How Does Samago Use Animal Imagery In Blindness

In Jose Saramago’s Blindness, there was a contagious epidemic, the "white blindness" that was spreading throughout the city. Placed in quarantine, the blind will have to deal with what exists as more primitive in human nature: the will to survive at any cost. Among the blind imposes the selfishness and so the law of the strongest. Saramago uses a lot of animal imagery as a way to display humans. As the novel progresses, humanity starts to fade. Therefore, as norms and rules cannot apply what remains of humankind tries to survive and abuse women to satisfy their needs.
Once admitted, the Government promulgated a set of rules for the blind, but daily coexistence begins to torment the patients: rations of food, cleanliness of the bathrooms, not
knowing if it is day or night. Everything seems to destine the place to turn into a hell, a cesspool of human waste, a vile place.
This way was how the first deaths happen: the blind that move beyond the aisles are perforated without contemplation, and the aroma of rottenness and decomposition started taking possession of the place. Saramago stated, “He was dirty, dirtier than he could ever remember having been in his life. There are many ways of becoming an animal, he thought, this is just the first of them” (93). This shows that this is only the beginning and the blind are starting to transform into something less than human. The first stage for the people in the quarantine is sanitation. Without the work of plumbing and other type of help, the blind are living in their own filth. As a result, people no longer have a human characteristic that we all think that makes us different from animals; cleanliness. Also, the
reason why the author remains the characters nameless with only their surnames like “the doctor’s wife” is because their names are insignificant. The author says, “no dog recognises another dog...a dog is identified by its scent and that is how it identifies others, here we are like another breed of dogs, we know each other's bark or speech, as for the rest, features, colour of eyes or hair, they are of no importance, it is as if they did not exist” (57). Meaning that their names are no essential since they are all blind and can only recognize each other by their voice.
Nevertheless, this is not the only way in which the author describes the human beings as animals as in the scene in which they fight to eat. Desperate and crazed by their disease, they strive to survive at all costs. This asylum becomes the setting for deteriorating moral values and social order, as the inmates are led by an oppressor using guns and brute force. At first, they asked internees' valuables like jewelry for boxes of food. After the ruffians run out of valuables to steal from the blind, they wanted to exchange women for food to satisfy their lust. The men were willing to give up their wives in exchange for food, thus diminishing and objectifying the status of women. Leading the asylum into a mess of moral degradation due to ravenous and greedy people. In Blindness, it states, “His cry was barely audible, it might have been the grunting of an animal about to ejaculate, as was happening to some of the other men, and perhaps it was” (189). This shows that Saramago describes the ruffians as having degenerated to the point of becoming animals. Plus, the doctor’s wife has justified herself for committing the murder because the ruffian had proven himself to be incapable of being human. Additionally, in the “Review: Seeing” states,
“it is powerless people who insult human dignity - ordinary people, terrified at finding themselves and everyone else blind, everything out of control. Some behave with stupid, selfish brutality... The group of men who seize power in an asylum and use and abuse the weaker inmates have indeed abandoned self-respect and human decency: they are a microcosm of the corruption of power”(Guin).
Meaning that in this scene the man loses all his humanity and decency. However, as animals they follow the rule of the strongest by oppressing the weak and powerless.
In addition, when they killed one of the women who was sexually assaulted, one of them wanted revenge and burned the place where the ruffians were.
As the only alternative the blind escaped from the quarantine and went to the streets of the city. Fetter describe it as, “The blind prisoners, as well as the blind residents of the city... have forgotten how to use the toilet, and they defecate in the streets, which run with filth...they walk around on all fours while navigating through an unfamiliar environment, and they don’t care to, wash themselves or their clothes.” This clearly shows that people were walking without course and with famine in an unknown place. Similarly, dogs that are abandoned and haunt the streets aimlessly, all dirty, and hungry. Due to people relying on the doctor’s wife since they were in the ward, she felt as it was her responsibility of helping this helpless people. Saramago depicts the blind as helpless by stating, “the fact is that there is no comparison between living in a rational labyrinth, which is, by definition, a mental asylum and venturing forth, without a guiding hand or a dog-leash, into the demented labyrinth of the city, where memory will serve no purpose” (217). This shows how Saramago refers to the blind as dogs and the doctor’s wife as the only human reponsible of
them.
To sum up, Blindness leads us to the concept to which extent the life can change in an instant. The doctor’s wife –one of the central figures of the novel– is the only witness that can see everything within the quarantine. Although she has the ability to see, she cannot escape the aberrations and the putrefaction that live in the asylum because she decides to help the blind. She regretted that she was able to see everything since she saw the monstrosity that became the human beings. They were worse than animals, they were beasts as they raped women to satisfy their lust. Saramago uses a lot of animal imagery as a way to display the fragility of human beings.