PARADOX IN H.G. WELLS’ THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND
(CROSS-CULTURAL PRESPECTIVES)
By
Drs. Mangihut Nababan, M.Hum
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to identify and look into the paradoxes found in the story to find out their aims. To investigate the paradoxes, the Close reading applied by the New Criticism is used. Things are viewed from two points of view: one is from the perspective of the blind, and the other from that of the sighted. It is discovered that the blind manifest the behaviors of the sighted, and the sighted those of the blind. What happens to the main character, the only sighted in the story, is typically experienced by one thrown into a new culture. He goes through five stages: Jubilation, Culture shock, Initial adjustment, Mental isolation, and Acceptance.
Key Words: the blind, the sighted
Introduction
The language of every day life is different from that of literature. The former seeks for precision and avoids ambiguities. On the other hand, the language of literature prizes rich interpretations, for which writers employ ambiguities, ironies, paradoxes and other figures of speech.
The story is about the main character who gets lost in an expedition in Ecuador’s part of the Andes, and finds himself amidst people who are totally blind. His persistence to demonstrate his superiority over the blind and his ambition to become king for the people causes him humiliation, frustration, downfall and submission to the blind.
The purpose of the study is to identify and look into the paradoxes found in the story to find out their aims. To investigate the paradoxes, the Close Reading used by the New Criticism is employed. After careful examination of each absurd phenomenon, truths are revealed. The two groups of people live their completely separate worlds that can not be reconciled. What happens to the main character is typical of what happens to one who gets into a new cultural situation.
Review of Literature and Methodology
Paradox, which is the main concern of this paper, can be defined as ‘an apparent contradiction that, nevertheless, somehow true’ (Perrine, 1984: 100). Paradox can be in the form of a sentence or situation. A sentence is a paradox if the constituent words contain contradictory meanings, as in “Diam menghanyutkan”, said of a girl so calm but beautiful viewers are drawn deep in contemplation filled with amazement. “He died of joy that kills”, (Story of an Hour). Joy usually brings revival, not death. To make sense out of this, we have to know that the dead man is one who has suffered from a chronic heart trouble. When good news is passed to him, he turns jubilant, but ironically causing him a heart arrest.
Paradox can be a situation, like a humor in Reader’s Digest (edition forgotten): “A driver makes one pray, and a priest makes him asleep.” According to common sense a driver should make a passenger sleep, and the priest should make a worshiper pray. The driver is driving so recklessly, that from horror, he screams “ Allahuakbar.” The sermon is so long and boring it makes the congregation fall asleep. Furthermore, Aesop tells of a traveler who blows warm things to cool them down, but he also blows cool things to warm them up (Perrine 100). This phenomenon is not clear until we know that the temperature of something blown for a length of time will at last come closer to that of the medium, in this case, the breath, that is neither hot nor cold.
Later Abrams extends the application of paradox to cover all situations that deviate from common sense. Beethoven accomplishing his master piece, Symphony No 9, when he turned deaf is a paradox in this sense.
To identify situations and remarks that look or sound contradictory to common sense the writer uses the Close Reading of the New Criticism. To look into each phenomenon he sees things from two points of view: one from the side of the blind, and the other from that of the sighted. Emphasis is made on who says things, when and why he says them.
Findings and Discussion
Below are some of the paradoxical phenomena found in the story, starting from the moment the sighted is located up to the time he agrees to have an eye surgery:
1. The Sighted Stumbles a lot.
The statement above defies logic. Common logic goes because they don’t have eyes, it is the blind and not the sighted that stumble a lot. This condition can be understood if we are aware that the blind people, blind since birth, have been accustomed to and living in total blindness. They move cautiously using their ears and other senses.
From the point of view of the blind, Nunez frequently stumbles. This is because when they try to ‘feel’ him, to touch all over his body – as a way of knowing strangers – of course Nunez feels uncomfortable, and therefore tries to avert it with jerky movements, bumping and tripping here and there. Actually for common people such movements are just usual, but for the blind who move slowly and with calculation, it is considered stumbling. Nunez must have ‘stumbled’ much more when the blind want to know whether the stranger is male or female. “Certainly he is a man”, said Correa (111).*
2. The Blind Lead the Sighted
This is another contradiction to common sense. How can blind people lead a blind person? Logically, it is the sighted that lead a blind person. To look into this phenomenon, a reader has to be aware that Nunez stumbles a lot. And for them he is an idiot, talking nonsense, because they cannot understand whatever Nunez says. They don’t even understand the meaning of ‘eyes’, ‘seeing’, and ‘blind.’ When Nunez proclaims his motto “In the Country of the Blind, the One-eyed Man is King”, one sightless person says ignorantly “What is blind?” (115) The more excited he is to explain these things, the more convinced they are that Nunez is really an idiot, who needs guidance. One of them says: “His senses are still imperfect. He stumbles, and talks unmeaning words” (111). In spite of all these, he is considered a rare find and needs to be reported and taken to the elders. The person continues “Lead him by the hand.” On another occasion, another blind man suggests “Bring him to the elders” (112).
