Blindness

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

Does a government have a responsibility to isolate entire groups of people on the assumption that they might pose a threat to the general public?

Teaching Suggestion: Discuss the similarities and differences between quarantine, detention, and imprisonment. When are these measures justified? When are they not? Can students recall a moment in history when people were detained on the assumption of threat to the general public? Depending on student background, examples may include the incarceration of Japanese Americans; these and similar sources might guide connected discussion.

• “Japanese Internment Camps” – An article about the United States government’s forced internment of Japanese people, many of them US citizens, during World War II
• “Japanese-American Incarceration During World War II” – A National Archives web page discussing President Roosevelt’s executive order to detain Japanese residents

Short Activity

Smell is one of our strongest senses, and it is a key player in recalling memory, even decades after an event. How does smell play into your everyday experience—are you tolerant of most strong smells, or can your entire mood be altered when you encounter an unpleasant or strong smell?

You are invited to:

1. Bring something foul-smelling to class in a tightly sealed container. Make sure it is nontoxic. Label the item, describing what it is and how it smells to you.
2. Place your contribution with those of your classmates on a table.
3. Choose one of the other items (not your own) to explore personally. Open the lid to smell the item, and then close the lid again. Immediately write a journal entry about what the thing smelled like and how it made you feel to experience it for just a few seconds.

Teaching Suggestion: This activity relates to the author’s references to the sense of smell, made more sensitive in the absence of sight, throughout the text. There are many references to foul smells of filth, excrement, and bodily odors. The author also suggests the blind are particularly sensitive to the smell of food—even packaged food. Discuss in advance what items might be appropriate for this exercise (e.g., soured food; strong-smelling food or spices; stagnant water; disliked colognes; disliked candles or incense (unlit), or essential oils). Clearly state what should be off limits (e.g., anything toxic or potentially dangerous; remains or rotted materials; excrement) if necessary.

• “Noisomeness”– This article discusses two books dealing with the history of human attitudes toward smells.

Differentiation Suggestion: For neurodivergent students, those with a history of migraines that are triggered by strong smells, or those who opt against the activity, as an alternative, ask students to consider the following in a journal entry: What is the most awful smell you ever encountered? What if you had to live with that smell constantly, and it never became less offensive but only got worse? How do you think it might affect your physical, emotional, and psychological well-being?

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the novel.

Consider your own personal experience with the Covid-19 pandemic, quarantine, and lockdown. Reflecting on your experience, how might you have reacted differently? In a brief essay, consider also how you would prepare differently, connect with community differently, or alter your daily life if faced with a second global pandemic. In what ways would you approach it differently, or the same? What positive and negative changes emerged from the pandemic?

Teaching Suggestion: Blindness essentially deals with a literal pandemic, as well as a figurative pandemic. Students will all have their own experience of the Covid-19 pandemic to reflect on, and they will also have the hindsight to see where society broke down and came together at different moments of the pandemic. As students may have very different views on how the pandemic played out, discussion of essays should consider how to civilly engage with opposing views in a high-stakes situation such as a public pandemic.

Differentiation Suggestion: A differentiation strategy for visual learners or students who struggle with abstract concepts could be to create a remembered timeline for the Covid-19 pandemic, pinpointing where public attitudes shifted broadly at each moment throughout the pandemic to the present. Creating a visual timeline together (on a blackboard, for example), note what prompted isolation (voluntary or involuntary), personal conflicts, societal breakdown, or collective moments of progress throughout the pandemic.