Blindness

I'm almost finished reading this book for English. It's called Blindness, written by Jose Saramago who is a Nobel Prize winner (though the Nobel Prize seems a little less prestigous since Al Gore scored it), but the book was actually really interesting. It is about a city hit by an epidemic of white blindness (like normal blindness but everything goes white instead of black). In an effort to contain this epidemic, the initial victims of this sudden break-out are interned in an empty mental hospital. It's a little Lord of the Flies-esque in style insofar as it is thick with symbolism and has a pretty bleak outlook on the nature of mankind. Just once I'd like to read a book where people are thrust into an unfamiliar situation and learn to deal without losing all morality and sense of decency. I suppose there is no interest in a book like that. This book though, just reading the state of things in this city once everyone has gone blind makes me feel like I'm suddenly losing basic necessities which is silly. I guess it mean Jose Saramago is an effective author. I still have like 50 pages left, so there is still time for the human spirit to triumph, but things don't look too good.