Gut-wrenching account of a contagion apocalypsePortuguese author José Saramago won the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. One of the works the prize committee singled out when announcing his award was his 1995 novel Blindness.
I had previously read Saramago’s novel The Cave, which I wasn’t too crazy about. Blindness is a better-known and highly regarded book, however, so I decided to give Saramago a second try. I’m glad I did, because I was blown away by this book from page one. The most surprising thing about the novel, to me, is that it’s actually a kind of thriller, something one doesn’t expect from Nobel laureates.
At a busy intersection in an unnamed city, a car comes to a stop at a red light. When the light turns green, the car doesn’t move, causing a traffic jam. The reason for the car’s immobility is that the driver has suddenly and inexplicably gone blind. One of the bystanders on the scene gives the blind man a ride home, and later the blind man’s wife takes him to see an ophthalmologist who can find no cause for the sudden loss of sight. Soon, the bystander, the wife, and the doctor have all gone blind, indicating that this blindness is caused by a swiftly spreading contagion. When the authorities are notified of the outbreak, the first several victims and those who have come in contact with them are rounded up and quarantined. A former mental hospital is converted into a sanitarium, but in reality it is more of a concentration camp. The internees receive periodic disbursements of food and water, but are otherwise left to care for and govern themselves. Any who attempt to escape will be shot on sight by military guards who are terrified of catching the blindness disease.
This novel isn’t so much about blindness as it is about what happens to people when they are subjected to such extreme circumstances. Somewhat like a Holocaust novel, the story is an examination in how low humanity can be degraded while still remaining human. All of the characters in the book are nameless—the doctor, the first blind man, the girl with the dark glasses, the old man with the eyepatch, etc.—which adds to the feeling of inhumanity and loss of identity. The tone and effect of Blindness is quite similar to that of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. On the one hand, you are riveted to the story, and you admire the author for writing such a perfectly compelling narrative. On the other hand, you’re disgusted and repulsed by much of what you’re reading. One can’t help but acknowledge, however, that in an extreme apocalyptic situation such as this, there would be oppression and atrocities, violence, murders, rapes, filth, and degradation. This hell through which Saramago guides the reader is not a pleasant experience, but it is an experience that rings true to the reality of human nature as we unfortunately know it.
To be honest, the ending of Blindness wasn’t all I hoped it would be, but I was so impressed by the entire novel up to that point that I’m willing to overlook that imperfection and praise the whole work. After reading this novel, I really want to explore more of Saramago’s work, in particular his 2004 novel Seeing, which is a sequel to Blindness. For anyone interested in Saramago’s work, I would recommend buying The Collected Novels of José Saramago ebook volume from Open Road Media, which contains 13 novels and usually sells for under five bucks.
Equal parts captivating and frustrating
Portuguese author José Saramago won the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. His novel The Cave was published in 2000. The book’s protagonist, Cipriano Algor, is an artisan potter who manufactures earthenware dishes in his home workshop and kiln. He lives on the outskirts of an unnamed metropolis and makes periodic trips into the city to deliver his products to his sole customer: the Center. Imagine if Amazon, the company who sells everything, had a skyscraping retail complex that dwarfed the Mall of America, complete with housing for its most valued employees, and you have the corporate nightmare that is the Center. Cipriano Algor lives with his daughter Marta and her husband Marçal, who works as a security guard at the Center. While making a delivery, the potter is informed that the Center will no longer be buying his wares, as they have decided to sell a factory-made product in its place. This unexpected development suddenly leaves Cipriano Algor without a livelihood, forced to face the possibility of having to close his workshop and leave his home.
The story of The Cave is sufficiently interesting to keep the reader involved, but Saramago tells it at a snail’s pace. He begins with an overly detailed description of the potter’s delivery route to the Center. Then a stray dog shows up and joins the family, an event which is dwelt upon for quite some time. It feels as if the story takes forever to get started, when all the while it is slowly growing on you. The reader becomes very fondly engaged in the family dynamic between the three main characters, and the details of the ceramic processes and techniques are surprisingly fascinating. Despite the slow-moving plot, the prose often takes the form of rapid-fire dialogue between the family members in discussions that are often overly protracted and repetitive. There is also quite a bit of interior dialogue, and Saramago very insightfully relates the thought processes of his characters, even the dog. The book has no chapters, and the prose is written in long run-on sentences devoid of punctuation but for commas, forming paragraphs that go on for multiple pages. Dialogue is presented the same way, without quotation marks and with only commas to separate one character’s speech from another. These stylistic choices make for an annoying lack of clarity at times, but they do serve to speed up the reading pace.
For much of the book’s length, the reader finds himself wondering why Saramago chose to title this novel The Cave. About halfway through the book, a cave is briefly mentioned, but it hardly seems worthy of being the novel’s namesake. At some point I began to suspect that perhaps the title might end up being a reference to Plato’s allegory of the cave (from The Republic), and sure enough, eventually that turned out to be the case, and in a very heavy-handed way. After having spent so much time wading through long, circuitous conversations, waiting to find out what the novel is actually about, the climax is disappointingly vague and forced, a metaphor taken too far and too literally. If you are not familiar with Plato’s allegory, then you’d better read up on it, or you will not have a clue as to the point of the novel.
Overall the merits of The Cave outweigh its faults. I quite enjoyed the relationships between the family members (including the dog), and Saramago’s depictions of the Center amount to a beautifully executed dystopian vision of corpocracy that approaches the level of genius in its balance of satire and foreboding. The Cave is not Saramago’s best-known novel (that would be Blindness) and it probably isn’t his best novel, but it is satisfying enough to make me want to read more of his work.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R18BO7UL4DMRL4/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm
