb never tires of teaching us,

“while trying to cross himself the blind man only succedded in breaking his nose."