LITCS 114
Teaching Associate: Patrick Mooney
Bldg. 494, room 160B
Fall 2015
11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
12 So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.
13 And God said to Noah,
The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
17 Now the flood was on the earth forty days. The waters increased and lifted up the ark, and it rose high above the earth.
18 The waters prevailed and greatly increased on the earth, and the ark moved about on the surface of the waters.
19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth, and all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered.
20 The waters prevailed fifteen cubits upward, and the mountains were covered.
[…]
23 So He destroyed all living things which were on the face of the ground: both man and cattle, creeping thing and bird of the air. They were destroyed from the earth.
8 Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying:
9 “And as for Me, behold, I establish My covenant with you and with your descendants after you,
10 “and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth.
11
Thus I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.12 And God said: “This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:
13 “I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.
Pay attention, I’m going to switch off the light and you can tell me, now, Nothing, What do you mean nothing, Nothing, I always see the same white, it’s as if there were no night. (9; ch. 1)Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are, said the doctor. (126; ch. 8)He [the guard at the third ward] had been waiting for ages for one of his comrades to come and relieve him, but for this to happen it was necessary that the other, on hearing the inner voice of duty, should wake up by himself. (157; ch. 10)Were we not trying to reduce her [the girl with the dark glasses] to some primary definition, we should finally say of her, in the broad sense, that she lives as she pleases and moreover gets all the pleasure she can from life. (23; ch. 2)he [the doctor] simply stretched out his hands to touch the glass, he knew that his image was there watching him, his image could see him, he could not see his image. (29; ch. 3)dear God, how we miss having our sight, to be able to see, to see, even if they were only faint shadows, to stand before the mirror, see a dark diffused patch and be able to say, That’s my face. (69; ch. 5)our names, what do names matter (58; ch. 5)
it seemed he was about to give his name, but what he said was, I’m a policeman, and the doctor’s wife thought to herself, He didn’t give his name, he too knows that names are of no importance here. (59; ch. 5)No one seemed interested in knowing who had died. (87; ch. 6)Who is speaking, asked the doctor, A blind man, replied a voice, just a blind man, for that is all we have here. (129; ch. 8)many ways of becoming an animal (93; ch. 6)
any day now, we shall no longer know who we are, or even remember our names, and besides, what use would names be to us, no dog recognizes another dog or knows the others by the names they have been given, a dog is identified by its scent and that is how it identifies others, her we are like another breed of dogs. (57; ch. 5)Someone protested at the far end of the ward. Pigs, they’re like pigs. (93; ch. 6)Thieving dogs, that’s what they are, commented a rough voice. (105; ch. 7)If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals. (116; ch. 8)Blindness = [X]constructions ...
interpret blindness allegorically in this way.
[X] is [also] blindness:
who can say that this white blindness is not some spiritual malaise (85; ch. 6)to be dead is to be blind (108; ch. 7)we were already blind the moment we turned blind, fear struck us blind, fear will keep us blind. (129; ch. 8)blinded by lust. (167; ch. 11)Perhaps I’m the blindest of all, I’ve already killed and I’ll kill again if I have to. (191; ch. 12)The blind are always at war, always have been at war, Will you kill again, If I have to, I shall never be free from this blindness. (193; ch. 12)in death, blindness is the same for all. (210; ch. 12)blindness is also this, to live in a world where all hope is gone. (209; ch. 12)we ought to start getting organised without delay (the doctor: 45; ch. 4)
the internees must organize themselves as the see fit (43; ch. 4)The blind moved as one would expect of the blind, groping their way, stumbling, dragging their feet, yet as if organised, they knew how to distribute tasks efficiently. (86; ch. 6)Unless we organise ourselves in earnest, hunger and fear will take over here. (91; ch. 6)They [the occupants of the third ward]’re organized, he [the doctor] thought to himself, this has not suddenly been improvised. (145; ch. 9)are we agreed that the hand that stabbed him was the hand of all of us, or to be more precise, the hand of each one of us. No one replied. (197; ch. 12)In this place, age is of no account, nor sex, therefore don’t forget the women. (203; ch. 12)And how can a society of blind people organise itself in order to survive, By organising itself, to organise oneself is, in a way, to begin to have eyes (296; ch. 16)Faltering, as if his lack of sight had weakened his memory, the [first] blind man gave his address, then he said, I have no words to thank you, and the other replied, Now then, don’t give it another thought, today it’s your turn, tomorrow it will be mine, we never know what might lie in store for us. (3; ch. 1)Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are. (276; ch. 15)there was such an abundance of water, all of it purifying. (307; ch. 16)she searched in the kitchen for soap and detergents, scrubbing brushes, anything that might be used to clean a little, at least a little, of this unbearable filth of the soul. Of the body, she said, as if to correct the metaphysical thought, then she added, It’s all the same. (279; ch. 15)He made lather so that the cleaning process should