Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______

Symbols Sample Answers

Evidence and Analysis
Directions: Describe or use a quote to identify three instances in which
each symbol appears in Blindness, and write a short paragraph describing
the context and significance of that appearance. Then write a longer
paragraph analyzing the broader meaning of the symbol in Blindness.

Blindness and Sight

Quote or Description Context and Significance
1.

2.

3.

Meaning of the Symbol

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 light) does to his
protagonists spiritually: for instance, after regaining his sight, the doctor thinks that
perhaps the world is already populated by “blind people who can see, but do not see.”
While the protagonists literally go from sight to blindness, spiritually and existentially
they go from blindness to sight, as the familiar but meaningless world of discernible
objects and other people gives way to a new world that “swallow[s] up rather than
absorb[s], not just the colours [of things], but the very things and beings” themselves. In
other words, amid their state of blindness, characters are better able to perceive the
underlying essence and interconnectivity of different “things and beings” rather than
being caught up in what sets these people and objects apart from one another.
Additionally, many of the protagonists see the blindness as a symptom of their own
sense of moral responsibility: for instance the car-thief believes that going blind is his

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Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______

being punished for stealing the first blind man’s car, and the girl with the glasses—
who is a prostitute by trade—wonders if her blindness constitutes a punishment “for her
immorality.” In this way, the blindness epidemic is not just a plot device or a metaphor
for the unforeseeable catastrophes that can strike humankind at anytime: it also
represents contemporary society’s decadence—or its blindness to what is truly
important for human beings—as well as people’s disorientation in a universe that neither
provides them with clear answers the purpose of existence nor appears to consistently
reward the morally good and punish the evil.

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Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______

The Mental Hospital

Quote or Description Context and Significance
1.

2.

3.

Meaning of the Symbol

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 immediately sets up a quarantine in an
abandoned mental hospital. The novel frequently compares the blind to the insane, who
used to be house in the asylum—when the building eventually burns down, Saramago’s
narrator exclaims that “the madmen escape.” Indeed, blindness becomes “madness”
not because the blind are somehow mentally defective—rather, the violent, filthy,
inhumane conditions of the asylum drive otherwise mentally sound people mad and strip
them of their individuality.
The mental hospital also represents the illusion of safety that governments provide
during times of crisis. Though the hospital is ostensibly delegated as a safe shelter for
the blind internees, when they’re thrown inside and left to their own devices, the
hospital becomes both a kind of prison and a kind of laboratory for the formation of a
new society—the blind are left without resources and forced to organize themselves in
order to guarantee their survival. In this way, the mental hospital symbolizes the
incompetence and ineffectively of government aid during crises.

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Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______

Cars
Quote or Description Context and Significance
1.

2.

3.

Meaning of the Symbol

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 enough, the first
blind man is sitting in his car at a stoplight when he loses his sight. The man who brings
him home goes on to steal the blind man’s his car—but the thief soon goes blind himself
and ends up in the same quarantined hospital. The two men bicker about the theft but
quickly realize that they now have greater problems to tackle: they are blind and could
not drive a car if they wanted to. Indeed, as everyone in the city goes blind, they give up
on their cars, abandoning them in the streets. Rather than useful modes of transport,
cars become obstacles to navigate around or to use for shelter.
Just as the traffic light loses its function and meaning when the protagonists return to it,
cars become relics of the past: specifically, they illustrate how society used to be
dependent upon sight and how consumption used to be organized around a specialized
division of labor. Cars become useless when people can no longer see where they are
going or follow the traffic lights that ensure that their travel harmonizes with everyone
else’s. And their function of transporting people and goods to enable complex economic
exchange becomes irrelevant during the blindness epidemic, when people simply want
the closest source of food. Cars are important and meaningful when society is organized
around them, but when white blindness strikes, the car-thief’s robbery looks just as
foolish as that of the thugs who take everyone else’s money even though there is
nothing left to buy with it. For Saramago, although the world of white blindness is tragic,
a society organized around the complex economic tasks that cars and similar

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Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______

technologies make possible is frivolous and wasteful: these technologies distance people
from their fundamental nature and needs rather than enabling their fulfillment.

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Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______

Guns
Quote or Description Context and Significance
1.

2.

3.

Meaning of the Symbol

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 learn that none of the rules that used to
govern society apply anymore: there are no rights nor authorities to appeal to, and food,
plumbing, and medicine are no longer guaranteed. From the moment the hospital’s
doors are sealed, force becomes the only law: soldiers rule over the blind because they
are armed and unafraid to kill, and later, the thugs take power because they have a gun.
The thug leader’s gun not only symbolizes his power: it also is his power, because it is
what allows him to force everyone else into compliance (either as a member of his team
or a target to exploit). Whenever he shoots, people flee in terror, unable to see where
the bullet is headed. After the doctor’s wife kills the thug leader, the blind
accountant takes the gun in order to take power, although his hold on it is insecure.
Saramago’s message is clear: all of society is ultimately based on this capacity for
violence, which governments usually reserve for themselves and promise to only use
according to the laws they set out. But such promises are unenforceable: governments
can wield their power however they like, just as in this novel the Government approves
of the Ministry of Health rounding up the blind and the soldiers massacring them.
Although people get used to the false sense of security that living in a democratic
society gives them, crises like the white blindness epidemic are a stark reminder that all
power is based on the capacity to cause physical harm or enlist others to cause that
harm on one’s behalf, and that all governments are always capable of committing the
kind of authoritarian atrocities that people generally see as confined to history.

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Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______