Proverbs and False Comfort in Blindness Saskia Rohde 12th Grade

In Blindness, José Saramago questions the morals innately present in human nature through characters who ignore or misuse the advice provided by sayings. By inserting old, vague, and contradictory proverbs, Saramago demonstrates that in bewildering times, sayings become a comfort rather than actual guidance. He criticizes the use of sayings when one doesn’t follow their advice, suggesting that humans should rely on their own rationality instead of clinging to a fake morality. Once the blindness epidemic strikes, the characters are thrown into a new situation where old morals and proverbs are no longer useful, and they are subsequently stripped of the comfort that counterfeited logic and ethics provided them. The main characters then learn to think critically and reconstruct reason through their own original sayings, giving them organization, rationality, and ultimately their sight. As Saramago submerges the world in blindness he portrays the absurdity of characters’ reliance on old proverbs, exposing that individuals tend to rely on advice they’ve heard to make themselves feel better and not use logic to draw their own moral conclusions. Saramago distinguishes between words as a comfort versus words as guidance, ultimately...