Blindness in Literature - Blind People in Literature Written By Visually Able Authors

Blind People in Literature Written By Visually Able Authors

It is impossible to make a blanket generalization about how the blind were treated in literature beyond that point – they were marvelous, gifted, evil, malicious, ignorant, wise, helpless, innocent, or burdensome depending upon who wrote the story – except to say that blindness is perceived to be such a loss that it leaves an indelible mark on a person’s character.

Even pioneers in training the blind, such as Dorothy Harrison Eustis, harboured negative stereotypes about them. Blind people had, in her opinion, grown so accustomed to waiting on others as to be passive and 'whiney.'

Father Thomas Carroll, who founded the Carroll Centre for the Blind, wrote Blindness: What It Is, What It Does and How to Live with It in 1961. In it, he characterized blindness in terms of 20 losses, and as the ‘death’ of the sighted individual.

In "Moumoku Monogatari" Junichiro Tanizaki retells the well-known tale of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi from the perspective of a blind servant. The character is portrayed as demonstrating a number of traditional Japanese virtues, but ultimately falls prey to his own human flaws.

"The Country of the Blind", a short story by H. G. Wells, is one of the most well-known stories featuring blind characters. A sighted man finds himself in a country that has been isolated from the rest of the world for centuries, wherein all the inhabitants are blind even as their ancestors had been. These people are depicted as self-sufficient, having developed their other senses, but they are ultimately closed-minded and insular to the point of xenophobia. As they themselves have no sight, they wish to deprive the traveler of his own eyes in this allegorical tale of stagnation.

Read more about this topic:  Blindness In Literature

Famous quotes containing the words blind, people, literature, written and/or authors:

    We’re not blind and we’re not fools. We’re just plain, sensible people who refuse to be fooled by a lot of supernatural nonsense.... There’s no magic in dried lizards and dead chickens.
    —Eric Taylor. Robert Siodmak. Frank Stanley (Robert Paige)

    If you wish to succeed, consult three people first.
    Chinese proverb.

    Just as it is true that a stream cannot rise above its source, so it is true that a national literature cannot rise above the moral level of the social conditions of the people from whom it derives its inspiration.
    James Connolly (1870–1916)

    What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
    Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

    If in the opinion of the Tsars authors were to be the servants of the state, in the opinion of the radical critics writers were to be the servants of the masses. The two lines of thought were bound to meet and join forces when at last, in our times, a new kind of regime the synthesis of a Hegelian triad, combined the idea of the masses with the idea of the state.
    Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)