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
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
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