102 pages • 3 hours read
José SaramagoBlindness
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1995A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 11-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary
Content warning: This chapter contains graphic scenes of sexual assault, violence, and gang rape.
This chapter starts off with a thought experiment from the narrator. They imagine what the naturally blind man from Chapter 9—now referred to as “the blind accountant”—might write down if he was not aligned with the blind hooligans. Instead of keeping inventory of others’ belongings, he might record the reality of living in the asylum, which includes filthy living conditions, rampant disease, and malnutrition amongst other ailments. The narrator then considers why the internees have not joined together to rise up and overthrow the tyrannical blind hoodlums. He explains that while some proposed collective action, the call for prudence won out. Instead, they decided to send a smaller group of 10 to 12 volunteers to demand better treatment. Those men were quickly chased away, and the lead hoodlum even fired a shot at them that went wide but convinced the volunteers that protest was futile, especially after the protesters were denied food for three days.
Soon, the hoodlums increase their demands. First, they demand that more valuables be turned over before they will release more food. While the first ward had nothing more to give—they had been honest from the start—the other wards begin self-policing. This causes tension and suspicion within each ward, especially when people reveal they withheld goods the first time. A week later, the demands increase: This time, the blind hoodlums tell the wards “they wanted women” (166).
At first, all the wards refuse, but that changes once they stop receiving food. The men try to convince the women to comply, and the women are indignant. They accuse the men of being “lobs, pimps, parasites, [and] vampires. The men respond simply: “Put out” (167-68). In time, a few brave women from each ward volunteer to sacrifice their bodies to feed their ward mates. This includes the first ward, where seven women—including the girl, the doctor’s wife, and the first blind man’s wife—volunteer to go. The first blind man is adamant that his wife not go, but she pushes back. The doctor supports her decision, saying “it is probably the only solution, if we want to live” (169).
The wards set up a rotating schedule so that each ward sends women but never two nights in a row. The night before the first ward’s women must go, the doctor’s wife cannot sleep. She slips out of bed to look across the ward, and shortly after sees her husband also leave bed to have sex with the girl with the dark glasses. As they finish, the doctor’s wife walks up and touches them. Both are instantly apologetic, but the doctor’s wife tells them, “[L]et’s all keep quiet, there are times when words serve no purpose” (174). Before she leads her husband back to bed, she tells the girl that she can see, and the girl promises to keep her secret.
The next night, the women walk to the blind hoodlums’ ward. They line up in the middle of the room, where the leader selects the girl with the glasses and the doctor’s wife as his own. The blind hoodlums then proceed to violently rape the women repeatedly for the rest of the night. The experience is so brutal that one woman—whose distinguishing characteristic is her constant insomnia—dies on her way back to the ward. Her ward mates pick her up and carry her bloody, bruised body back to her bed. The doctor’s wife leaves and heads to the kitchen, where she fills old food bags with fetid water from the sink. She returns and cleans the body of her dead companion before washing the other women of the ward individually, then cleaning herself.
Chapter 12 Summary
Four days after the brutal sexual assault, three blind hoodlums return to the first ward and ask the women if they have recovered from their “sexual orgy” (186). As the men leave, the doctor’s wife silently grabs her scissors from the wall. She waits for a bit, then tells her husband she will be back soon, and slips down the hall. She silently joins the group of 15 women from the second ward whose turn it is to visit the hoodlums. She waits outside the door until the assault begins. Once the men are distracted, she slips in with her scissors and sneaks up behind the leader. The doctor’s wife stabs him in the throat, and his blood splashes the woman crouched between his legs, who starts screaming. The doctor’s wife covers the woman’s mouth and drags her back to safety, whispering comforting words to her. In the meantime, the blind accountant has already found the leader’s dead body and pilfered his pockets, taking the gun and about10 rounds of ammunition for himself.
The blind men realize their leader’s throat has been slit, and the women start trying to escape in a panic. The accountant fires into the ceiling to regain order as the de facto new leader, but that throws the room into even more chaos. The doctor’s wife rounds up the women and hustles them out, stabbing a few of the other hoodlums in the process. The doctor’s wife yells back into the fray, “Remember what I said the other day, that I’d never forget his face, and from now on think about what I am telling you, for I won’t forget your faces either” (191). The blind accountant, now enraged, tells her that he recognizes her voice. He knows she is from the first ward, and he promises to starve them out. The doctor’s wife promises she will start killing his men and then flees down the hall, covered in blood. As she returns to her ward, she decides that it is necessary to kill “[w]hen what is still alive is already dead” (193). When she gets back, she hugs her husband tightly and confesses that she killed the hoodlum’s leader.
