Blindness

Blindness Summary and Analysis of Part III

Summary

The car thief was escorted home by a police officer, as was the girl with the dark glasses. The circumstances of the car theft were unknown to the police officer, but the circumstances of the girl's employment were known because the hotel staff found the girl running, screaming and naked, with her client trying to leave the room in a hurry.

After going blind, the doctor had somehow made it into bed without disturbing his wife's sleep. Upon waking up, though, he was discovered, and the couple decided to call the ministry of health to report the spreading epidemic. After much bureaucratic hassle, they are told to stay put and wait to be picked up. The doctor's wife helps her husband pack her bag, as instructed by the ministry of health. Unbeknownst to him, she packs her own bag as well. When the ambulance comes to pick her husband up, she claims to go blind right at that moment. They both get into the ambulance.

Analysis

This part continues the egalitarianism of the second part. The car thief is led home by a police officer who has no interest in the fact that this man has just committed a crime. The young girl, unfortunately, is judged more harshly than the car thief, although she is not arrested or detained for any reason.

The doctor's interaction with the Ministry of Health continues the theme of medicine as a metonymy for modern progress. When the doctor calls into the Ministry, he is derided by the person who answers the phone for being unable to treat himself, or even diagnose himself. At this moment, the doctor feels extremely impotent. It becomes apparent that systems that we usually consider abstract such as, "Medicine," are actually only as good as the individuals who support that system and carry out its operations. This fact will become more and more apparent as the story progresses.

This is the first section in which the government attempts to intervene in any significant way, attempting to quarantine the infected. This will ultimately be futile. Read allegorically, this refers to the fact that no system constructed by people is free from the ignorance that is symbolized by the "white sickness." While the last section confined itself to demonstrating this fact across what might be called the social spectrum, this section includes the government in this indictment.