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SETTING
Aug 29, 2010 16:11:51 GMT -5
Post by Estefania Jervis on Aug 29, 2010 16:11:51 GMT -5
The time when this story occurs is during the late 1990’s because this book comes from the science fiction genre and the futuristic fiction subgenre which indicates that it’s about something that may happened in the future of society. Knowing that this book was published in 1995 the story may take place in the following years. I also believe that this “white blindness disease” takes place during this time because of the descriptions that the book gives about the city and electronic devices as the radio that the man with the black eye patch had. The circumstances by which this story takes place is a disease called “white blindness” according to society. It’s highly contagious and creates a feeling as that, according to the first man who caught it is described as, “…it’s as if I were caught in a mist or fallen into a milky sea.” (pg. 3)
Jose Saramago’s writing style doesn’t specify many details about the setting of his book. By the little clues that the author give us during the story we can tell that this story takes place in a big city first of all because of the traffic that is described in the beginning of the book. In actuality the big cities of different nations are full of movement all over the place and as its describe in the first pages of Blindness, “The pedestrians have just finished crossing but the sign allowing the cars to go will be delayed for some seconds, some people maintain that this delay, while apparently so insignificant, has only to be multiplied y the thousand of traffic lights that exist in the city...” (pg. 1) This describes that part of this story is taking place in a big city by the description of the “thousand of traffic lights existing in the city” which is only seen in big and important cities. After the “white blindness” pelage, the city was almost destroyed because of all the accidents that occurred and full of dead body’s all over the place.
The other place where this book takes place is the mental hospital where people who started becoming blind were sent. When authorities got to know about this terrible disease, people who were infested were sent to quarantine in this place where they didn’t have good services, food or clean water. While time passed in the story, more persons were sent to the mental hospital and the space and food became a bigger problem because there wasn’t enough for everyone. Many diseases started to appear and the guards didn’t give them medicine so very simple diseases became mortal for many of the internees. People reacted badly to this place because in first place they were sent there against their will and also because of the living condition and little resources they had to survive. I believe anyone should live this way; it goes against human rights and integrity of people.
For the people who were blind, this setting affected them because of the sounds and smells that they could perceive. But the most affected one by all this was the doctor’s wife because she was the only one who could see everything that was happening and shocked her so much that there were times when she wanted to became blind too in order to cease all that suffering she had inside when she says, "You do not know, you can not know, what it means to have eyes in a world in which everyone else is blind, I am not a queen, no, I am simply the one who was born to see this horror" (p. 247).
Estefania Jervis Dávalos
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SETTING
Aug 29, 2010 18:23:22 GMT -5
Post by kgabela on Aug 29, 2010 18:23:22 GMT -5
The setting of the book blindness takes place in a city which isn’t mentioned in the book are two types of settings the closed settings and the open settings. The closed are inside the house and inside the mental hospital and the open setting is in the city but booth aren’t good. It all starts with a man that is driving his car and suddenly he turned blind but it wasn’t a normal blindness. It was a blindness epidemic which was transmitted by contact, so that’s why it started to spread very quickly. So then the health minister and the city authority’s decide to take all the people with the blindness epidemic and the people who had been in contact to a mental hospital that was empty. All the people who went blind were sent there and stayed in quarantine with the objective of trying to stop the spread of this strange epidemic that was never seen before. The mental hospital was very big and had two wings the right and the left. Each wing had 3 different rooms in each room there were 2 rows of beds one in each side. One wing was used for the infected and the other with the people that had been in contact with the infected people. What we know of the description and details of the setting described by the doctor’s wife the only person that wasn’t blind, she says that the rooms where gray with gray beds and very big all the space. The doctor and his wife were the first to arrive then each day start coming more people until there was a point where there weren’t enough beds, the ground the bathrooms and everything else where very dirty. The interned people were treated like animals, lived in a dirty place without hygiene, the food was thrown to them, they eaten little portions because the food given wasn’t enough for all and many were killed. I think that military should have treated them better and understand them because becoming blind suddenly should be very hard and provide them more food and better conditions. All the people that got blind were isolated of the city they didn’t knew anything that was going outside. When the mental hospital got in fire everybody went out to the city which was a chaos, the streets were filed with human and animal’s excrement, mud and death people. People lived in abandoned stores supermarkets or others houses because they didn’t remember the path back to their homes. The streets were filled with abandoned cars, everything was a chaos, and the conditions were bad including the lack of water and food and the bad smell. I think the author created this setting to show people what would happen if all the people got blind and how it feels to be blind. My opinion about the setting is that would be terrible to live in a place like that neither animals can live or survive in such bad conditions its terrible all the things this people pass throw. Karina Gabela 11th grade
