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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 do the soldiers pour on the blind Thief's blood?

2. What is the Doctor pretending to look at when his wife wakes up?

3. Who is the last patient the Doctor sees the day before he goes blind?

4. Which of the following is not among the rules announced to the inmates?

5. What item does an anonymous person wish was around near the end of Chapter 8?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. What bit of knowledge does the Thief reveal to the Doctor's Wife on the night of his death? What will he do with this knowledge?

5. What is the Sergeant's attitude toward the internees?

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

7. What is the government's plan for dealing with the outbreak at the end of Chapter 3?

8. What is the Doctor's conclusion about the origin of his blindness?

9. What is the Doctor's Wife's reaction to her husbands hypothesis about his blindness?

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

If the novel Blindness is a parable, what is the lesson? Each of the surviving characters grows in a certain way from their experience in quarantine. What does the breakdown of their lives teach them? Cite examples for three of the surviving characters, noting how they behave at the beginning of the novel and at the end.

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the use of violence in the novel. Is it seen as a purely evil force, or is its function in the novel more ambiguous? Why is it presented in such graphic detail? Write about each of the following violent episodes:

1. The gang-rape of the first ward women by the Thugs.

2. The murder of the Leader of the Thugs by the Doctor's Wife.

3. The burning down of the asylum.

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?

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