When “Assay On the
Blindness” came out, in 1995, Jose Saramago had in mind a normal trilogy, with linking between histories.
As time went bei; other two books had been launched: “All the Names”, in 1997, and “the Cave”, in 2000. Histories are independent from each other. But a link between them is perceived: “The trilogy deals with the behavior and the condition of
human being, as we are for or against the eachother”, declare the author. In the first one of them, “Assay On the
Blindness”, a disturbing work, Saramago shows the primitive nature of the human being: the will to survive whatever the cost. The novel starts when a man goes blind at the moment where he was stopped in a transit signal. The other drivers are impatient with the fact that he congests the traffic. The scene brings a terrifying image of the shady times where we are living, in which the individualism dominates.The sudden blindness becomes an epidemic that reaches all the city. The human beeing is presented without the benefits of the eyes, disclosing as the values would move in a society that lost is direction. It is at this moment that the author considers a reflection on the human being of today and what could happen if he does not change is principles. The current in-human is shown, that beeing human is only one of many possibilities that we can reach: The characters have no name, are identified by their “position” in their lifes. “The name that we have substitutes what we are: We do not know nothing about the other”, declared Saramago after publishing his Novel. Words of Jose Saramago, in the public presentation of its romance Assay on the Blindness:. “This is a frankly terrible book with which I want that the reader suffers the same way as I suffered writing it. It describes a long torture. It is a brutal and violent book and is simultaneously one of the most painful experiences of my life. They are 300 pages of constant affliction. Through the writing, I tried to say that we are not good and that is necessary that we have the courage to recognize this.”