Book Review of Blindness: Saramago's Literary Novel in Study of Humanity

In Saramago's literary novel,“white blindness” strikes a man while he was driving. After he has gone to a clinic to check on his condition and the doctor couldn't find the problem, the disease spreads to the doctor and his patients. To contain the blindness, the government rounds up these victims in a mental asylum where the strong would oppress the weak.

The eye doctor’s wife, who keeps her eyesight after everyone have gone blind, leads a group of six people, including her husband, on a journey in the wasteland of the blind that reeked of excrement and decomposing corpses, to search for food.

To what depth would men and women descend to fill their bellies, to satiate that hunger which would smother all traces of humanity?

Blindness is a surrealist novel of the human condition, the struggle to survive that would release the cruelty and selfishness suppressed by law and punishment as well as the courage and perseverance in the face of suffering. It is the stench throughout the novel that would linger in the reader’s mind.

Jose Saramago

Albert Camus has The Plague; William Golding The Lord of the Flies; Cormac McCarthy The Road; and so Jose Saramago Blindness.

Invisible Man Book Review

Like the underground man in Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground, Ralph Ellison’s invisible man lives underground, but he is invisible only because others refuse to see him for who he is. They manipulate him as a tool toward their goals.

Harlem Riot of 1964

When he was fighting in the battle royale, he was only entertaining the white men. When he studied at the college, Dr. Bledsoe showcased him to the trustee as a model of the school’s success. In turn, the trustee funded the school to heel his wounded heart. When he went to New York, the communists used him to solicit members and ultimately sacrificed him through the Harlem riot to promote their agenda. Even Mary, who cared for him like a mother, didn’t see him for who he is.

But such invisibility is not only that of an African-American, but of all Americans, and perhaps of all human. To exist but not be seen. To reflect light but be transparent. An object of others’ agendas rather than an individual.

Ralph Ellison

Only when he realized his invisibility did possibilities emerge, did he become free. Only then did he found himself. The person he is, rather then the person whom others wanted him to be. And in the end, he decided to emerge from his hibernation. What are the possibilities? Or perhaps more disillusionment?

Narziss and Goldmund: The Spiritual Life and The Secular Life

Goldmund could not fit into the Mariabronn Monastery anymore than a square peg could fit into a round hole and soon left the cloister for the vagrant life. By sleeping in the woods, killing Viktor the thief, meeting the plague, studying under Meister Niklaus and romancing with Lydia and Julie, Lene and Agnes, he explored the sensual life as an artist. When Agnes rejected the old man that he was, he returned to the monastery to meet his friend and mentor Narziss before leaving the world.

Calw, Germany

On the other hand, at home in Mariabronn with the chestnut tree and knowing that his way differs from that of Goldmund, Narziss, isolated from the flesh’s pleasure and pain, lived out the monastic life, praying, meditating, searching for enlightenment through intellectual and ascetic disciplines. The way of the mystic was for Narziss as much as the way of the artist was for Goldmund.

Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse, throughout his life, sought Goldmund’s artistic way¾ the emotional, prodigal, active, and sensual path¾ but ended up with Narziss’s mystical way¾ the intellectual, disciplined, contemplative, and ascetic path.

Buddenbrooks: The Saga of a Family

Thomas Mann's Novel on the Decline of a Family

Thomas Buddenbrook was a businessman, who followed in the family’s bourgeoisie pragmatism and achieved moderate success. But his brother Christian was the prodigal son, who squandered time and money in theater. And Thomas’s son Hanno, escaped harsh reality into the world of music. The conflict between the pragmatic and the ideal, reflected Thomas Mann’s struggles, and would surface again in The Magic Mountain.

Hamburg

The reader sees the family’s decline in Christian’s worsening pain, in Thomas’s gloom, in Hanno’s unhealthy teeth, and in the failed marriages of Tony, Thomas’s sister. Although Tony tried to leverage her and her daughter’s marriages to uplift the family status, their failures pointed toward the finale, where Christian was permanently institutionalize and Hanno died without children. Not only had the wealth dissipated, but also there was no heir.

Buddenbrooks is a monumental family saga.

Thomas Mann