ENGL 231: APOCALYPSE & DYSTOPIA. Depravity s Depths

Transcription

1 ENGL 231: APOCALYPSE & DYSTOPIA Depravity s Depths

2 do the internees remain interested in sex after they have all begun to smell horrible? doctor s wife watching two people make love w/ mixed feelings feels they will never become one, yet cries as she notices how much they love each other clasped hands, etc. (153-54) women soon to be man-handled by hostile ward: It also has to be said that these women are enjoying themselves on two counts, such are the mysteries of the human soul... (READ ). women sharing themselves w/ men giving them relief (172 mid-bot) doctor sleeps w/ girl w/ glasses, his wife thinks neither to blame (174-75). the hostile internees don t care that the lineup of women smells horrible: it seems impossible that the animal drive for sex should be so powerful, to the point of blinding a man s sense of smell... (177 mid).

3 does one gender prove itself more heroic than the other under these dire circumstances? MEN doctor ashamed that he didn t grab the leader s gun when it was pressed against his own neck (147 top-mid) eight men try to reason with the hostile ward, are chased away w/ cudgels (163 mid-bot); repercussions are no food for three days, and less food thereafter (164 top-mid) men yield to demands for their women, then try to rationalize their acquiescence (167 bot 168 mid) two men and two women rescue the corpses after a foray into the hostile ward concludes with two deaths ( )

4 does one gender prove itself more heroic than the other under these dire circumstances? WOMEN women (incl. doctor s wife & wife of 1st blind man) offer to yield to lusts of the hostile ward so that their own ward can eat (169 mid 170 bot). women in neighboring ward don t warn those going to hostile ward for first time because curled up in their beds like animals that had been given a good thrashing they scream when the men come near (178 top). For hours they had passed from one man to another, from humiliation to humiliation, from outrage to outrage, exposed to everything that can be done to a woman while leaving her still alive (181 top-mid).

5 does one gender prove itself more heroic than the other under these dire circumstances? WOMEN The woman with insomnia dies afterwards from the stress (181-82), and the doctor s wife looks at her bruised body and sees it as the image of all the women s ravaged bodies (182 top). when hostile internees come back second time to tell women to get ready, doctor s wife slips into their ward, kills the leader with scissors, and pulls out the women striking blows left and right to clear a path (188-92). one woman finds a lighter in her bag and sets aflame the hostile ward, burning herself to death in the process (211 bot 213 mid).

6 at what moments does silence serve the characters better than words? following adultery, doctor s wife & girl w/ dark glasses connect by whispers and touch (175 top-mid) following adultery, doctor kisses s wife on the forehead (177 top-mid) no use describing one woman s death, or the atrocities recently suffered by those surviving rape: the unnameable exists, that is its name, nothing else (182-83). only women can find a few words to identify the recent horror and subsequent transformation (204 top-mid).

7 is the old man with a black eye patch intended to be a reflective, Tiresias-like sage, or do his actions align him more closely with Greek military heroes of old like Odysseus? older, impotent man w/ black eye patch (172 top), finds pretty girl w/ dark glasses in his bed, and his strength of heart helps him satisfy her (173 top-bot) when others turn on the (unidentified) woman who killed the hostile leader, the old man stands up for her: READ encourages them to fight for their food, to arm selves ( ) blind man: Anyone who is going to die is already dead and does not know it, That we re going to die is something we know from the moment we are born... (201 bot).

8 do the old categories that governed moral behavior retain their importance within the asylum? difficulty of reducing hostile internee to evil incarnate: READ 158 bot washes female corpse, though bodily purity impossible to maintain (184 bot) women born again transformed by this experience: READ 204 top-mid as human history has shown, it is not unusual for good to come of evil, less is said about the evil that can come out of good, such are the contradictions of this world of ours, some warrant more consideration than others... (213 mid-bot).

