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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. Who gives the Squinting Boy half his/her portion of food?

2. What does a blind person grab from the Doctor's Wife as she runs from the grocery?

3. In the first ward, who suggests and an armed assault against the Thugs?

4. How many containers of food is the first ward given?

5. What does the Girl with Dark Glasses not realize?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe the old woman with insomnia in Chapter 9.

2. What idea does the Doctor's Wife have when it starts raining?

3. What happens to the Old Woman with insomnia in Chapter 11?

4. Describe the scene in the Thug's Ward immediately after the Doctor's Wife kills their leader.

5. What does the Doctor's Wife say to silence the Thugs when they stop by the first ward at the beginning of Chapter 12?

6. Why would the Doctor's Wife's mentioning to the stranger she meets that she is going home reveal that she can see?

7. Describe the Thugs' ward.

8. How does the first ward get its information of the outside world?

9. What does the Doctor's Wife do when she sees her husband in bed with the Girl with Dark Glasses?

10. What arrangement do the Thugs make for payment?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

Within the quarantine, the dueling forces of authoritarian power and chaos are juxtaposed. The central narrative is the conflict of these opposing forces:

Part 1) Compare and contrast the government's plan for controlling the epidemic through quarantine with its plan for maintaining order within the quarantine.

Part 2) Discuss the results of the rules set down by the government to maintain order in quarantine with their results. Which rules are effective and which are discarded immediately?

Part 3) Compare the authoritarian rule of the government over the blind internees with the authoritarian rule of the Thugs over the other wards.

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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