'The Road' vs 'Blindness'

Assignment 2 - 'writing about something the story remined me of'


When I was reading the first part of the book ‘The Road’, I had a lot of difficulties in understanding what it was about. I couldn’t understand the words and I couldn’t put the stories together into one. However, there was one thing that kept me from not giving up. It was the unknown familiarity of the story. I think the familiarity was because of the many apocalyptic movies and books I’ve seen. As I read the book, the story kept on overlapping with a book called ‘Blindness’ by Jose Saramago.

‘Blindness’ is an apocalyptic book. The problem starts when a man suddenly yells out that he cannot see in the middle of the street. Then, the people who had contact with him get the same symptoms. As more and more people start to get this virus, the government decides to lock them in a mental institution. The book is mainly about the story inside this mental institution and the events that happen after they escape and go back into the world.

I think the biggest relation between the two books is that people can’t see well. In the book ‘Blindness’, people with the virus cannot see anything but white waves. They (the infected people) say that they feel like they are swimming in a pool of milk. So, as the story goes on, people learn to conceive things by touching them and to keep balance without looking. Similarly, if you see on page 15, the man says, ‘The blackness he woke to on those nights was sightless and impenetrable. A blackness to hurt your ears with listening.’ At first, people who can’t see feel like they can’t do anything anymore. However, as time passes they get used to it and they can live with it. Although it is a common plot used by authors I always feel amazed and touched by human’s adapting abilities. I mean, you can just experience it by turning off the light and staring at the darkness for a few minutes. Your eyes adapt and you can see distant outlines of some objects around you.

Another thing that caught my eye was the strong relations that seemed to form or get stronger as the tragedy progresses. In ‘Blindness’, people were complete strangers at first. However, as people strived to survive, they became bonded together. They shared even the littlest piece of crackers and held hands so that they wouldn’t fall apart. Similarly, in ‘The Road’, the man and the boy had a very strong bond. If you see on page 29, the author narrates that the man knew ‘That the boy was all that stood between him and death.’ Not only that, the boy seems to care about the man if you see him trying to share with the man, Coca Cola and Cocoa. I think this is why I like by apocalyptic pieces so much. As I read the book, I could feel how important it is to keep strong bonds and form great relationships. Caring about one another and surviving altogether as a result of each other’s sacrifices, it seems so great and makes me feel thankful and happy that they all survived.

But, more than the two points I made above, the thing that most reminded me of the book ‘Blindness’ was the supermarket and the continuous mentioning of other survivors. In the book ‘Blindness’, there are a lot of scenes where people violently fight over food because there are so few. The scene that struck me the most was the scene where people were all fighting with each other in a supermarket. In this scene the woman who still has her sight, finds a storage room underground. She silently moves down and finds food to take to her people. But, before she leaves the room, she opens up a sausage to eat it because she was so hungry. However, starving people smelled the sausage and started running for her! It was so freaky, gross and violent but it was really interesting too. Anyways, the man in ‘The Road’ also says on page 42 that ‘It was for us and it will be for others and we don’t know who they will be and we can’t hear them coming. It’s not safe.’ Not only that, he keeps on saying things like ‘This was not a safe place. They could be seen from the road now it was day.’(p.5). At first, I couldn’t get what it means. From the earlier descriptions, there was supposed to be nothing but this man had a fear of something. However, from the page 28, ‘In those first years the roads were peopled with refugees.’ and page 46 ‘We’re not the first ones here.’ I was able to remember the striking scene from the ‘Blindness’ and understand that the fear the man had was directed at the other survivors.

As I read this story, I could find many connections between the two books. In some ways these books are very different. However, I found that after I related two books together, it made the book a little bit easier to understand. While reading the next part of the book, I will try to connect it more with other stories so that I can understand better.