Where does Blindness take place.. and some filler

For some reason that I cannot explain, I have always thought that Blindness takes place somewhere in the southern cone of South America. However there is little textual evidence to suggest this, or any at all for that matter. But something about the feel of the world, a sort of feeling of being in a developed country, but torwards the lower end of one in wealth, with a sort of uncaring bureaucracy, (which is not something that I really associate with the Southern Cone Augustin Pinochet notwithstanding) It could be because of the influence of The Country of the Blind,  set in the Andes, another book written about in another blog post, hugely influential for me, as far as short stories go. So it is possible that I now just associate South America with the blind, with blindness. I decided in the end that nothing could be done to find where it takes place, and it does not matter, it could have happened in any industrialized country, it could have happened anywhere, when I noticed a strange turn of phrase, the use of the word "tu."  The word tu is used in both Spanish and Portuguese, though in the context: "You simply must call me "tu," Oh no I couldn't, I simply could not do that. " As far as I can tell the Spanish tu has little meaning beyond the word for you, the Portuguese tu, is a formal you similar to the Sie form in german, where it is only used to people that are not well known as a mark of politeness. The context suggests a Portuguese speaking language country, though seeing as the author was Portuguese that proves nothing, and in the end, the location does not matter so much as the ideas of it.

Cliches

“The cold dawn air cooled his face. How well one breathes out here, he thought to himself. He had the impression that his leg was less painful, but this did not suprise him, some-time before, and more than once, the same thing had happened. He was now outside the main door, he would soon be at the steps, That is going to be the most awkward bit, he thought. “(pg 73)

To this section, I will preface that it is not that I faulted the book for containing cliches, or a deus ex machina ending. I think that even if they were cliches, or a deus ex machina ending, the novel used these tropes well, and the overall work was not damaged by them, that being said however there was an instance where the cliche was very obvious, and greatly annoyed me, the death of the Thief. It makes liberal use of the "retirony" trope, in which the character is making plans for his future without knowing that he will never live through them. It uses the usual trope of "everything is so beautiful.. it does not hurt anymore." With the thief reflecting on a pleasant thing, then noting how his limbs do not hurt anymore, then mentioning how much he hopes he will get help, right after the end of the quote, he was marked for death, having fulfilled every trope of the sympathetic character  death that i have heard. At the very least it did not have the "sudden sharp pain" part of the sympathetic character death  Point of view cliche box. All this being said, I still liked the scene, I just thought it was to many cliches in one paragraph.

Describing Sight in a book about the Blind

“... the resistance of the contaminated broken, many of them no longer contaminated, others running like madmen, were still trying to escape their black destiny. They ran in vain, one after another they were struck with blindness, their eyes suddenly drowned in that hideous white tide inuading the corridors, the wards, their entire space.” (pg 112)

It is the imagery of Blindness, and not so much the characters, that pushes the story along. The imagery is vivid, ironic considering the subject material:  an epidemic of the blind. While the characters sort of stumble through the story, with a few exceptions, it is the feel and image of the dark (pun not intended) world of Blindness that is the stories strongest point.

The imagery of Blindness is aided by its writing. Long, run on sentences, and no quotations help the text, giving it a sort of almost-claustrophobia. To me, this really helped me put myself in that world. In the writing seems to be  in a sort of matter of fact, on the run writing style, as if Saramago was just describing the story as he saw it, running on in the sentences as if he is in a rush to get information on the page. (something he and I seem to share in our writing styles, he does it better) The matter of fact, out-of breath, fast writing style

The imagery is vivid in part because it does not hold back very much. It describes the disturbing happenings of the novel in great detail,. A case in point, the fire set by a woman to kill her rapers, and the descriptions of the sounds made: “the cries of rage and fear, the howls of pain and agony, there they have been mentioned, note in any case that they will die away, the woman with the cigarette lighter , for example, has been silent for some time.” (213) Again, Saramago does not shy away from the disturbing when describing the disturbing, and it is this quality that helps the imagery become vivid, as a combination of fast prose, disturbing images, and dark material has created an image in my head that will remain for some time.

