Blindness by Jose Saramago

I've recently been reading a book called "Blindness" by Jose Saramago. It is about an epidemic of this disease that is known as the white evil, spreading from one person to many others. The government tries to stop this by putting them into quarantine, and from there it follows an eye doctor and his wife into a mental ward in quarantine. The doctor went blind after examining the first person afflicted by the disease, and his wife pretended to go blind so she could stay with her husband rather than have to separate from him. For some strange reason, the wife has not gone blind yet, even after spending at least a few weeks there (The narrator never gives any mention of how much time they have been in the ward, so this is just my guess based on how well acquainted everyone is with the inside of the ward, even blind). The doctor's wife has told no one but her husband that she is not blind yet, because not only does she not want to be at the beck and call of everyone, but she does not want people to think badly about her for lying about it for so wrong. But this does not mean that she does no work. In fact, she more or less leads all of the work done in the ward, to some extent.
Something a bit strange about this book is that there are no quotation marks throughout the entire book (when people talk, he adds commas and capitalizes the first letter to show that a new person is talking. It can get a bit confusing at times). There are many metaphors in this book, and he never fully explains the disease, because no one fully understands it. In some ways, the narrator is omnipotent, but in other ways, he is not. He can tell the thoughts of the people in the ward, but he is not able to explain anything that no one in the ward knows.
The nice thing about this book is not only does it show the big picture of the ward and the disease and everything related to it, but it also connects many people in the ward. The first blind man had his car stolen when he turned blind. The man who stole his car later became blind as well. Many patients of the doctors became blind as well, due to the disease spreading from the doctor before he went blind.
Though I have not finished this book yet, I can already say that it is a very good book, with a lot of not only specific but also general information to help me understand the plot.

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

     I recently read the book "The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells. The narrator is a man named Mr. Hillyer, a guest to The Time Traveller. We do not follow Mr. Hillyer very much in the story, however, as the bulk of the story is a narration of the Time Traveller's travels into the future. The story is set in the Time Traveller's house in Richmond, a London suburb. Seeing as the book was written in 1895, the year of the narration is 1895, not including the time spent in the Time Traveller's adventures, set in the year 802,701.
     In this new age, he meets an evolution of humans known as the Eloi, a golden skinned race descending from humans, frolicking through meadows without a care in the world, never doing any work, while underground, a race known as the Morlocks, an apelike descendant of humans, does all the work. This set up is meant to symbolize the upper class and the working class in the (then) modern day.
     There are many external and internal conflicts. The main external conflict in this book is protecting the Eloi, helpless and defenseless, from the Morlock, aiming to kill the Eloi in the nighttime (when they can go outside without fear of their sensitive eyes being blinded due to the sun) for years of slavery. Internal conflicts in this book are about the relationships that he forms with one of the Elois there, whom he names Weena. When she is killed by the Morlock, his inner struggles turn towards disgust to the Morlocks. After spending so much time with the Elois, who are disgusted with the Morlocks, their behaviors began to rub off on him.
     This story symbolizes life in this world. The rich breeze by, while the working class struggle to stay in one job and make enough money to support their families.

"Am I Blue?" By Bruce Coville

     I read the short story "Am I Blue?" by Bruce Coville recently. In this short story, a boy named Vince is continually getting bullied by a boy named Butch because Butch has decided that Vince is gay. Vince meets a man, Melvin, who says that he is Vince's fairy godfather and that he gets three wishes. When he talks with Melvin, he learns that Melvin was killed by gaybashers in an alleyway. This makes me think about how there are a bunch of stories of memorials for people killed in hate crimes against gays and many other things, such as being black or latino.
     In the story, Melvin tells him about one of the Three Great Gay Fantasies, which is that every one who is even partially gay or deciding turns a shade of blue that everyone can see. Vince uses one of his wishes to wish for this, for 24 hours, coast-to-coast.
     When people start to realize that being blue means being gay, reactions were, expectedly, mixed. Vince asks Melvin to turn Butch blue, but Melvin comes back and says that Butch is already blue. This sheds some light on Butch's reasons for beating up Vince. He was realizing that he was gay, so to prove that he wasn't and that he hated them, he beat up a guy that he thought could be gay.
     Bruce Coville blends realism and fantasy perfectly in this story, throwing real issues into a fictitious, and often humorous, setting. He puts a light air on a serious issue.
     The moral of "Am I Blue?" is that you shouldn't have to hide your sexuality from anyone, no matter if gay, straight, or otherwise, and that whether you like it or not, everyone is different in some way or another.. Everyone knows someone that's gay, whether you know so or not.