The hoodlums make good on their threat and start severely rationing the internees’ food, claiming that there have not been new food deliveries recently. A group of internees go to the courtyard to ask the soldiers about the delivery issues, and the sergeant—a new one—responds that they have not received any shipments to pass along. The group, which includes most of the first ward and a handful of representatives from the others, starts arguing that they should turn over the killer to the hoodlums in exchange for food. The doctor’s wife almost confesses, but the old man with the eyepatch stops her. Instead, he proposes that the internees attack the hoodlums en masse. Some might die, he argues, but they could overwhelm the hoodlums and fight “for what is rightfully [theirs]” (196). Seventeen people agree to the plan, including the woman the doctor’s wife saved who tells the doctor’s wife, “Wherever you go, I shall go” (197). They collectively decide that if they do not receive food tomorrow, they will attack.
The next day, two important things happen. First, the power goes out at the asylum, which the doctor’s wife tells her husband about. Second, the internees receive no food. They prepare to attack the hoodlums as planned, armed with bed rails. As they advance, other internees join in, nearly doubling their number. The group charges the barricade but cannot get through. The blind accountant fires three shots into the barricade, hitting two of the internees. Everyone retreats down the hall with their casualties, defeated.
One woman breaks off from the group and finds her way back to her ward, where she uncovers a lighter in her belongings. She makes her way back to the hoodlum’s barricade where she lights it on fire, setting the ward aflame but dying in the process. The fire kills the hoodlums, but it quickly spreads through the asylum. The blind rush outside as quickly as they can, and the old man with the eyepatch says they should rush the gates because it is “better to be shot than burnt to death” (215). The doctor’s wife goes to ask the soldiers for mercy but realizes the soldiers are gone, likely taken by blindness themselves. The blind then rush to freedom.
Chapter 13 Summary
The excitement of leaving the asylum is short lived. The blind realize that they have lost all frame of reference—the world is a big, open place, and at least they had learned the layout of the wards. They huddle together and refuse to move, believing that food will be delivered in the morning. The doctor’s wife tries to convince those who survived that there will be no more food and tells them to leave. When they refuse listen, the doctor’s wife gathers her small group and walks toward town.
The doctor, the first blind man and his wife, the old man with the eyepatch, the girl with the dark glasses, and the boy with the squint make their way into town as it begins raining. The city appears vacant, with litter and excrement covering the empty streets. The doctor’s wife leaves her group in a shop and tells them to wait there as she explores. She encounters a group of blind people in a nearby pharmacy and tells them that she has just fled the asylum. One of the men brings her up to speed on the crisis, saying “everyone is blind, the whole city, the entire country” (222). Now the blind wander from building to building in search of food and supplies. Despite this, they have established a kind of order: They live together in small groups, respect occupied spaces, and make way for each other on the street. No one can establish permanent homes because they become lost once they leave.
The doctor’s wife returns to her group with the report and tells them she will go find food. Everyone wants to come with her, but she insists it will be easier for her—and safer for them—if they stay and get some rest. She cautions them not to move no matter what happens, otherwise she will never be able to find them again. The doctor’s wife leaves to find supplies, “her eyes filled with tears” (225).
As she wanders the streets, it becomes apparent that the restaurants and stores have been picked over. She makes her way to a large grocery store filled with blind people who are crawling around looking for food and fighting each other over scraps. The doctor’s wife realizes there is nothing on the shelves, but a quick survey of the store reveals a basement accessible by a staircase. As she moves down the steps, she is plunged into darkness and becomes (situationally) blind. In the process, she experiences the same fears as the blind: She worries she cannot find her way out, or her way in. She continues moving forward anyway and accidentally stumbles into a shelf containing matches. Once she lights them, she realizes the room still has supplies. She eats a sausage to bolster her strength—she is still barefoot, malnourished, and barely dressed—fills her bags, and makes her way upstairs.
Once she reaches the main floor, she sees her mistake. The blind will be able to smell the sausage as she moves through the crowd. She initially tries to sneak to the door, but the smell quickly tips off those around her and she makes a mad dash for safety. Her flimsy top is ripped off in the process, though that does not keep her from sprinting down the street with her precious supplies. Soon, though, she realizes she is lost and collapses in sobs, afraid she will never find her group again. A stray dog comes over to lick her tears, and when she looks up to pet him, she sees a map painted on the side of a building. The narrator chalks this up to fate, but it is certainly good luck—the doctor’s wife makes her way back to her group, the “dog of tears” (235) in tow, and they eat for the first time in days.