3. People in the Country of the Blind work at Night and Sleep in the Day time.
In the normal world, people work in the day time, and sleep in the night time for the global reason that for work people need abundant light, which is supplied by the sun. For sleep light, the sun, is dispensable.
Believing that Nunez’s mind is newly formed, one of the elders offers him guidance and explains to him about life, philosophy and religion, ‘how this time has been divided into the warm and cold – the blind equivalents of day and night.
For the blind people, as far as light is concerned, our day and night are exactly the same: pitch darkness. The difference is that in our night the weather is cool and for the blind fit for working, and in our day the weather is hot, for them unfit for working but good for resting and sleeping.
4. Superiority of the Blind Over the Sighted Nunez
The first thing Nunez plans to reform after taking control of the blind is to change work-sleep time pattern, which has caused him in great misery. In the day time people are asleep, leaving him alone awake, whereas in the night time people work, again leaving him alone, unable to work because there is no light. “He found working and going about at night a particularly irksome thing to do” (115).
But when trying to prove his superiority of having eyes, Nunez faces more and more frustration, humiliation and ridicules. When some blind men ask him to come, he deliberately doesn’t move, a gesture they can detect. They say “You move not, Bogota” (Bogota is another name for Nunez) (115). Further, like a sighted to a blind person, he is reminded not to walk on the grass. Worse, when he proudly announces that Pedro, one of the blind, will be in their place in a while, he is corrected, that that person doesn’t have anything to do in that place and in that time of day. It is true, Nunez moments later in fact turns another direction.
These embarrassments hasten his planned coup d’état (115) and his downfall. In one incident, he cannot stand his anger, and he snatches a spade from one of the blind. But almost at once, people are alerted and besiege him. In spite of his special sight, he feels cornered. The blind people move with certain advance, and as if well coordinated, the ears are also ‘assaulting’ him. He is panic stricken. Like a real blind person harassed by naughty children, he moves groping; dodging when there is no need to dodge. His immediate instinct drives him to hit one of the blind, and with that, he stumbles many times, but any way, he manages to escape the attack.
5. The Blind Nurse the Sighted
In his hideout he runs into yet other problems: lack of sleep for fear of being captured, extreme cold and hunger. To survive, he finds no way but surrender. He crawls and tries to make terms with the blind. Later he asks for mercy: ”Before you ask me any more, give me some food or I will die” (121). They even nurse him kindly.
6. Because of her Same Facial Texture, a Young Girl is Loved and “Unloved” at the Same Time.
In his submission to the citizens of the Country of the Blind, Nunez has special keenness on Medina-Saroté, the only ugly, young unmarried girl in the society. The people considered her ugly because, unlike most people in the Country of the Blind, the girl’s eye sockets are less sunken, less hollowed. For the blind, when sight is denied, all parts related to this organ, like the eyeballs, the eyelashes, and the eyelids gradually disappear, and in the long run, such absence, hallowed eye sockets, is considered beauty, and its presence a disfigurement.
For Nunez, however, she is the most beautiful. She also has long eyelashes. Of course, for Nunez, who is accustomed to the sighted world, Saroté looks more like a healthy person than any of the others with the sunken face and rather smooth eye parts. . What makes her ugly for these people is exactly the reason why Nunez falls in love with her, namely her less sunken face, her barely open eyelids, and her particularly long eyelashes.
7. The Blind Suggest that the Sighted Nunez Undergo Eye Surgery
Nunez-Saroté relationship has become more intense, leading to marriage proposal. But the elders, especially Yacob, Saroté’s father, object to the idea. Who would marry his child to an idiot? He reasons. “You see, my dear, he is an idiot … ; he can’t do anything right” (123).
Fortunately, one of the elders offers an idea and solution. He theorizes that Nunez’s senselessness is attributed to that part in the face that continuously moving (meaning his healthy eyelids). That constant movement affects the brain: “These queer things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make agreeable soft depression in the face (meaning the eye socket which is not so sunken) are diseased (124). He concludes that to make Nunez sane those moving things, the eyelids, must be removed, of course through surgery.
In the healthy world, people suggest that the blind undergo surgery to restore sight, and in the Country of the Blind the blind people suggest that the sighted (Nunez) also undergo eye surgery to ‘recover’.