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SETTING
Aug 29, 2010 19:44:55 GMT -5
Post by claudiaricaurte on Aug 29, 2010 19:44:55 GMT -5
The novel “Blindness” takes place first in an unknown city which the author, Saramago, does not describe in any kind of detail nor gives us its name or the ones of the people in it. Later the story is developed in a mental asylum where the blinds are taken in order to prevent the epidemic from spreading. This mental asylum is well described by the author, explaining the animalistic life the blinds where living there. The mental asylum is described with wards a central garden etc. but the most detailed things Saramago explains are the conditions in which people start to live, since they didn’t use bathrooms not have any hygiene at all. The reaction of the characters to this setting is of deep fear, animalistic attitudes, and basically chaotic. I think that the two setting were very well described, and not described since when the author leaves the name of the city and those of the characters unknown it makes the reader wonder more, and focus more in the detail of human emotions.
Claudia Ricaurte
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SETTING
Aug 29, 2010 20:18:07 GMT -5
Post by carmenmasaenz on Aug 29, 2010 20:18:07 GMT -5
Blindness plot takes place in a city, the name is never revealed. This city seems to be a very calm and normal place. This changes when epidemic of white blindness turns everything upside down. Everyone starts to panic so the authorities make the first infected get removed to an abandoned mental hospital. There they are isolated from the other people which are still healthy. The characters are unhappy with this decision because they want to stay home with their families and belongings. They are afraid, because they don’t know how the place looks like and also because of the way other internees act, in desperation and stress. The characters inside the asylum start to react anxious to recover their sight, obtain food and pleasure so they do things before thinking; this makes the initial problems worse. When the story its almost over, the internees leave the hospital due to the fact that everyone in the city was blind and a big fire burned down the hospital. The doctor’s wife moves with some of the people of her ward and walk through the city, they end in the doctor’s house after spending some nights in different places. My opinion to the setting is that it goes very well with the plot. Saramago expresses the chaos that forms when everyone goes blind focusing in how receiving no help makes the problem worse. It makes the problem look as a more close reality instead of being superficial. Carmen Maria Saenz Int
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SETTING
Aug 29, 2010 20:21:00 GMT -5
Post by mjcevallos on Aug 29, 2010 20:21:00 GMT -5
The story takes place in a city that is never named neither is the country. The author never mentions nor even talks about details in the city. Where the story most takes place is in the mental hospital where all the blind people are internship and put into quarantine. The people who are in this hospital are isolated from the rest so they wouldn’t get infected. The metal hospital looks like a jail with guards that supervise it. This story takes place around the beginnings of the 90´s because they talked about technology and that kind of stuff. At the beginning the hospital is a comfortable and clean place that is enough to everyone. But with the pass of time more people get infected so the hospital gets overpopulated and everything is scarce. People fight for food, for using the bathroom and for a place to sleep. The hospital becomes a mess where much desperation takes place. It becomes dirty and destroyed. Saramago describes perfectly how the hospital is a chaos. What the author was attempting to achieve with these settings is that in any place of the world this crisis could occur. When he uses the setting of the metal hospital what he tries to achieve is that many people could become inhumane and take advantage of the rest when they are not in good conditions, in this case blind. Also he tries to say that many people wouldn’t care if others are in bad situations. I think that the settings fit perfectly to what Saramago wants to transmit to the readers about how humans can be selfish and only think about themselves and not about the others. They don’t care because they aren’t passing through that situation. By: Maria Jose Cevallos 11th D
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SETTING
Aug 29, 2010 20:48:43 GMT -5
Post by mjcarrera on Aug 29, 2010 20:48:43 GMT -5
