The Country of the Blind

In terms of structure, Wells’s story can be informally broken down into four sections of action. These sections correspond to major narrative beats that emphasize the larger ideas the story is trying to communicate.

The first section introduces the titular “country of the blind” from an outside perspective. While the entire story is told by an omniscient third-person narrator, this section offers an overview of the geography and environment, establishing setting and helping to create a mystical mood around it. Wells uses a combination of fictional features like Parascotopetl and Mindobamba and real locations like Quito and Yaguachi to lend verisimilitude to the story and, by extension, the community that Nunez finds. It fits in with real places, yet remains untouched by the outer world that surrounds it. 

Wells reinforces the mythical quality of the community with the story of one of its residents, who is stranded outside the valley by a nearby volcano eruption. Everything that those outside the community know about it is the result of his stories of idyllic pastures and landscapes. However, just as compelling are the details he refuses to explain, such as the pure silver bar he carries with him to barter for the favor of the gods. The combination of these details evokes an earthly paradise, one in which the outer world might possibly find prosperity and fortune. The omniscient narrator adds to this information for the reader’s benefit, explaining how the community came to be. This compressed history, along with the resident’s stories, develops a portrait of the community in advance of Nunez’s arrival as a contrast to his initial impressions.

The second section of the story begins with the introduction of Nunez, the story’s protagonist, although he does not fit the conventional notions of a heroic protagonist. When Nunez realizes where he is, the first choice he makes is not a noble one but an exploitative one. The proverb that recurs throughout the story—“In the Country of the Blind the One-eyed Man is King” (447)—inspires Nunez to attempt to assume rule over the community by virtue of his sight. This hints at Nunez’s subtle condescension—he automatically assumes that being sighted makes him superior to the residents. Because of his beliefs and behavior, Nunez is an anti-hero, a protagonist whose moral values are fundamentally flawed. 

The dynamics between Nunez and the community’s residents also establish one of the story’s larger themes, The Folly of Colonialism. He conceives of his plan to rule but quickly becomes frustrated by his failure to appeal to his prospective subjects. This happens because he does not anticipate the deep entrenchment of their cultural and social values: Earlier, the narrator reveals that generations have passed since the community became sequestered in the valley. During that time, the shared experience of blindness ceased to be seen as a disability and instead became a natural condition of their experience. Nunez’s failure to understand this or how it affects his status in the community highlights the narrow perspective of colonizers who, upon seeing a community different than their own, automatically assume their own superiority and the population’s ignorance. 

Nunez’s inability to fit in, much less to convince the community of his superiority based on sight, is predicated on the fact that no matter how hard he argues that seeing is better, the people of the valley have no basis from which to evaluate his assertions. As a result, they consider his arguments nonsense and assess his social standing to be low, based on his inability to abandon his reliance on sight. This shift in perspective drives the theme of The Value of Needs-Based Development, showing what could happen if societies were designed according to the needs of their members. Wells offers descriptions of the town that establish features specifically designed for people without sight, from the notches that denote the edging along each pathway to the absence of windows on all the buildings. Nunez adopts the mindset of a colonizer, imagining how he might shift the community’s entrenched social practices in order to fit his ideas of conventional society. By contrasting his attitude with the sensible development of the community, Wells highlights both the impracticality and narrow-mindedness of Nunez’s perspective.

In the third section of the story, Nunez repents for his actions and commits himself to the ways of the community. No longer intent on colonizing the town, Nunez is faced with The Challenges of Assimilation. He learns that fitting in takes more than just submitting himself to the community’s authority: He is expected to completely abandon his reliance on sight and commit wholeheartedly to the philosophy and experience of the people. This is complicated by Nunez’s relationship with a local woman named Medina-saroté, who initially expresses delight in Nunez’s experiences of sight. When the two try to get married, they meet resistance from the larger community because they view Nunez as a lower-class member of society. This status has less to do with his assets and occupation than it does with his experience as a person with sight. The doctors who assess Nunez suggest that his sight is a curable illness that affects his brain. When they propose removing his eyes to make him experience blindness, Nunez is torn. His character depends on the impossible choice between leaving Medina-saroté and knowing that he can no longer see her again for the rest of his life. Because sight remains an imaginary concept to Medina-saroté, she does little in the way of supporting Nunez’s desire to keep his eyes, especially when their relationship is at stake. Nunez’s dilemma in this section highlights the impossible choices that are often forced upon people who wish to or are being forced to assimilate into a culture.

This dilemma leads directly into the fourth and final section of the story, in which Nunez initially agrees to go through with the surgery but instead leaves the community in the hours before the surgery is scheduled to take place. Nunez’s decision isn’t spurred by cowardice but by his preference to live as a person with sight. This choice does not mean that Nunez’s character is weak or lacks resolve; rather, it points to his willingness to abandon his adoptive community to forego the costs of assimilation. While Nunez finds a way out of the valley, his fate is left open-ended. Wells does not disclose whether Nunez survives his escape because what matters is that he has received the reward for his choice. Nunez is granted a glimpse of the stars, which brings him peace, and with this ending, Wells thus suggests that Nunez has abandoned his colonialist mindset and has chosen instead to embrace his own abilities and identity.