Monday, October 27, 2014

Why did the young man leave the mysterious mountain valley and go into the lower world? What happened to prevent him from ever returning to his home?

The first three paragraphs of “The Country of the Blind” outline a history behind the main plotline of the short story. These two questions refer to this first section. The narrative describes a secluded valley where a disease once infected the residents, eventually blinding an entire community of people. A sighted man from among them took a bar of silver and climbed out of the valley “to buy them holy help against their ill.” But cataclysmic weather and an earthquake shook the region, and the man was cut off from ever returning to that valley. As a result, he could get no help for his people. Ironically, he grew blind before he died. And generation after generation of individuals in that valley kept passing on the trait of blindness to their descendants. They adapted their lives and their culture to this condition. Soon no one living there knew what sight even was. Into this valley, our character Nunez ventures.

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