Blindness

The novel "Blindness" is considered the most famous and important work of the distinguished Portuguese novelist José Saramago. It is a remarkable symbolic novel that depicts the reality our societies live in, symbolizing intellectual blindness, which is ignorance. Translated by Ali Abdul Amir Saleh, the novel "Blindness" is published in a new edition by Jamal Publications. About the novel "Blindness": The novel "Blindness" tells the story of a mysterious epidemic that affects a city, where the residents suddenly go blind, creating a wave of panic and chaos that leads to military intervention to control the situation. However, the situation becomes more tragic when the military abandons the helpless and weakened crowds, leading gangs to take over the remaining food and medicine. People then begin to fight among themselves. In his novel "Blindness," José Saramago also sheds light on the human side represented by the doctor, his wife, and his family, who remained cohesive until the disease suddenly disappeared as it appeared. The book "Blindness" addresses intellectual blindness, as the doctor’s wife said at the end of the novel: "I don’t think we went blind, but I think we are blind people who see," also indicating that human morals and principles are fragile in the face of human need. Quotes from the book "Blindness" - José Saramago: If we are unable to live as human beings, at least let us do our best not to live like animals. If you want to go blind, you will go blind. The difficulty is not in living among people, but in understanding them. When everyone goes mad, holding onto your mind becomes the harshest form of suicide. The moral conscience, which many fools attack and many others deny, is present and has always existed. As long as it exists and is not the invention of the philosophers of the Fourth Age, where the soul was nothing more than a confused hypothesis, over time, social elevation, and genetic exchange, we ended up coloring our conscience with the redness of blood and the saltiness of tears. As if that was not enough, we turned our eyes into internal mirrors, and the result is that they often appear without reflecting what we were trying to deny verbally. If we think more carefully before acting, considering the immediate, potential, and possible outcomes, and finally those that can be imagined, we will never step beyond the point where our initial judgment stops. The good and evil resulting from our words and actions are equal; one continues in a reasonable and balanced manner in the following days and perhaps indefinitely, while we are not present to see its results, to praise ourselves for them or to apologize.