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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 tertiary character is among those killed when the soldiers open fire?

2. What rumor about the government is going around?

3. How does the narrator justify the policeman's rudeness in interviewing the Girl with Dark Glasses?

4. Where is quarantine located?

5. Of the four corpses that the first ward buries, how many actually slept in the first ward?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe the painting the Man with the Eye-Patch mentions at the end of Chapter 8.

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

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

4. What is the Thief's reaction to the suggestion that the Doctor be leader of the quarantined inmates?

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

6. 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?

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

8. Does the First Man trust the man who comes to his aid after he goes blind?

9. Does the Doctor give up on the case of blindness in the First Man?

10. Who in the first ward dies in the hail of fire?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

After the central characters leave quarantine, they discover a city where absence of sight has rendered private property nonexistent:

Part 1) Examine the overview of the situation as related by the anonymous man that the Doctor's Wife speaks to as she is walking to the city? What function do residences and stores serve in this new society?

Part 2) Which characters within the group cling to the hope that they will find their old home, and which give up this hope? Prior to regaining their sight, do they find a home?

Part 3) Examine the First Man's arrangement with the Writer living in his house. How has the First Man's attitude toward private property changed since the beginning of the novel?

Essay Topic 2

Saramago makes several references to the old cliche: "in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." In the central section of the novel, he pits two characters with sensory advantages against each other: the Doctor's Wife, who can see, and the Chronicler, who was born blind and can read and type braille. Compare and contrast these two "one-eyed men" and how they use or do not use their advantages. Is either truly a leader or "king" in the quarantine? What does each hope to achieve for their constituency?

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

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