Examples Of Blindness In The Book Thief

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In the first 55 pages of Blindness, I believe the the loss of the thief’s sight does not change the thief’s sense of self at all. The thief is the first person who contracts the white blindness, as he was the first person to directly interact with the blind man. At first, the thief seems like a good Samaritan, as he is the only one to volunteer to drive the blind home and help the blind man get into his house. He even offers to look after and keep the blind man company until his wife comes home, but the blind man declines the offer because the good Samaritan’s “zeal suddenly struck the blind man as being suspect…” (5) But when the blind man’s wife gets home, we find out that the blind man’s car is gone and the only person who could have taken …show more content…
In fact, the thief becomes more aggressive, trying to put a facade that he is innocent of any trouble. As soon thief enters the mental ward, he starts pointing fingers and blames the blind man for his blindness. “My reward for carrying out a kind action was to lose my sight.” (47) His need to justify his actions still sticks with him even in blindness. This statement is defensive as he knows himself that he did something wrong, so in order to compensate for it, the thief tries to make it seem like he’s the victim. The thief puts the blame on the blind man as a way to both make himself look like the good guy who has done nothing wrong and to take out his anger for being blind. “If I hadn’t been the decent fellow I am, if I hadn’t helped him to find his way home, I’d still have my precious eyes,”(46) After the first blind man continuously responds that the thief was the one who stole his car, the thief finally give in and says “all right, I stole your car, but you stole my eyesight, so who’s the bigger thief,”(48) This logic isn’t different than when he justifies stealing the blind man’s car which shows that blindness hasn’t changed his thought process. The thief’s inner qualities don’t change that much either. When he smells the perfume of the girl with glasses, he becomes lustful and gropes her. He then gets kicked by the girl, and he acts like he did nothing wrong and that he was actually the

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