The hospital for the mentally retarded, where the blind are imprisoned, is the symbol of this rapidly deteriorating system: a wild competition for food and women, the law of the strongest, rapes and famine.
The author shows his visceral disgust for this system by plunging us into packets rot and excrement in which `blind 'should (and must) live.
Philosophically speaking, to Saramago, man is a mere animal. Moreover, he uses a dog as a symbol of pure nature. Man for him is pure being; selfishness is only his second skin. This is the system that corrupts and blinds him to his real interests ''.
The doctor's wife does not become blind, because it helps a altruistically others. It does not kill the gangsters terrorizing his classmates. Only those, like her, who do not let themselves be tempted by the sirens of the market are saved. All other become and remain blind.
I believe this view is extremely naive. Saramago's dream of a return to the Golden Age seems childish, since the Golden Age never existed. Scientifically speaking, altruism is not an option for the survival of a species. No ideology can stop `blind watchmaker '.
Apart from some big exaggerations (`eat is stealing '), this book is in fact a fierce description, like Schopenhauer, the true nature of the human species.
A strong novel, but biased.