That the imagery is so strong is fascinating considering that it was written in another language. Writing well in a language not known requires skilled translators, and imagery like this reflects well on both the translator and the author.

In the Country of the Blind...

A fleeting quote, or reference possibly, took my interest when reading Blindness, a novel by Jose Saramago, a reference to the old saying "In the Country of the Blind, the one eyed man is king" which though it may not have been directly referenced brought me, in this roundabout way, to H.G .Wells, The Country of the Blind. Like Blindness, the Country of the Blind features a sole individual who can see, in a world of the blind. Like  the first half of Blindness the short story uses imagery and location to create a sense of claustrophobia, unlike blindness, however, the person who is effected
   
         The Country of the Blind follows a mountaineer who exploring a remote mountain range, stumble across a remote mountain valley inhabited by only the blind. Isolated by a great avalanche which fell across the far end of the valley, the locals of this valley had all become blind centuries before. Being blind so long, they do not believe the mountaineers stories of sight, and think that he is somewhat insane.  For a little while, the mountaineer believes that he can rule the valley, as sighted among the blind, but soon he gives up on his dreams of rule, realizing that he could not ruthless enough to take control, and the blind are more difficult to subdue than he thought. After a short while, having made peace with the blind, telling them they were right and he was mad, the mountaineer falls in love with one blind woman, whose eyes are less sunken in. The blind however, decide that it is his eyes that cause his "insanity", and they plot to have them removed, so the mountaineer flees, up into the mountains, where his fate is unknown.
Claustrophobia is a big similarity between the two stories. The first half of Blindness, taking place in an insane asylum, with guards guarding the entrances, is extremely claustrophobic, giving a sense of despair and an inability to escape. The people who go blind are not always good, and this claustrophobia is heightened by those with whom the "good" blind people are stuck with. Reading Blindness, I got a feeling of being stuck, not in a literal sense but in a more figurative one, with the walls of the Asylum closing in, locking good and bad together. I was reminded, reading this, not only of Country of the Blind, but also of a line in Watchmen, a line spoken by the mentally unstable vigilante Rorschach in a prison, " I am not stuck in here with you , you are stuck in here with me."

     In the Country of the Blind, the beautiful mountain valley, ringed with snow and cliffs, that is the Valley of the Blind may seem pristine and idyllic, but it quickly turns to claustrophobia, as the mountains block escape from the blind, who in a sort of well-meaning way, want the mountaineer to remain there and lose his only way of escape. The blindness of the denizens of the valley, the picturesque location, the perfection of their little village, adds to the claustrophobia, it is too good, and stifling. the blind though portrayed as people, are almost creepy in their mannerisms in the story, groping around for the mountaineer, " like a game of blindman's bluff."

There is one major difference in the claustrophobia of the two stories. The blind in The Country of the Blind do not know any better, and are not claustrophobic, but instead are bit of atmosphere. The people of blindness are often characters whose thoughts the reader knows, and the act of being blind, rather than the blind themselves, with creepy movements and a sort of misguided well-being is a huge source of claustrophobia.
I do not think that The Country of the Blind was a huge source of inspiration for Jose Saramago, when he wrote Blindness, but the parallels between the two stories are interesting, and this short blog post is only scratching the surface of the analysis that can be done between the two.

The one blind spot in an otherwise great novel: the characters of Blindness

Characters

The characters in Blindness tend, though are not necessarily, not the most developed, serving instead as tools to move the plot along, however there are a few exceptions, this post will focus on both the exceptions and the less interesting less-developed characters.The characters in Blindness do not have names, but they are still identifiable characters. A name is never mentioned in the novel, instead, characters are always identified by one characteristic: the Doctor's wife, the Doctor, the First Blind Man etc.

The First Blind Man is the person first infected by the white blindness. Though it appears at first that he is the main character of the story, as the first chapter follows him, in later chapters he is a secondary character, being more of a background character than anything else, though he is present for most of the book. He seemed to me to be relatively bland, with little personality, except occasionally in his interactions with the Car Thief. The First Blind Man’s Wife is also a important character, and appears often in the story, but like her husband, rarely seems to have defining characteristics making her an identifiable character.