9 do the blind navigate their urban surroundings in the same way they did back in the asylum? she saw the situation quite clearly, somebody who was blind and had left their home would only manage to find it again by some miracle... (222 mid-bot). they kept very close to the buildings with their arms stretched out before them, they were constantly bumping into each other like ants on the trail, but when this happened no one protested, nor did they have to say anything... (225 bot). She wanted to keep all of them close to her [in two rows of three], not in the usual fragile Indian file, which can be broken at any moment... (260 top). Creates cord (260 mid)

10 does society appear more egalitarian once everyone is blind? blind girl w/ glasses is further humanized stereotypes about prostitutes further interrogated (219 mid, 273 top-mid, , 244 mid-bot) old woman in building: witch (250 top) becomes not a bad person (251) What s the world like these days, the old man with the black eye patch had asked, and the doctor s wife replied, There s no difference between inside and outside, between here and there, between the many and the few, between what we re living through and what we shall have to live through, And the people, how are they coping, asked the girl with dark glasses, They go around like ghosts... (242 mid-bot).

11 do the social ties formed by the blind resemble those which existed when they could still see? blind companions help one remove glass splinter from knee in supermarket (226-27). doctor s wife feels responsibility to help everyone, but can t (252 top) doctor s wife feels closer to girl w/ glasses, perhaps because she s like a sister, perhaps because her husband slept w/ the girl (252-53). doctor s wife: if we stay together we might manage to survive, if we separate we shall be swallowed up by the masses and destroyed... We re going back to being primitive hordes... [BUT] When it starts to become difficult to find water and food, these groups will almost certainly disband, each person will think they have a better chance of surviving on their own... (256 top-mid). girl with glasses dismisses old man with eye patch s suggestion that he should be euthanized when it begins to become a burden to the group (257-58).

12 does heroically protecting her friends require the doctor s wife to act the villain to everyone outside her group? doctor s wife does not let everyone near supermarket know about the basement filled with food, rationalizes that it would create a stampede (232 mid-bot); leaves door closed (236 bot). in no time a blind man was shouting, Who s eating sausage around here, no sooner were those words spoken than the doctor s wife threw caution to the wind and broke into reckless flight, colliding, jostling, knocking people over, with a devil-may-care attitude that was wholly reprehensible, for this is not the way to treat blind people who have more than enough reasons to be unhappy (233 top-mid).

13 does Saramago appear determined to reinforce stereotypes about the blind being somehow less than human? startled when he heard her say, Good-day, he had lost the habit of saying of saying Good-day, not only because the days of the blind, strictly speaking are never likely to be good, but also because no one could be entirely sure whether it was afternoon or night (221 bot). she herself would also have to turn blind in order to understand that people get used to anything, especially if they have ceased to be people... (225 mid). doctor s wife w/ girl with dark glasses: Don t cry, what else could she say, what meaning do tears have when the world has lost all meaning... (248 mid).

14 does Saramago appear determined to reinforce stereotypes about the blind being somehow less than human? I m simply an ignorant girl, but in my opinion we re already dead, we re blind because we re dead, or if you would prefer me to put it another way, we re dead because we re blind, it comes to the same thing... (251 bot). the feelings with which we have lived and which allowed us to live as we were, depended on our having the eyes we were born with, without eyes feeling become something different, we do not know how, we do not know what, you say we re dead because we re blind, there you have it... (252 mid). Perhaps humanity will manage to live without eyes, but then it will cease to be humanity, the result is obvious, which of us think of ourselves as being as human as we believed ourselves to be before, I, for example, killed a man... (255 bot).

15 in what other deep philosophical enquiries does Saramago involve the reader? Do you love your husband. Yes, as I love myself, but should I turn blind, if after turning blind I should no longer be the person I was, how would I then be able to go on loving him, and with what love, Before, when we could still see, there were also blind people, Few in comparison, the feelings in use were those of someone who could see, therefore blind people felt with the feelings of others, not as the blind people they were, now, certainly, what is emerging are the real feelings of the blind, and we re still only at the beginning, for the moment we still live on the memory of what we felt, you don t need eyes to know what life has become today... (252 mid-bot).