PortadaGruposCharlasMásPanorama actual
Buscar en el sitio
Este sitio utiliza cookies para ofrecer nuestros servicios, mejorar el rendimiento, análisis y (si no estás registrado) publicidad. Al usar LibraryThing reconoces que has leído y comprendido nuestros términos de servicio y política de privacidad. El uso del sitio y de los servicios está sujeto a estas políticas y términos.

Resultados de Google Books

Pulse en una miniatura para ir a Google Books.

Cargando...

Blindness / Seeing

por José Saramago

MiembrosReseñasPopularidadValoración promediaConversaciones
1846146,867 (3.86)Ninguno
In Blindness, a city is overcome by an epidemic of blindness that spares only one woman. She becomes a guide for a group of seven strangers and serves as the eyes and ears for the reader in this profound parable of loss and disorientation. We return to the city years later in Saramago’s Seeing, a satirical commentary on government in general and democracy in particular. Together here for the first time, this beautiful edition will be a welcome addition to the library of any Saramago fan.… (más)
Ninguno
Cargando...

Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará.

Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro.

Mostrando 1-5 de 6 (siguiente | mostrar todos)
After one gets used to Saramago's writing style, this is a well written tale about a plague which causes blindness and infects an entire population in a modern city. In the story, the first man to go blind visits an ophthalmologist with his wife. Shortly thereafter, the doctor and all of those who were in the waiting room become blind. The doctor informs the authorities who make plans to isolate the group in an abandoned insane asylum. One oddity is that although the doctor's wife accompanies him, she does not develop blindness. For a while, the group of seven does quite well with their disability but gradually as the building fills up with more people, serious problems arise among the population including thuggery, rape, and hoarding of food. The prison becomes a disaster zone full of excrement and dead bodies. The soldiers who are to protect the population are disorganized and fearful of becoming blind themselves.
No one in the story has a name nor is the city identified. Is the story a metaphor for what happens to a society when basic human needs are no longer available, civilization becomes chaotic without sight.
The doctor's wife is an amazingly strong character who protects her little group from the thugs and leads them out of the prison to safer ground when it burns down. She forages for food and keeps the spirit of the group positive whiles she is the only witness to the destruction around her. The final pages of the story take place in a church where the religious icons have their eyes painted over or cloths on their faces to hide their eyes. Sight is restored at the end and the doctor"s then becomes blind. ( )
  MaggieFlo | Oct 12, 2015 |
Saramago has a way of making me consider things I’d never thought about before. He takes his chosen topic and applies it to every aspect of society: from language and habits to government and other institutions, from interpersonal relationships to the practicalities of everyday life. I am blown away by how deeply and completely he explores the topic at hand. My curiosity about what he will investigate next, at least as much as the plot itself, keeps me turning pages. Blindness is no exception.

Full review on Erin Reads. ( )
  erelsi183 | Nov 18, 2013 |
This is one book that I simply did not get into at all. While it is considerered to be a brilliant book, somehow it simply did not draw me in. It explores the world of people who have all suddenly become blind. They stay in one place, and the book explores the dynamics of the relationship between the blind people. It is a grim book, aimed at exposing the worst in people and humanity. I may read it again in a few years, however. ( )
  RajivC | Jul 1, 2012 |
After pg 109 or so, I gave up due to the totally horrible punctuation and just skimmed through the rest of the book. The concept of story itself is interesting - an entire country is struck by an epidemic of blindness and the story follows some of the first people to be struck blind - a doctor, and his wife, who never does go blind, and some of his patients. There are no question marks or quotation marks in the book and most of it is written in run-on sentences punctuated by commas with an occasional period thrown in here and there. Apparantly that was done on purpose, but I really don't know why and I think it makes the book very difficult to follow and for me it was so annoying that it just was not worth the effort. Anyway, the people who go blind are dehumanized and quarrantined and they act like animals and steal food from one another and rape the women and live in filth.
If you don't care that the story is horribly punctuated and also has some words misspelled, is that done on purpose too, and if it does not bother you that I did not put a question mark after the word too, then you might want to read the book, otherwise, you may want to just skip it. ( )
1 vota herdingcats | Nov 7, 2011 |
A man stopped at a traffic light, waiting for the light to turn, suddenly goes blind, a white blindness, like you're viewing the world in a fog so great it obliterates all the world from view. He stumbles out of the car, calling out, I can't see, I can't see. A man takes him home. His wife takes him to the eye doctor.