The Car Thief is the main character of the second chapter, stealing the First Blind Man’s car, after helping him get home in the first chapter. After being unlikable for a little while, assaulting the Woman with Dark Glasses, and stealing the First Blind Man’s car, after he is injured by the Woman with Dark Glasses. He is is bedridden,and in addition to being blind, is pathetic, and as a result he gets sympathy. Somehow, he discovers the Doctor’s Wife’s secret, but when his leg hurts too much, he drags himself off to find help, going through an excellent example of  a every- likable-character-who-is-dying-slowly-coming-to-grips-with-death-before-they-die scene, complete with the Car Thief mentioning how nice everything was, how little things hurt, before he is shot by guards for what they believe is trying to escape. He is the first death.

The Boy with a Squint is another background character. His purpose is mostly to make people to feel sorry for him, as he rarely says much, or advances the plot. He is a patient of the Doctor, but to me, he does not really have a character, he is just someone for the other characters to pity.

The Old Man With an Eye Patch is a more developed character than the Boy. HE is some sort of former military man, and plans out the oppressed assault on the other blind men. The Old Man is isolated, having no family, towards the end of the book he falls in with the woman with the dark glasses.

The Accountant, and the Man With The Gun. are the closest thing the story has to “villain” characters. The soldiers are far from kind, but they are more afraid than anything else, afraid of being blind. The Accountant, who is a actually blind person caught up in the blindness epidemic, works an accountant for the group led by the man with the gun, who though suffering with white blindness holds power over his gang, and the women he rapes, using a gun. Both characters are again quite simplistic, with the accountant, being a sort of opposite to the sighted Doctor’s Wife, being the more developed character, taking control of the gang after the death of the man with the gun, using his previous blindness as an advantage, like the one eyed man in the land of the blind.

The girl with the dark glasses is another character with some personality. She was assaulted by the Car Thief and hurt him in retaliation, but in the end she feels sorry of him. She often takes care of the Boy with a Squint, and develops a relationship with the Old Man with an Eyepatch.

The Doctor and the Doctor’s wife are the two characters closest to a protagonist in this novel. The doctor was a vision doctor, an optometrist. who lost his sight after examining the first man. Despite being an eye doctor, he still attempts to help the Car Thief after he was injured. He, along with his wife, are elected as leader of his area in the insane asylum used in holding the blind. Even he, however, though somewhat developed, is not developed as much as the usual main character, as his past, and a large amount of his thoughts are not dwelled upon at all.

The Doctor’s wife is the probable main character in the story. Being able to see, she is the reader's window into the blind, the one normal person in all of this. She is kind, takes lead often, and tries to help the blind unlike people in similar situations in other literature, unlike Nunez in the Country of the Blind, she does not see herself as the one eyed man, as a greater power among the disabled.  She does not reveal her sightedness  until later in the book as she and her husband agreed that she would be like a slave if she did.

It is not the characters as much as the imagery and the suspense that really drives the book along, oftentimes the characters seem more like tools than people, focusing on just one character trait: the boy with a squint is lonely and scared, the man with the gun is evil. Some however, like the Car Thief, or the Doctor’s wife, however, do not feel like that, instead, they feel more like real people in real situations, so even if characters are not the novel’s strong suit the characters still work in the situations given.

Humanity and Crakers

Humanity and Crakers

Repeatedly, it is stated in Oryx and Crake that the Crakers lack much of what makes us human. They cannot make art, they cannot have a religion, they do not have leaders. By the end of the book however, there is signs that all three of these things are present, to some extent, in their culture, showing that they are more human than it may seem. Thought the book hints point to the Crakers not following the ideas of Crake, who designed them to lack these traits.

“These new women are neither lopsided or sad: they’re placid, like animated statues. They leave him chilled.” (101) So thought Snowman of the Children of Crake, almost soulless, robotic, without culture, or fear. On the very next page after this thought, religion can be discerned from the veneration of Crake, a person who they never knew, who they praise for ending “chaos,” like the god of the bible. Snowman by his own admission, is Crakes prophet. (104)

At the end of the novel, the Crakers erect a totem, a statue of Crake, chanting Snow-man, they attempt to summon Snowman, after their encounter with other humans This is very different from the rather simplistic religion of the Crakers before Snowman left them. They made a symbolic art, they have a set ritual to summon snowman from the sky. This shows that Crake is  not only wrong about the capabilities of the Crakers, but very wrong, in this sense they are little different from humans of before.

