The Novel Blindness And Liberalism

The concept of the state of nature, and the ideas of equality and individualism in the ideology of Liberalism would be the best analysis points of view to explain the novel Blindness by Saramago. So let’s take a look at liberalism first and then at its connection with this book. But I must warn you, there are some spoilers from now on!

Liberalism is a political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central issue of politics. The reason why Liberalism would be the most useful ideology to explain the novel Blindness is that there are many extreme events that took place in the book which can be an example of these concepts and ideas of Liberalism. These parts may be seen as the strongest points of the book since they demonstrate how Liberalism turns into a negative notion in extreme cases.

In the novel Blindness, in an unspecified country, a man suddenly becomes blind in his car in traffic. After this, an epidemic of blindness starts to spread like a disease with an increasing rate in a very short time. The government decides to put the blind people in quarantine in an old mental hospital under the observation of a group of soldiers.

As the first example of the extreme events, in the book, a man in the 3rd ward declares himself the new king of the other blind people and he states that there is no law and there is no authority or any kind of other power to stop him in the building.  He possesses a gun and a supporter who is blind by birth; therefore is more capable of using his other senses than other people in there. He acquires power from the people in his ward and utilizes this to scare and control other people from different wards.

The state of nature accepts that every man is free and equal so they can do whatever they want, there is no border in that sense and this is what the exact thing of the man from the 3rd ward believes. He thinks that he is free and he can kill someone that makes him angry or he can seize all food and do whatever he wants with it. But as it can be seen in the book, the state of nature may cause chaos. 

Saramago highlighted that when there is a lack of authority there may be ones that use their power for bad purposes. For instance, the freedom of the 3rd ward king damages the freedom of others; therefore, there should be an authority above them to set ground rules. If there will be one, the gun or the privilege that someone has wouldn’t be as important as before. The restrictions, common rules would be for all, and this way people won’t be allowed to use their privileges to be dominant over others.

As the second example, in the 1st ward, there is a man whose adjective is ‘thief’ due to his action of stealing the first blind man’s car. This man’s knee gets hurt by a girl and the lack of medical supplies and unhealthy conditions lead his situation to deteriorate. One night he decides to go outside and ask for help from soldiers but as soon as he gets there soldiers start to yell at him to go back and don’t listen to what the thief wanted to say. In addition, they fear getting infected with blindness and kill him without giving him a chance to express themselves.

In the idea of individualism, there is a thing as self-preservation, it indicates a natural or instinctive tendency to act so as to preserve one’s own existence. It is clearly seen that this instinct of soldiers triggered them to kill a being to protect themselves. In the book, the author shows that being excessively individualist may make us excessively selfish and may cause us not to think about other people’s interests or rights.

So it is obvious that some of the core notions of life such as equality or freedom may not always be considered as beneficial as one may think. In different contexts, these notions can gain negative meanings and side effects, in the novel Blindness we see the exact example of that kind of a context.

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