Chapters 11-13 Analysis
This section gives readers a better understanding of the consequences of social collapse as well as how the vacuum of social power and organization creates fertile ground for tyranny. Up until this point, readers have seen the rapid social collapse inside the asylum. While the announcement over the loudspeaker encourages internees to elect ward representatives to create social order, no one has been able to do so. The initial push to appoint the doctor failed, and as more internees have arrived, survival—not social order—has been the top priority. The result is nothing short of appalling. The narrator tells readers that the internees have resorted to eating crumbs they find on the filthy, excrement-covered floors, and when they do get food from the blind hoodlums, it is often spoiled. Disease has begun to run rampant beyond just diarrhea; influenza has begun to make the rounds, and at least two internees have “fairly advanced cancer” (162). In short, the situation has worsened, and each new indignity just adds to the internees’ hopelessness.
This atmosphere creates an ideal environment for the emergence of an oppressive power system. In Poetics, Aristotle defines tyranny as “any sole ruler, who is not required to give an account of himself, and who rules over subjects all equal or superior to himself to suit his own interest and not theirs, can only be exercising a tyranny.” More importantly, tyranny tends to occur in situations of great instability or inadequacy, which is exactly the case in the asylum. The internees feel powerless, both because of their condition and as a result of their treatment by the government and military. Any modicum of power, then, makes people feel like they have more control over their situation. Within the asylum, food is tantamount to social power: When people are starving, the person who controls the food supply controls everything. The blind hoodlums devise a way to seize power that allows them to better their own situation while wielding their authority over everyone else.
In a tyrannical system, the trickle-up model of power concentrates it within the hands of the few at the expense of the many. This is certainly the case in the asylum; when the doctor’s wife sneaks out in the middle of the night to count the number of hoodlums in the ward, she marks their number somewhere around “nineteen or twenty” (158). Obviously, with about 300 internees, the blind hoodlums are far outnumbered. Saramago uses this as an opportunity to examine why tyrants not only ascend to power, but how they maintain it as well. When the blind hoodlums first take control of the rations, the internees call for a full-on revolt. The narrator refers to this as “collective action” (162), meaning everyone would work together to overwhelm the hoodlums and take back their supplies. Saramago argues that collective action rarely happens because it requires sacrifice. A full-on assault of the blind hoodlums would result in at least a handful of internees dying, whether from gunshot wounds or being “crushed to death” (163) in the attack. While collective action is an effective, and perhaps the only way of overthrowing tyrants, nobody wants to be the person who ends up sacrificed for the greater good. That is certainly the case for the inmates. They downgrade their plan to sending a group of 10 to 12 emissaries to confront the hoodlums, but when it comes time for volunteers, only a few speak up. In the end, people are more interested in preserving their own lives, no matter how miserable they are, rather than potentially sacrificing them for the greater good. Saramago believes the emphasis on the individual over the collective good is what maintains tyrannical power, both within the pages of Blindness and without.
Furthermore, Saramago believes the only way to do the most good for the most people and subsequently build a functional society is through sacrifice. In Blindness, sacrifice falls along gendered lines—that is to say that the women are the only ones able and willing to make the types of concessions necessary for everyone to benefit. This is most clear in the sexual assault scenes in this section. When the blind hoodlums call for the wards to turn over their women, all the wards initially refuse. However, when the food dries up, the men start negotiating with the women to essentially volunteer for rape. Saramago makes it clear that the men would be unwilling to do the same should the situations be reversed. The narrator explains that not one man “had the courage to utter” the words, “if they were to ask for men, we would go” (168). The women step bravely into the lion’s den so everyone can eat, even though their experience is so horrific that it kills at least one of the victims.
Ultimately, it is a woman who sacrifices herself to free the interred from the asylum. One woman who was part of the initial, failed attack on the blind hoodlums pulls away from the group to take matters into her own hands. She does not ask for help or assistance—once she has decided on her course of action, she does not need to gather consensus to justify her actions. Instead, she takes her lighter and sets their mattress barricade on fire. When she fears they may put it out, she “got under the first bed” and lit them from underneath, even as “her own body was already feeding the bonfire” (212). This unnamed woman gives up her life so that the rest of the internees may live. This echoes in smaller ways, too: The doctor’s wife gives up everything to take care of her charges; the girl with the glasses starves herself so the boy with the squint has food; and later, the old woman dies in the threshold of her building so the girl can have the keys to her apartment. Through this, Saramago suggests that women are the lynchpin to building a functional society based on the collective good, rather than reestablish the current system where people are blinded by the desire for power.
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