The Country of the Blind

Infobox short story |
name = The Country of the Blind
title_orig =
translator =
author = H. G. Wells
country = flag|United Kingdom
language = English
series =
genre = Short story
published_in = "Strand Magazine"
publisher =
media_type = Print (Magazine)
pub_date = April 1904
english_pub_date =
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"The Country of the Blind" is a short story written by English writer H. G. Wells. It was first published in the April 1904 issue of the "Strand Magazine" and included in a 1911 collection of Wells's short stories, "The Country of the Blind and Other Stories".

Wells later revised the story and the expanded version was first published by an English private printer, Golden Cockerel Press in 1939.

"The Country of the Blind" is one of Wells's best known short stories and features prominently in literature dealing with blindness.

Plot summary

While attempting to summit Parascotopetl's unconquered crest, a fictitious mountain in Ecuador, a mountaineer named Nunez slips and falls down the far side of the mountain. At the end of his descent, down a snow-slope in the mountain's shadow, he finds a valley, cut off from the rest of the world on all sides by steep precipices. Unbeknown to Nunez, he has discovered the fabled Country of the Blind. The valley had been a haven for settlers fleeing the tyranny of Spanish rulers until an earthquake reshaped the surrounding mountains and cut it off for ever from future explorers. The isolated community prospered over the years despite a disease that struck them early on, rendering all new-borns blind. As the blindness slowly spread over the generations, their remaining senses sharpened, and by the time the last sighted villager had died, the community had fully adapted to life without sight.

Nunez descends into the valley and finds an unusual village with windowless houses and a network of paths, all bordered by kerbs. Upon discovering that everyone is blind, Nunez begins reciting to himself the refrain, "In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King". He realises that he can teach and rule them. But the villagers have no concept of sight and do not understand his attempts to explain this fifth sense to them. Frustrated, Nunez becomes angry but they calm him and he reluctantly submits to their way of life because returning to the outside world is impossible.

Nunez is assigned to work for a villager named Yacob, and becomes attracted to Yacob's youngest daughter, Medina-saroté. Nunez and Medina-saroté soon fall in love with one another, and having won her confidence, Nunez slowly starts trying to explain sight to her. Medina-saroté, however, simply dismisses it as his imagination. When Nunez asks for her hand in marriage he is turned down by the village elders on account of his "unstable" obsession with "sight". The village doctor suggests that Nunez's eyes be removed, claiming that they are diseased and are affecting his brain. Nunez reluctantly consents to the operation because of his love for Medina-saroté. But at sunrise on the day of the operation, when all the villagers have gone to sleep, Nunez, the failed King of the Blind, sets off for the mountains (without provisions or equipment), hoping to find a passage to the outside world and escape the valley.

In the original story, he escapes the valley but becomes trapped in the mountains, which ultimately leads to his death. In the revised and expanded 1939 version of the story Nunez sees from a distance that there is about to be a rock slide. He attempts to warn the villagers, but again they scoff at his "imagined" sight. He takes Medina-saroté and manages to flee the valley during the slide.

Characters

*Nunez – a mountaineer from Bogotá, Colombia
*Yacob – Nunez's master
*Medina-saroté – the youngest daughter of Yacob

Major themes

H. G. Wells addresses the following themes in "The Country of the Blind" [ cite web |url=http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_cult/culturedisability.html |title=Culture as Disability |work=Serendip (Science in Culture) |last=McDermott, Ray and Varenne, Hervé |accessdate=2007-06-01 ] :
*An isolated community will generally overcome any disability like blindness after a few generations.
*Having adapted to cope with such disabilities, an isolated community will believe that its modified behaviour is normal.
*An isolated community will tend to be closed-minded and xenophobic, and will persecute and (if necessary) maim anyone who is different and/or non-conformist.
*The maxim, "In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King", from Desiderius Erasmus, is not necessarily always true.
*The story may be seen as an allegory of society's treatment of those with ability or intellect beyond the understanding of the many. The fear of the 'barbarian' or at least unenlightened masses is a recurrent theme in Wells's writing.

Adaptations

*A radio adaptation of the story was produced in 1954 for the NBC radio series "Suspense".
*A stage production was written by Frank Higgins; the only production to date has been in The Coterie Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri in 2006.

Footnotes

External links

* [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/11870 The Country of the Blind and Other Stories] - public-domain text from Project Gutenberg
* [http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a0159.pdf The Country of the Blind] - PDF version
* [http://www.otr.net/r/susp/79.ram NBC radio adaptation of "Country of the Blind"] - RealAudio file