“The valley, he said, had in it all that the heart of man could desire—sweet water, pasture, an even climate, slopes of rich brown soil with tangles of a shrub that bore an excellent fruit, and on one side great hanging forests of pine that held the avalanches high.”

The lost settler depicts the country of the blind as a utopia, which fuels the legend around it. Later on in the story, Nunez’s recognition of the valley speaks to the pervasiveness of the legend and his willingness to exploit the valley’s utopic qualities as the “ruler” of the community.

“But Nunez advanced with the confident steps of a youth who enters upon life. All the old stories of the lost valley and the Country of the Blind had come back to his mind, and through his thoughts ran this old proverb, as if it were a refrain—

‘In the Country of the Blind the One-eyed Man is King.’

‘In the Country of the Blind the One-eyed Man is King.’

And very civilly he gave them greeting. He talked to them and used his eyes.”

In this passage, Wells frames Nunez’s character motivation through the use of a proverb, a vernacular saying meant to convey folk wisdom. Though proverbs are figurative in nature, Nunez takes the saying literally, believing that his sight entitles him to rule over the people.

“‘I fell down,’ he said; ‘I couldn’t see in this pitchy darkness.’

There was a pause as if the unseen persons about him tried to understand his words. Then the voice of Correa said: ‘He is but newly formed. He stumbles as he walks and mingles words that mean nothing with his speech.’”

This passage foreshadows the people’s response to Nunez’s attempts at subjugation. When they perceive Nunez’s inability to navigate a town that has been designed for their needs, they assess that the fault is in the development of his senses. Throughout the story, they will continue to refer to Nunez as if he were “newly formed” or a child.

“For fourteen generations these people had been blind and cut off from all the seeing world; the names for all the things of sight had faded and changed; the story of the outer world was faded and changed to a child’s story; and they had ceased to concern themselves with anything beyond the rocky slopes above their circling wall. Blind men of genius had arisen among them and questioned the shreds of belief and tradition they had brought with them from their seeing days, and had dismissed all these things as idle fancies, and replaced them with new and saner explanations. Much of their imagination had shriveled with their eyes, and they had made for themselves new imaginations with their ever more sensitive ears and finger-tips.”

This passage not only compresses the history of the valley into a digestible summary, but it also exposes how the history of their blindness impacted the development of their cultural imagination. By taking blindness as a given condition of existence, they erase sight and its related concepts from their ways of thinking and thus their community’s development, establishing the theme of The Value of Needs-Based Development.

“‘Unformed mind!’ he said. ‘Got no senses yet! They little know they’ve been insulting their heaven-sent king and master. I see I must bring them to reason.’”

This passage firms Nunez’s resolve to subjugate the people, viewing their assessment of his behavior as a slight on his character. Wells captures the condescending view Nunez takes of the blind people, cementing the protagonist’s status as an anti-hero with flawed or ambiguous morals. It also positions him as a stereotypical colonizer, whose narrow perspective is informed only by the difference between the societies and the presumption that his is better.

“‘My time will come,’ he said.

‘You’ll learn,’ the blind man answered. ‘There is much to learn in the world.’

‘Has no one told you, “In the Country of the Blind the One-eyed Man is King”?’

‘What is blind?’ asked the blind man carelessly over his shoulder.”

This passage encapsulates The Folly of Colonialism as a theme by dooming Nunez’s actions to failure. As previously shown, the community does not possess a concept of sight in its cultural imagination after generations without sight. When Nunez directly communicates the proverb that compels him to action, they have no response for it as they do not view themselves as missing anything: Nunez’s colonialist imperative is literally nonsense to them.

“He found working and going about at night a particularly irksome thing, and he decided that that should be the first thing he would change.

They led a simple, laborious life, these people, with all the elements of virtue and happiness, as these things can be understood by men. They toiled, but not oppressively; they had food and clothing sufficient for their needs; they had days and seasons of rest; they made much of music and singing, and there was love among them, and little children.”

