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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. Whose spouse arrives with the new inmates?

2. Which of the following is not a career of an arriving inmate?

3. Why does the Girl with Dark Glasses' companion abandon her when she goes blind?

4. Which of the following characters are not in the Doctor's waiting room?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe what happens when the Doctor's Wife wakes up in the morning.

2. What is the Thief's state of mind at the beginning of Chapter 2?

3. Describe the final moments of the Thief's life.

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

5. How does the Man with the Eye-Patch describe the state of the outside world?

6. By this point, is the dispersal of food effectively organized by Chapter 7?

7. What news does the Minister of Health have for the Doctor when he calls back?

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

9. What services will the government offer the quarantined inmates, according to the announcement?

10. Describe the asylum dormitory.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The beginning of the novel is marked by a sense of helplessness and shame associated with the inability to see. Explore the unifying embarrassment characters feel in these chapters through the following:

Part 1) How would you describe the character of the First Man? Though we do not know anything of him prior to going blind, does he seem like a man used to asking for help? How does he respond to being helped home by the Thief and stumbling around his apartment?

Part 2) In what state are both the Thief and the Girl with Dark Glasses when they go blind? What - in both of their lives - are they hiding from most of the world which is impossible to hide when they are in this helpless state?

Essay Topic 2

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 3

Jose Saramago's narrative voice is unique in its familiarity with the reader and its presentation of the story in a colloquial, conversational format, one that forgoes many of the standards of traditional novel writing:

Part 1) Discuss the effect of Saramago's frequent use of the first person plural - we - to engage the reader as a confidante of sorts. How does this alter the traditional relationship between the third-person omniscient narrator and the reader?

Part 2) Examine Saramago's frequent usage of hypothetical situations - such as that of the Chronicler walking out among the desperate hordes of the other wards - and allusion to proverbs. What purpose do these devices serve in the narrator's dissection of events?

Part 3) Why do you believe that Saramago uses no quotation marks and generally embeds his dialogue into large paragraphs rather than breaking it up?

(see the answer keys)

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