Blindness takes place mainly in two places. The first place is in the city, which is an unnamed and normal city were the epidemic of blindness starts. The second place is in the asylum or mental hospital were blind people are isolated. First the city and the asylum were in order and with comfortable conditions but as the plague of blindness starts to increase this places become devastated, there is chaos and disorder. These places have awful circumstances of hygiene, disorder, confusion, people fight for food and there is lots of pain. There isn’t enough space in the asylum for too much people, the place is dirty but at the end they got used to it. Blind people not only needed to stand the facts that they were completely blind, starving and living in terrible conditions they needed to bear the guards that treat them like animals and the king of ward three who threat them with a gang in order to take control of the asylum and benefit himself and his assistants. In my opinion these settings are very cruel. There, blind people feel hopeless, fear, desperation and loneliness and that isn’t fair for them, instead they should be supported and loved. The setting of the book matches exactly with the conflict of the story because it’s understandable that when a society is in chaos, the city becomes torn and in crisis. Maria Jose Carrera
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SETTING
Aug 29, 2010 20:54:43 GMT -5
Post by carolina on Aug 29, 2010 20:54:43 GMT -5
The novel Blindness, by Josè Saramago, takes place in an unknown city were a man becomes suddenly blind and no one knows why. The city doesn´t have a name perhaps as an attempted to interpret blindness as a universal condition. Then the story takes us to a mental hospital were all the people suffering from this illness are taken. They were isolated from the rest of the world. The way that the character respond to the setting of the mental hospital was in a bad way because he felt sad and angry since the soldiers treated them as animals and they shouldn´t have because they are sick human beings that don´t have any guilt for what is happening. My opinion about the settings is that they are somehow appropriate because the city is where everyone lives but maybe they shouldn´t have been taken to a mental hospital, just a normal hospital where they can still be isolated from society so that the blindness doesn´t spread any longer. But they should be treated respectfully.
Carolina De Sucre
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SETTING
Aug 29, 2010 21:48:04 GMT -5
Post by cbenitez on Aug 29, 2010 21:48:04 GMT -5
The story take place in a city and then in a mental hospital, the location and name of both the city or the mental hospital is not specific. You could that the story could be in the past but not so many years ago, only a few. This mental hospital is now turned into a prision where the unfunctional people considered by the government is thrown in. The conditions that they have in this place were horrible. The government didnt care about this citi zens and have no intention to cure them or to help them. The governent only want them to dissapear. This setting wake up the instinct of survival and people start fighting. The people inside was desesperade and the only thing they wanted to do was to get out. I think that the author of the novel is trying to represent with this setting is caos and suffering and how can fear make people desesperate and crazy.
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SETTING
Aug 29, 2010 21:52:38 GMT -5
Post by emilianaranjo on Aug 29, 2010 21:52:38 GMT -5
Blindness has two main settings, the first one is the city in which the story begins to take place and in which it ends as well. The second setting is in this mental hospital in which all the people that suddenly become blind are force to go in isolation to this hospital. Referring to the first setting is hasn´t much detail, it´s an unknown city, from the minimum detail that the author express we can analyze that is an urban and technological city because it has cars and lights. At first this city is the main setting because in it there is the doctor´s surgery and all the house of the characters, and at the end this setting is the last place where the story takes place, in the ophthalmologist house. For this setting the characters respond in an adventure way, after leaving the mental hospital their own city becomes a jungle in which you have to fight for your survivable. The second main setting is the mental hospital in which all people that got the epidemic have to be in quarantine or isolated. Characters respond to this place harsher, because they are limited to follow orders and their privacy has finish because they are force to live with more blind people. My personal opinion for both setting is of pity, because in both of them they need to fight for life by themselves because everyone is on the same conditions and there are always people who tale advantages of others, these settings seem to be like jail, you have to care for yourself not knowing what might come.
emilia naranjo
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SETTING
Aug 29, 2010 22:44:37 GMT -5
Post by vlopez on Aug 29, 2010 22:44:37 GMT -5
The setting of the novel starts in the city, it is described as a normal city too. Then the setting changes drastically because of the plague that hit the city. All of the blind people are taken to a mental hospital where they are forced to stay so the plague does not extend. The problem is that this setting makes everything worst because it is full of blind people that have to eat, bath, go to the bathroom and basically live there. But they are not prepared to do all those things with this disability so the hospital ends up being a mess where is impossible to live. Then a gunman makes everything worst when he takes power over the food. The characters respond badly to this setting since people start acting as animals not as human beings. My opinion about this setting in particular is that the government should take care about blind people and not be coward to leave them alone with no real help from them. So I think that there is when you see the true face of the government when confronting this type of issues with their own people.