Shortly after coming into contact with him, all of these people go blind as well, following by all of the people they come into contact with. An epidemic of blindness spreads through the city. The government in an immediate and swift effort to quell the spread, take all the people who are blind and all the people who have come in contact with them an lock them into quarantine, a sanatorium without doctors or anyone to aid them.

In order to stay with her husband, the doctor's wife claims that she is blind too, in order to join her husband in quarantine. She is certain that her time to be blind will come, but in the meantime, she is the only person with vision in a ward of the blind, the only true witness to the horrors that all the detainees experience.

The first thing you will notice about this book is that there are no names. In a world of the blind, Saramago asserts, identity is eliminated. The characters in this book are known only as the man, the doctor, the woman with dark glasses, the boy with a quint, etc. Unable to see each other and recognize each other, names have no meaning.

Likewise, and to assert this point, dialog is not separated out into separate paragraphs. Whole strings of conversation flow into one another within a single paragraph. To give you a sense of what I mean, here's a string of dialogue:

"What does reading do, You can learn almost everything from reading, But I read too, So you must know something, Now I'm not so sure, You'll have to read differently then, How, The same method doesn't work for everyone, each person has to invent his or her own, whichever suits them best, some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don't understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they're there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it's the other side that matters, Unless, Unless what, Unless those rivers don't have just two shores but many, unless each reader is his or her own shore, and that shore is the only shore worth reaching."

What you get are dense blocks of text, paragraphs that occasionally go on for several pages. Surprisingly, this did not throw me. Saramago is a skillful writer, and I was soon able to pick up the pattern of his writing and make sense of where the dialog began and ended. I wasn't confused and the reading was easy, despite the thick chunks of text. Descriptions, scenes, dialog, and musings tumble one into the next, just as in life one day's emotional and physical events and toils tumble into each other. The story maintains clarity and carries you along as though you are merely on a boat at the mercy of the flow of the river.

Saramago's writing is philosophical, pondering, and beautiful, even as he is describing the horrifying events that occur. He manages to bring out the humanity in his characters even as he asserts that this mass epidemic of blindness eliminates the humanity of the population, which suddenly unable to care for itself is starving and desperate to survive.

Blindness is a beautiful book, one I would love to read again some time as I'm sure I would take something new away from it the second time around. ( )
2 vota andreablythe | Aug 11, 2011 |
Mostrando 1-5 de 6 (siguiente | mostrar todos)
sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Debes iniciar sesión para editar los datos de Conocimiento Común.
Para más ayuda, consulta la página de ayuda de Conocimiento Común.
Título canónico
Título original
Títulos alternativos
Fecha de publicación original
Personas/Personajes
Lugares importantes
Acontecimientos importantes
Películas relacionadas
Epígrafe
Dedicatoria
Primeras palabras
Citas
Últimas palabras
Aviso de desambiguación
Editores de la editorial
Blurbistas
Idioma original
DDC/MDS Canónico
LCC canónico

Referencias a esta obra en fuentes externas.

Wikipedia en inglés

Ninguno

In Blindness, a city is overcome by an epidemic of blindness that spares only one woman. She becomes a guide for a group of seven strangers and serves as the eyes and ears for the reader in this profound parable of loss and disorientation. We return to the city years later in Saramago’s Seeing, a satirical commentary on government in general and democracy in particular. Together here for the first time, this beautiful edition will be a welcome addition to the library of any Saramago fan.

No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca.

Descripción del libro
Resumen Haiku

Debates activos

Ninguno

Cubiertas populares

Enlaces rápidos

Valoración

Promedio: (3.86)
0.5
1 1
1.5
2 3
2.5
3 11
3.5 4
4 10
4.5 1
5 15

¿Eres tú?

Conviértete en un Autor de LibraryThing.

 

Acerca de | Contactar | LibraryThing.com | Privacidad/Condiciones | Ayuda/Preguntas frecuentes | Blog | Tienda | APIs | TinyCat | Bibliotecas heredadas | Primeros reseñadores | Conocimiento común | 203,203,458 libros! | Barra superior: Siempre visible