Blindness? Erm.. more like Blandness

Side note: I'd like to say sorry upfront, because it's going to get a bit ugly in the following paragraphs.

So first let's talk about Blindness. In case you didn't catch my outrage during the dicussion, I didn't like it. Not one bit. First of all, it's a stupid premise. My apologies to Mr. Saramago, but that is not even a realistic possibility the way he sets it up. People don't just go blind. I don't care that it's a fictional book, the fact that he disregards all scientific and medical knowledge irks me.

Secondly, I got tired of the sentences that would go, "The blind man said..." Oh wait, that was basically every single sentence. Don't tell me the man is blind because I already. freaking. know.
Because everyone is blind. You know, besides the doctor's wife.

I was also terribly aggravated by the characters. They should shut up, stop fooling around with each other and actually organize themselves! They are so selfish, stupid, one-dimensional and annoying I just couldn't handle it.

You know, now that I think about it, the title should've been something like "Asylum of the blind," or "Prepare for the most painful reading experience ever." I guess those aren't as catchy or brief. Those really aren't that witty either.

As for the impact on me, I did freak out a little bit whilst reading it. It was probably the scariest book we read all semester, in my opinion. But that's less so based on the events of the book, but blindness in itself, which is naturally frightening to me. So in a weird sense, I could kind of relate to their panic when they all first went blind- even though I've never gone blind. Does that make any sense?

And don't even get me started on the ending. That is by far the worst possible way to end the book. They're all sitting around thinking, hey maybe we can figure out a way to survive in a world that's totally fallen apart, when suddenly it's they're all saying, "Hey I can see again!"
At this point, I'm just like: NOOOOOOOOOOO, why didn't you die in the asylum fire because I just can't take you anymore!
Sorry- that was mean, but it's the truth. Dystopian books shouldn't have hopeful endings. I thought it was an implied rule.

But anyway, I don't mean this to sound like this was the worst book I ever read- though it's up there- it just didn't strike me as a brilliant novel. I guess if you analyze is really closely there's the whole idea that this blindness is of the moral sense and society should become more collectivistic and work towards a common goal or we'll be destroyed by self-interest, but I wasn't really feeling that.Rather I think the larger message I got was to watch for excrement and always have a source of food and water.

Maybe I'm just blind to what others consider good writing. But then again, aren't we all blind to something?