This change is a turning point in the novel, before, despite hints that it may be otherwise, the Crakers are seen as an “other.” They are alien, reminiscent of the people of Winter, in The Left Hand of Darkness, in their egalitarianism, but very alien. Now they have religion, they have culture, Crake is proven wrong, and Snowman must make a decision.

Odds and Ends, The meaning of Oryx and Crake, and its place in literature final book writeuop

The Meaning of Oryx and Crake, and why Oryx and Crake is AP Material

After reading the entire book, looking back has allowed me to draw conclusions on Oryx and Crake, namingly, trying to figure out what meaning did she want people to get from it, and is the book, with its underlying symbolic meanings worthy of being used in AP classes.

Is Oryx and Crake AP Material?

Oryx and Crake is definitely AP material. The novel. despite having a rather cliche background,and setting (discussed in previous posts), has deeper meaning, and is not written at the third grade level. This combination of deeper meaning, and decent writing makes it worthy of being considered as material worth reading in an AP class. Snowman’s struggle through life, for instance, is not a simple one, accomplished by simple means. Snowman is a flawed human being, though somewhat relatable, a reasonable person is disgusted with what he did. When he was younger, he watched child pornography,  he created the advertising campaign for the BlyssPlus drug, which was used by Crake to wipe out humanity to pave the way for his Crakers. At the same time, Snowman is relatable, he is the last man, or he believes himself to be, he is lonely, alone, there seems to be some sort of remorse in him.

There is a purpose to Atwood's writing. The novel tries to show the dangers of genetic engineering, the failings of an Anarcho-Capitalist society, where there is next to no government, and corporations rule all. The novel also builds off of the “last man” theme common in many novels, starting with Mary Shelley's the last man, isolation, and loneliness, coming to grips with being the last person alive being the main themes of “last man” novels. Oryx and Crake builds off of these by introducing the Crakers, nearly human but not enough for Snowman to feel not alone, alien in some ways not in others.

The writing in Oryx and Crake is quite good. Though I must admit quite good can mean anything to me from Shakespeare all of the way down to the point where the writing is not so bad that it distracts me from the overall story. That being said, I found the prose of Oryx and Crake to be adequate in showing the complex themes that are in the novel, and it worked well with the setting.

The novel is also useful in an AP setting, though that is also true of any novel of literary merit. It there are overarching meanings, so questions can be answered. Snowman works as a prompt character for questions about insanity, complex characters, changing views, characterization, etc. that being said, I think that there are plenty of other AP worthy novels out there, and as I did not love it, would not want it to be on the curricula next year.

What meanings can be acquired from Oryx and Crake?

There is several greater meanings that can be made from the novel. The first is the arguments against consumerism, against genetic engineering, against a corporate culture. The world of Snowman’s youth is nasty and rather rotten, with a thin outer veneer of peace, it is violent, and corrupt, with no signs of an organized government, with companies releasing diseases of their own invention to make money, and most people living in squalor with a small elite. In the “present” Snowman is isolated, living with the semi-human Crakers, the novel touches upon what it means to be human, with the Crakers taking on more and more human traits, by the end of the novel they seem to have an obvious religion and leaders, two things that Crake said they could never have, due to their genetics. Snowman, being isolated, is also almost inhuman in his lack of active work towards his own survival, his living in the past. At the end of the novel, Snowman must react to the arrival of other humans, in one way or another, and he must make a human decision, driving home the theme of humanity.

Oryx and Crake: 50 % update

In this blog entry, I will be focusing less upon the plot of Oryx and Crake, and more upon comparing it to other books in the post apocalyptic genre that I have read. I will try to compare elements that I have seen so far in the novel with elements found in The Handmaid’s Tale, Blade Runner (The film, not the obscure novel) and my least favorite book of all time, A Boy and his Dog, by Harlan Ellison.