Wells underscores Nunez’s colonialist mentality in this passage by showing the contrast between Nunez’s intentions and the people’s way of life. Nunez wants to reshape the community to fit his needs, but the paragraph that directly follows shows how unnecessary Nunez’s plan is—the society they have developed already gives them everything they need. Nunez’s plan merely caters to his convenience, not to the needs of the people.

“He spoke of the beauties of sight, of watching the mountains, of the sky and the sunrise, and they heard him with amused incredulity that presently became condemnatory. They told him there were indeed no mountains at all, but that the end of the rocks where the llamas grazed was indeed the end of the world; thence sprang a cavernous roof of the universe, from which the dew and the avalanches fell; and when he maintained stoutly the world had neither end nor roof such as they supposed, they said his thoughts were wicked.”

This passage drives the conflict between Nunez and the community. When Nunez tries to undermine their cosmology by revealing the geography of the world, they become hostile, condemning him for what they perceive to be heresy. From their perspective, Nunez is trying to redefine their understanding of the world, which disturbs them.

“He expected dire punishments, but these blind people were capable of toleration […]

He was ill for some days, and they nursed him kindly. That refined his submission. But they insisted on his lying in the dark, and that was a great misery.”

In this passage, Nunez begins to experience The Challenges of Assimilation for the first time. The contradictory feelings he has are no conscious fault of the community: While they willingly take care of him, Nunez’s misery in the dark causes him to confront his biases as a sighted person firsthand. For anyone else in the country, the constant darkness would have no effect, but Nunez actively struggles to adjust to the dark, the beginning of his process of assimilation.

“There came a time when Nunez thought that, could he win her, he would be resigned to live in the valley for all the rest of his days.”

Nunez’s assimilation is helped along by the emotional connections he forms among the community members. This culminates in his romance with Medina-saroté. He comes to accept that a lifelong relationship with her will motivate him to accept the valley as his new home, although the word “resigned” highlights that he is still conflicted.

“There was from the first very great opposition to the marriage of Nunez and Medina-saroté; not so much because they valued her as because they held him as a being apart, an idiot, incompetent thing below the permissible level of a man.”

Nunez’s journey to assimilate is obstructed by societal resistance to his romance with Medina-saroté. This exposes the social hierarchy that continues to exist in the community, albeit one based on value alignment. The union between Nunez and Medina-saroté would be considered scandalous because it would mean raising a family that holds views that contradict the prevailing culture.

“‘My world is sight.’

Her head drooped lower.

‘There are the beautiful things, the beautiful little things—the flowers, the lichens among the rocks, the lightness and softness on a piece of fur, the far sky with its drifting down of clouds, the sunsets and the stars. And there is you. For you alone it is good to have sight, to see your sweet, serene face, your kindly lips, your dear, beautiful hands folded together…It is these eyes of mine you won, these eyes that hold me to you, that these idiots seek. Instead, I must touch you, hear you, and never see you again. I must come under that roof of rock and stone and darkness, that horrible roof under which your imagination stoops.’”

Nunez appeals to Medina-saroté by making a passionate argument for the value of sight. The argument relies on imagery, evoking visual details to argue his point. He also stresses that his love for Medina-saroté is based on his ability to see her. Although he will continue to love her when he experiences blindness, he must reckon with knowing what she looked like when he was sighted. He also reveals that he still sees her as inferior when he says that her “imagination stoops” under her blindness.

“‘You mean—you think—I should be better, better perhaps—’

He was realizing things very swiftly. He felt anger, indeed, anger at the dull course of fate, but also sympathy for her lack of understanding—a sympathy near akin to pity.

[…]

‘If I were to consent to this?’ he said at last, in a voice that was very gentle.

She flung her arms about him, weeping wildly. ‘Oh, if you would,’ she sobbed, ‘if only you would!’”

The tragedy of the romance between Nunez and Medina-saroté is laid bare in this passage. Despite Nunez’s best attempts to appeal to Medina-saroté’s emotions and reason, she is swayed by the demands of the collective she belongs to. Medina-saroté cannot accept his argument on a practical basis because she has no experience to validate Nunez’s claims of the joys of sight.