Cross-cultural Perspectives
Cross Cultural Understanding can be defined as understanding other cultures in order that the people of the respective cultures can establish co-operations that can benefit the people of both sides. Solidity of bilateral co-operation between countries, between people, between individuals depends, among others, on how well they understand and respect each other’s cultures.
Nunez, the main character in the story, takes with him his own culture, his own world, to a completely different culture, the Country of the Blind. His total failure to become King is attributed to his ignorance of other human beings and their nature. This is in line with James Michener’s suggestion to tourists as quoted in Reader’s Choice: If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home: you are like a pebble thrown into water; you become wet on the surface; but never part of the water. (p.32)
It is agreed that no culture is superior or inferior to other cultures. No matter how bizarre a culture of a people may look like, for those people that culture is their ancestors’ heritage and their way of life, which should be defended. Culture to people is likened to water to fish. Once the water is tampered with, the fish becomes alert.
Five Stages of Cross-Cultural Adjustment
Throughout the story Nunez goes through the five stages of adjustment, commonly faced by one who gets into a new culture. In their book Beyond Language on cultural adjustment, Levina and Adelman elaborate the process:
l. Honeymoon period
Like a groom and his bride imagining new life and other exciting things ahead of them, Nunez is jubilant upon coming to the new place and discovering he is the only one lucky to have eyes. Overwhelmed with the strong possibility to become ruler for the people, he repeatedly chants his motto “In the Country of the Bind, the One-eyed Man is the King.”
2. Cultural shock
Nunez’s elation is only sort-lived, for soon he comes into trouble after trouble. He cannot communicate. Rather than being envied with for having eyes. He is ridiculed and considered an idiot because he is not understood. He even finds sleep a problem. He feels hunted.
3. Initial Adjustment
This is the period when in his hideout, Nunez realizes his vulnerable condition. He is very hungry and feels cold. He finds no way to survive but to surrender. He crawls from his hideout and announces “I was mad … I was only newly made (120). When asked whether he still sees, he denies, saying it was only folly. Earnestly he asks for food.
4. Mental Isolation
In his submission and brooding over the upcoming operation of his precious eyes, he is torn between maintaining his eyes and losing Saroté
5. Acceptance
Nunez story culminates when he agrees to the operation. When parting from Saroté the night before the coming operation, he says to her “Tomorrow I shall see no more”, and looking at her beautiful face, he goes on “Good-bye dear sight, Good-bye.”
But as said before, as he is savoring the beautiful morning for the last time, he is drawn away from the valley attracted by the beauty of the nature, and at last away from the Country of the Blind, and forgetting it. Here care should be taken that whatever happens in the end, Nunez does agree to the operation. His last remark then is ambiguous. First, it means he is saying good-bye to his power of seeing; and second, he is saying good-bye to his beautiful sight, his beloved Medina-Saroté.
Conclusion
The story The Country of the blind is full of paradoxes. The story should not be understood literally, for it is impossible to have a country whose population is totally and physically blind. The story should, however, be understood as an allegory, a story that has a secondary level of meaning. “Blindness” here should be taken as ‘ignorance’, ‘seclusion’ or ‘isolation’ from other worlds.
In spite of their “limitations”, the blind people live happily and peacefully, with nothing to regret and nobody to envy with. They can “see”; even their means of “seeing” is sharper than the sighted’s ears. Perrine is then proved true when he says that “the value of a paradox is its shock value” (100). At first we are shocked and annoyed when Nunez is sad to be an idiot who needs guidance, stumbling a lot, and ridiculed. After these are proved true, we are left impressed about their truths.
Wells uses paradox to serve his purpose, which is to underscore that a culture is unique in itself, and that there is no culture which is inferior or superior to other cultures. However absurd a culture seems to be, it is formed, lived and defended by its people. Batak proverb goes Ngali aek, diingani dengke. Water is cold, fish live there any way.
References
Abrams, M.H. (1981), A Glossary of Literary Terms, New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winson
Baudoin E. Margaret, et al (1977) Reader’s Choice, Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan Press
Brooks, Cleanth (l949) The Well-Wrought Urn: The studies in the Structure of Poetry. New York: Cornwall Press Inc
Dolley, Christopher, ed (l975), The Penguin Book of English Short Stories Great Britain: Hunt Barnard Printing Ltd
Levina R. M. A. and Mara Adelman, Ph.D. (1993) Beyond Language: Cross Cultural Understanding, 2 nd edn, New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents
Perrine, Laurence and Thomas R. Arp (l984) Sound and Sense, Harcourt Brace Collage Publishers
* Henceforth, unless the source is cited the numbers refer to ‘The Country of the Blind’ in The Penguin Book of English Short Stories, pp. 103-128
by Drs Mangihut Nababan, M.Hum
Published in Polyglot A journal of Language, Literature, Culture, and Education Vol 3 No 1 January 2009
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