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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What valuable piece of information does the Doctor's Wife take from the radio?

2. What object is not in the painting one man saw before going blind?

3. Why don't the police arrest the Thief after he goes blind?

4. Why is the Girl with Dark Glasses seeing the Doctor?

5. What does the Ministry of Health require of the Doctor?

Short Essay Questions

1. What insights does the Doctor's Wife have about the society of blind people in quarantine in the beginning of Chapter 5?

2. What happens when the hundreds of new internees are delivered to quarantine?

3. How are conditions in quarantine affected as more inmates arrive throughout Chapter 5?

4. What appears to be the pattern for the spread of blindness in the novel?

5. Describe the First Man's Wife's reaction to her husband when she comes home.

6. Describe the humiliation that occurs when the Doctor tries to use the toilet in Chapter 6.

7. Describe the Girl with Dark Glasses' attitude toward her work.

8. Describe the Man with the Eye-Patch.

9. Why do the guards fire on the inmates?

10. How does the First Man compose himself in the Doctor's office?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Consider the idea of compassion and love in the novel. Often, the world of Blindness seems devoid of these qualities except in a few strange instances:

Part 1) Explain the Doctor's Wife's strange reaction to seeing her husband in bed with the Girl with Dark Glasses? What is she hoping to accomplish by telling them to stay in bed together?

Part 2) Discuss the reasoning of the women's decision to thoroughly wash the body of the Old Woman with insomnia before trying to bury her? What reason is there for taking such lengths to clean a dead body in such a filthy place?

Part 3) Summarize the understanding that the Man with the Eye-Patch and the Girl with Dark Glasses have at the end of the novel? What is the nature of their love, and how did they come about it?

Essay Topic 2

Food - and the search for it - becomes a destructive force in the land of the blind, leading to distrust, dehumanization, and sometimes death:

Part 1) Discuss the distribution of food in the first days of quarantine? Before the Thugs arrive, is the process of food distribution fair and straight forward? In what ways are the baser qualities of humankind on display even in these passages?

Part 2) As the Thugs arrive at quarantine, how does the balance of power shift regarding food? Discuss the quarantine is transformed into a Hobbesian nightmare with food as the sole objective?

Part 3) After quarantine, what instances of death occur as a result of the search for food in the city? In the era of white sickness, can humanity be safe as it seeks to subsist.

Essay Topic 3

Choose one of the following topics to discuss in essay form:

1.) Why does the Doctor's Wife not reveal her ability to see while in quarantine? Do you consider this choice prudent or selfish? Does this choice to remain a covert observer give her more or less control over her environment?

2.) Why do you think it takes so long for the blind inmates in quarantine so long to organize themselves? Are they content being at the mercy of systems handed to them by the government and the Thugs? What Saramago saying about the weak nature of human groups?

3.) Why do you think it is so easy for the Thugs to take control of the food supply and one of the wards? Is it exclusively their superior arms? What tactics do they employ to divide and disorient their subjects in the other wards?

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