The society of Snowman's youth is obviously heavily influenced by the Cyberpunk movements of the 80s. The cyberpunk tropes of large corporations running everything, and decaying inner cities were children of that movement, which for me can be seen most easily in the film Blade Runner, about a bounty hunter in a futuristic Los Angeles that seems like a mix of Hong Kong, and Detroit. In Cyberpunk literature, and films, there is usually a few wealthy individuals who control the corporations and live in luxury, or at least modernity. This trope is shown in Oryx and Crake in the Compounds, where Jimmy and Crake grew up, surrounded by the Pleeblands, the rest of the iceberg to the tip that is seen in the compounds, always on the edge of the story to tell us that life is much worse outside of the Compounds and the relatively sheltered life of Jimmy.

There are some differences between the setting of a average Cyberpunk novel, and the early part of Oryx and Crake. The primary difference is that Jimmy is an elite in this society. He lives in Compounds, and never seems to be bothered by fighting in the Pleeblands. If this was a cyberpunk novel, Jimmy would most likely be a dirt poor resistor to the unstoppable power in the Compounds, down in the depths of the Pleeblands. Other differences can be found in the use of genetic engineering. Though Ornx and Crake uses the ideas of growing meat for food, and organs for the wealthy, it does not go down the cyberpunk way of people experimenting with their bodies, injecting things into their skin, modifying their own bodies. Atwood does not write a cyberpunk novel when she wrote Oryx and Crake, she uses the tropes to show the early life of Jimmy, to provide a sort of base for Jimmy’s actions in the present time.

Blade Runner follows Rick Deckard in his search for artificial humans, or “replicants” who escaped and are now wandering the earth, highly dangerous and with extremely short lifespans. Blade runner shows the usual visuals of extreme urban decay, with sets looking like a rainy Hong Kong, with added poverty and seediness.  The poverty, enourmous in-your face advertizments, social unrest and seediness of Blade Runner’s Los Angeles can be found in Oryx and Crake in the Pleeblands. The excess of the wealthy Dr. Tyrell, of the Tyrell Corporation, can be compared to the wealthy, sheltered life in the Compunds. The replicants could be seen as the children of Crake, though they have little in common apart from a sort of humanity that both Snowman, and Rick must grapple with in the end.

The novel that is most close to Oryx and Crake that I have read is A Boy and His Dog, by Harlan Ellison. By a sad circumstance I found this disturbing novella, buried in a list of Hugo Award winners. The novella focuses on a boy, Vic, who in character seems like a mix between Snowman and a serial rapist, and his genetically modified talking dog, Blood, who eggs him on. After reading the first 200 pages of Oryx and Crake, connections can be made between the two, to the point that they could be in the same world. Like Vic and his all consuming obsession with rape, Snowman is far from modern day sexual norms, being highly interested in child pornography and snuff in his youth, this sort of messed up material made it very difficult for me to read both books. The background of the post apocalyptic wasteland, and the genetically modified creatures that inhabit it seems to have a similar nature in Boy and His Dog. Both seem to have a cynical picture on the world, In a Boy and his Dog, Vic is only really kind to, only cares for his dog, who he has a pact with, where Blood finds women for Vic with his sense of smell, and Vic finds food for Blood, who cannot find food on his own. This is a highly cynical view of human nature, in that it shows one of the few survivors of the apocalypse obsessed with rape, and helping an animal that cannot feed itself, not because he his kind, but because he wants its services. Oryx and Crake is cynical, with its cyberpunk setting in the beginning, and its post-apocalyptic setting in the later parts, caused by human set diseases, to protect the Children of Crake, but not nearly as cynical as Boy and His Dog.

There is rarely anything new in the world of science-fiction, new tech ideas may rise, but social structures are taken from the work before them. Just as Star Wars is a mash of Dune and Foundation, as Foundation itself was taken from history, and Dune from Arabic culture, combined with environmentalism and mysticism. Oryx and Crake is influenced by the writings of novelists before it, and them themes explored by other authors.