Valentina López
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SETTING
Aug 29, 2010 23:19:29 GMT -5
Post by Melissa Vorbeck on Aug 29, 2010 23:19:29 GMT -5
Blindness takes place in an unknown city. For most of the book, the setting is an old mental hospital. The characters do not respond well to this setting because, obviously, they are not used to living with that many people in that filth. They have just turned blind when they are forced into living in a relatively small place for a big number of people. Since no one (except the doctor’s wife) could see, they paid no attention to personal hygiene and didn’t use the marked place for things like using the bathroom.
My opinion is that the government should have thought of the conditions of this place before sending everyone there. They could have temporarily taken them there and then moved them to a bigger place when they saw that the epidemic was spreading out of anybody’s control.
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SETTING
Sept 5, 2010 10:36:11 GMT -5
Post by alegriabaus on Sept 5, 2010 10:36:11 GMT -5
In this book, there are two different settings. The city and the mental hospital. The plot starts in the street, were a man who's waiting for the light to change goes blind. Then this blindness tarts spreading like an epidemic to a lot of people. There is when the setting is transfered to the mental hospital. This place is where all the blind people is sent to live. The hospital is the main setting, this place is horrible. The response of the characters to this place is firts angry, because forcefully they are privated of having a good life style and they atart living like animals. I think this setting is completely in humane, its disgusting, it has way more people than it can handle and they don't even get enough food for everyone.
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SETTING
Sept 5, 2010 10:37:05 GMT -5
Post by alegriabaus on Sept 5, 2010 10:37:05 GMT -5
In this book, there are two different settings. The city and the mental hospital. The plot starts in the street, were a man who's waiting for the light to change goes blind. Then this blindness tarts spreading like an epidemic to a lot of people. There is when the setting is transfered to the mental hospital. This place is where all the blind people is sent to live. The hospital is the main setting, this place is horrible. The response of the characters to this place is firts angry, because forcefully they are privated of having a good life style and they atart living like animals. I think this setting is completely in humane, its disgusting, it has way more people than it can handle and they don't even get enough food for everyone. Alegria Baus
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jmora
New Member
Posts: 4
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SETTING
Sept 5, 2010 20:17:18 GMT -5
Post by jmora on Sept 5, 2010 20:17:18 GMT -5
The city seems nice, with many buildings, hotels, like a normal city. Once the first man from the car gets blind, many other people started to get blind so suddenly. When this happens the blind people are taken to a hospital to keep blind internees. Here the setting changes very much, there are many beds, an unclean bathroom, with the time it got dirty because internees left the wastes in the floor. Internees fought for their lives, they chased the food even though it was unfair portions, there was a lot of violence throughout the story and it is kind of happening in times like our these. Because society got cars, got buildings, got hosplitals. They have to make it work with sight or without it.
Jose Ignacio Mora
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SETTING
Aug 4, 2011 13:00:03 GMT -5
Post by francescavelarde on Aug 4, 2011 13:00:03 GMT -5
The story develops in a normal city. In a typical day a sudden blindness appear in a men, who was driving when this event happened, but the characteristic of this illness is its fast spread, which lead us to the next main setting. That is when authorities and people started to freak out and they decided to send the infected to a hospital or a quarantine building. At first authorities take care of them but they started to fear them, so they stopped sending supplies to the infected. Therefore people inside star acting like animals trying to survive in all this mess. Meanwhile people inside the hospital began to heal the outside world was a complete chaos, all the population got blind and the city was devastated. Sadly people inside the hospital figured how to get out andthey found the city worst than the hospital.
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