Or you can now get your books through an Alexa enabled device such as your smart speaker, tablet or phone. Do we have any hope then? Perhaps we do, otherwise we may not be reading this great piece of literature after progressing through so many hideous acts- genocides, wars, rapes, murders etc.- in our own history of civilization. Hope is a necessary evil, which instills confidence in you to move forward, though it may be shallow and baseless at times and that is all sometimes we need to put forth through madness of humanity. Saramago doesn’t disappoint you here either. The major characters of Saramago braved themselves to last extend of their perseverance, which comes out to be most essential of human qualities needed for survival, to remain afloat in this sea of white nothingness. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2010-06-21 22:12:43 Boxid IA118613 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City San Diego, CA Curatenote shipped Donor

Blindness ( Portuguese: Ensaio sobre a cegueira, meaning Essay on Blindness) is a 1995 novel by the Portuguese author José Saramago. It is one of Saramago's most famous novels, along with The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and Baltasar and Blimunda. In 1998, Saramago received the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Blindness was one of his works noted by the committee when announcing the award. [1] Saramago has used quite intelligently one of the characters to infuse intrusive narration through “the doctor’s wife” whose eye balls remain utilitarian throughout the madness of Blind people. She is an intelligent woman who full of survival instinct which is quintessential to exist in such mayhem. Gradually, she becomes “eye” to the main characters of the story as their existence become solely dependent on her will and act. What may appear a position of fortune is essentially an unfortunate gift to her in the city of Blind people as she has to witness all the horrors, horrific acts through her experienced but numb eyes. The doctor’s wife may also imply a type of internal narrator infused masterfully by the author to show the human virtues such as empathy, sympathy, co-ordination, assistance and perseverance amidst the madness of inhumanity.As the devil himself paws at the doctor's wife with his cloven hooves, wanting to do great harm to her, he concludes, “This one is on the mature side, but could turn out to be quite a woman.” urn:oclc:67815987 Scandate 20101125061931 Scanner scribe3.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Worldcat (source edition)

bătrînul cu legătură neagră spuse, Mai bine mor de un glonţ decît în flăcări, părea glasul experienţei...”; The book offers numerous scientific findings and real-world answers about the consequences of this problem. For example, studies of the effects of sleep deprivation found that medical interns scheduled to work 24 hours at a stretch "increased their chances of stabbing themselves with a needle or a scalpel by 61 percent, their risk of crashing a car by 168 percent, and their risk of a near miss by 460 percent."What did it matter if the women had to go there twice a month to give theses men what nature gave them to give.” The first part of the novel follows the experiences of the central characters in the filthy, overcrowded asylum where they and other blind people have been quarantined. Hygiene, living conditions, and morale degrade horrifically in a very short period, mirroring the society outside.

The influenza epidemic of 1918 was one of the most terrifying events to happen to humanity in the 20th century even eclipsing two horrific world wars. 50 million people worldwide died suffocating from fluid filled lungs. Doctors were baffled, unable to find a cure or slow down the symptoms to allow the human immune system to have a chance. The disease had no compassion or any sense of a person’s economic situation, rich, poor, young and old all died. The average life expectancy in the United States dropped by twelve years. Conditions degenerate further as an armed clique gains control over food deliveries, subjugating their fellow internees and exposing them to violent assault, rape, and deprivation. Faced with starvation, internees battle each other and burn down the asylum, only to discover that the army has abandoned the asylum, after which the protagonists join the throngs of nearly helpless blind people outside who wander the devastated city and fight one another to survive. Though Leland is accused occasionally by friends of “over-intellectualising” his situation, his fine sensibility, lucid writing and dignified treatment of his subject feels anything but indulgent. This book invites us all to rethink what it means to desire, to read, to be independent, to sit with uncertainty and to assume a new identity. Leland models how we might accept inevitable changes in our faculties as we age with tempered apprehension, humour and interest.

The one person who remains seeing through the whole catastrophe realises in the end that people might not actually have been literally blind at all: Ms. Heffernan, a former radio and television producer and a former C.E.O. of several multimedia companies, explores many ways why people can persist in failing to see problems. She wants to know, for example, "What are the forces at work that make us deny the big threats that stare us in the face?" and "Why, after any major failure or calamity, do voices always emerge saying they'd seen the danger, warned about the risk - but their warnings had gone unheeded?" The dystopian tale follows a group of characters as they come to terms with sudden blindness that ultimately affects the entire population. Society breaks down and the characters all question long held assumptions and form new and unexpected bonds with each other. The book is powerful and contains a few disturbing scenes. The more disturbing scenes are an intrinsic part of a tale that remind the reader of the fragility of civilisation. Blindness, it is, or is it really? We have been brought up with the notion of blindness in which a person loses its ability to see things as they are, more often than not it reveals out empathy and compassion from us. But could Blindness draw out baffling horror out of humanity, perhaps if it succeeds in showing the ignominy of humanity to itself; probably that’s what Jose Saramago has been able to achieve with this masterpiece. It just holds an inhuman mirror which shows humiliation of entire humanity, the farcicality of civilization to reveal our savage and primitive nature hidden under its inauthentic sheath of comfort, which is stripped down to rags of acrid and stifling truth, however appalling it may be. We invariably boast about feathers we have been able to add in the crown of humanity, over the years of civilization, but have we really moved a bit, transformed a bit from what we were, Jose Saramago shattered such notions, if any, with disdain; but perhaps that is how we really are, the ghastly image he shows us is probably we are essentially. Just imagine that you are going about your daily life as you always do. It's a normal day; nothing out of the ordinary. But then, suddenly, without any forewarning, you go completely blind. One second seeing the world as you know it, the next experiencing a complete and unending whiteness.

Shortly before his death, Saramago gave German composer Anno Schreier the rights to compose an opera based on the novel. The libretto is written in German by Kerstin Maria Pöhler. Like the German translation of the novel, the opera's title is "Die Stadt der Blinden". It saw its first performance on November 12, 2011 at the Zurich Opera House.A fost vina mea, suspina ea, ce-i drept e drept, nu se putea nega, dar e la fel de adevărat, în caz c-ar fi o mîngîiere, că, dacă înainte de fiecare gest, am încerca să-i prevedem toate consecinţele, să le cîntărim serios, mai întîi pe cele imediate, apoi pe cele probabile, posibile, cele imaginabile, n-am reuşi să ne urnim un pas din locul unde primul gînd ne-a făcut să ne oprim”; Ms. Heffernan argues that the busier we become chasing financial gain, the less likely we are "to see clearly and work thoughtfully" and to consistently consider the interests of others. "It keeps us silent, too, fearful lest debate or criticism jeopardize salaries," she continues. This is a potentially powerful argument, and Ms. Heffernan has some ad hoc data to support it. But it would have been stronger with a larger, more structured set of evidence.