The meaning of Blindness In George Snedekers note for Blindness , he views the blindness as a metaphor for both personal

misfortune and social catastrophe. With a large number of people going blind, the public health officials are scared and the blind citizens are quarantined in a former mental hospital. According to George Snedeker, it is clearly a sign of limitation. It causes the entire society to no longer function. Modern society Saramagos statement shows that people lost themselves in the modern society. They try hard adapting to the changing society and fulfill their dreams. People make plans to carry out their goal. They follow the order of the society and form their own principle to lead meaningful lives. But if the order is destroyed, they may find themselves in a society that no longer functions and suffer from the chaos. Blindness and Platos allegory of the cave

Near the end of Blindness, one of the characters says that perhaps they had never really been blind, that perhaps the sighted do not really see. The analogy between seeing and understanding is one of the oldest ideas in Western philosophy. Platos Allegory of the cave may be helpful to illustrate the story. To know the relationship between seeing and understanding, we can explore from the Allegory of the cave. It is an allegory in The Republic. The story describes a group of people are sitting in one long row in a dark underground cave. Plato Plato sends out some people to go out of the cave to experience the real world. John Day says that those people are obtaining their reason and knowledge through this long and difficult way. In Blindness, people do suffer from a great disaster to see the real world. What they used to believe in turns out to be a trash. The thing they didnt cast a glance at is a treasure. They find the true meaning of lives.

The role of the doctors wife Saramago creates a world of blindness to indicate peoples limited mind. Its interesting to have the only visible character, the doctors wife, to be the narrator of the story. She helps the blind people to survive. Her eyes allow her to lead the others to safety. Her eyes enable her to exercise a degree of control over the situation. She kills the blind people causing the chaos. wife as a prophet In the review of Jose Saramagos Blindness, Emre Peker views the doctors wife as a prophet. She is a leader with vision and tries to deal with the chaos. In the Allegory of the Cave, there are some men, the potential philosophers, climbing out of the cave before others. They walk in a difficult and long way to go out. At first, they are dazzled by the strong light. But soon, they get accustomed to the light and see the real world. Gaining the real knowledge, those people go back to the cave. Epistemology The study of knowledge is called Epistemology. It tends to solve the problem of distinguishing between thinking that we know something and actually knowing it. Without the distinction, we might just be living in the fantasy. In Lowell Kleiman and Stephen Lewiss book, they think knowing is quite like a supermarket scanner. It can identify the milk but does not know its a container of milk. A person, unlike a supermarket scanner, can not only recognize things and know how to do things but can also know that something is the case. Allegory of the Cave Instead of fleeing away from the chaos, the doctors wife decides to stay with the blindness and helps people to reset the order. Seeing the world clearly, she can be viewed as the philosopher with knowledge. People who can achieve enlightenment deserve to be the

leader and ruler of the rest. Some comments for the philosopher may also apply to her. There are some statements about the philosophers of the Allegory of the Cave from John Day. The decision of the doctors wife The following paragraph is from Blindness. Its the plot that the doctor finds out his wife is not blind and urges her to leave. However, she refuses his suggestion. The world is mad and blind. The decision of remaining silent is clever. If she told others the truth, she might be expelled from the hospital. It would not improve the situation. Staying with the blind people and leading them to reset the order, she cures the blindness little by little.