A personal review of “The Country of The Blind” by H. G. Wells
The book is set in a remote valley in Peru where a group of half-breeds arrived a very long time ago. The valley had all that the heart of man could desire and they led a quiet and happy life there. But in the course of time, a thing marred their happiness. A strange disease came upon them and blindness overtook them and all their descendants. Meanwhile, the volcano Mundobamba erupted and cut off The Country of The Blind for ever from the exploring feet of man.
Nevertheless, a mountaineer called Nuñez, got lost during an expedition and he eventually appeared in the valley a lot of years later. All things he saw were very queer and unfamiliar to his eyes, until he noticed that all the inhabitants were blind. At the beginning, he thought he´d be “the King” in a country of blind people, but as the days were passing, he realized that this wasn´t going to be as easy as he´d believed. At the same time, the blind considered him as a strange creature, which talked to them about unknown things. After a vain attempt of rebellion, Nuñez resigned himself to living with them and he even fell in love there. But the trouble was they believed Nuñez´s brain was affected by those queer things called the eyes and the solution would be to remove them, in order to turn him into a “sane and admirable citizen” and so, be allowed to get married to Medina-saroté.
It is an extremely gripping story with an amazing plot. The author uses this tale to talk about how an isolated civilization developes itself without some outward influences and the shock that means to everybody from both sides when, suddenly, someone turns up from the unknown world.
Furthermore, this story provides us with many things more. On the one hand, it makes us think about intolerance. We usually believe we are always on the right way and the other different people on the wrong one and we are also reluctant to change our minds. Nevertheless on the other hand, Wells gives us some hope through the character of Medina-saroté, stating that wherever you are, you can find people capable of tolerance. She doesn´t understand Nuñez at all, but she does love him, she loves his imaginative mind though it is so different from hers.
All in all, I´d highly recommend this book. Once you start reading it, you won´t be able to put it down.
AURELIA ARTOLACHIPI ESTEBAN