be extended […] he was a man of foam, white in the middle of an immense white blindness where nobody could find him. (284; ch. 15)If only the rain would last, in this situation sunshine would be the worst that could happen to us, said the doctor’s wife. (286; ch. 15)But you wrote books and those books carry your name, said the doctor’s wife, Now nobody can read them, it is as if they did not exist. (290; ch. 15)in my opinion we’re already dead, we’re blind because we’re dead, or if you would prefer me to put it another way, we’re dead because we’re blind, it comes to the same thing. (251; ch. 14)Blind people do not need a name, I am my voice, nothing else matters. (290; ch. 15)the human body is also an organised system, it lives as long as it keeps organised, and death is only the effect of a disorganisation. (296; ch. 16)We are already half dead, said the doctor, We are still half alive too, answered his wife. (303; ch. 16)And then the doctor’s wife said, What times we live in, we find the order of things inverted, a symbol that nearly always signified death has become a sign of life, There are hands capable of these and greater wonders, said the doctor. (304; ch. 16) we are in an old building and badly designed at that, […] doorways so narrow that they look more like bottlenecks, corridors as crazy as the other inmates of the asylum, opening for no clear reason and closing who knows where, and no one is ever likely to find out. (144; ch. 9)We may observe in the flesh how badly planned and organized these human communities in orphanages, hospitals and mental asylums have been, note how each bed, in itself, with his framework of pointed metal bars, can be transformed into a lethal trap, look at the terrible consequences of of having only one door to wards occupied by forty people, not counting those asleep on the floor, if the fire gets there first and blocks their exit, no one will escape. (213, ch. 12) The Groping City (Wyndham, ch. 3)
the fact is that there is no comparison between living in a rational labyrinth, which is, by definition, a mental asylum and venturing forth, without a guiding hand or a dog-leash, into the demented labyrinth of the city, where memory will serve no purpose, for it will merely be able to recall the images of places but not the paths whereby we might get there. (217; ch. 13)There’s no difference between inside and outside, between here and there, between the many and the few, between what we’re living through and what we shall have to live through. (242; ch. 14) new ways of living are being invented (the doctor, p. 256, ch. 14)
everyone is blind, the whole city, the entire country […] it was not the same as before, when blind people could always count on the assistance of some passerby, whether to cross the street, or to get back on to the right path in the case of having inadvertently strayed from the usual route. (222; ch. 13)life exists, because your four senses say so. (242; ch. 14)the whole banking system collapsed, blown over like a house of cards (267; ch. 14)the feelings with which we have lived and which allowed us to live as we were, depended on our having the eyes we were born with. […] Before, when we could still see, there were also blind people, Few in comparison, the feelings we use were those of someone who could see, therefore blind people felt with the feelings of others, not as the blind people they were, now, certainly, what is emerging are the real feelings of the blind. (252; ch. 14)You are a writer, you have, as you said a moment ago, an obligation to know words, therefore you know that adjectives are of no use to us, if a person kills another, for example, it would be better to state this fact openly, directly, and to trust that the horror of the act, in itself, is so shocking that there is no need for us to say it was horrible. (292; ch. 15) Were we not trying to reduce her [the girl with the dark glasses] to some primary definition, we should finally say of her, in the broad sense, that she lives as she pleases and moreover gets all the pleasure she can from life. (23; ch. 2)should I turn blind, if after turning blind I should no longer be the person I was, how would I then be able to go on loving him, and with what love? (252; ch. 14)Perhaps humanity will manage to live without eyes, but then it will cease to be humanity, the result is obvious, which of us think of ourselves as being as human as we believed ourselves to be before? (255)now we are all equal regarding good and evil, please, don’t ask me what good and what evil are, we knew what it was each time we had to act when blindness was an exception, what is right and what is wrong are simply different ways of understanding our relationships with the others […] forgive this moralising speech, you do not know, you cannot know, what it means to have eyes in a world in which everyone else is blind. (276; ch. 15)inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are. (276) I have no explanation, there may not be one (the doctor's wife, p. 293, ch. 16)
She looked at them, her eyes filled with tears, there they were, as dependent on her as little children on their mother. If I should let them down—she thought. It did not occur to her that all around her the people were blind yet managed to live. (225; ch. 13)let’s be glad of our good fortune at still having a pair of seeing eyes with us here, the last pair left, if they are extinguished one day, I don’t even want to think about it, then the thread which links us to that human mankind would be broken. (305; ch. 15)for the first time since the onset of blindness, it was the doctor who guided his wife. (313; ch. 17)Why did we become blind, I don’t know, perhaps one day we’ll find out. Do you want me to tell you what I think, Yes, do, I don’t think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see. (326; ch. 17)It is my turn, she thought. Fear made her quickly lower her eyes. The city was still there. (326)