Banquet Speech, 1974

Blindness: Is Literature Against Us?
An Address Delivered by Kenneth Jernigan
President, National Federation of the Blind
At the Banquet of the Annual Convention 
Chicago, July 3, 1974
History, we are told, is the record of what human beings have done; literature, 
the record of what they have thought. Last year I examined with you the place of 
the blind in history—not just what we have done but what the historians have 
remembered and said we have done. The two, as we found, are vastly different.
This year I would like to talk with you about the place of the blind in 
literature. How have we been perceived? What has been our role? How have the 
poets and novelists, the essayists and dramatists seen us? Have they "told it 
like it is," or merely liked it as they've told it?
With history there is at least a supposed foundation of fact. Whatever the 
twisting or omission or misinterpretation or downright falsehood, that 
foundation presumably remains—a tether and a touchstone, always subject to 
reexamination and new proof. Not so with literature. The author is free to cut 
through facts to the essence, to dream and soar and surmise. Going deeper than 
history, the myths and feelings of a people are enshrined in its literature. 
Literary culture in all its forms constitutes possibly the main transmission 
belt of our society's beliefs and values—more important even than the schools, 
the churches, the news media, or the family. How, then, have we fared in 
literature?
The literary record reveals no single theme or unitary view of the life of the 
blind. Instead, it displays a bewildering variety of images—often conflicting 
and contradictory, not only as between different ages or cultures, or among the 
works of various writers, but even within the pages of a single book.
Yet, upon closer examination the principal themes and motifs of literature and 
popular culture are nine in number and may be summarized as follows: blindness 
as compensatory or miraculous power, blindness as total tragedy; blindness as 
foolishness and helplessness; blindness as unrelieved wickedness and evil; 
blindness as perfect virtue; blindness as punishment for sin; blindness as 
abnormality or dehumanization; blindness as purification; and blindness as 
symbol or parable.
Let us begin with blindness and compensatory powers. Suppose one of you should 
ask me whether I think there is any advantage in being blind; and suppose I 
should answer like this: "Not an advantage perhaps: still it has compensations 
that one might not think of. A new world to explore, new experiences, new powers 
awakening; strange new perceptions; life in the fourth dimension."l How would 
you react to that? You would, I suspect, laugh me out of the room. I doubt that 
a single person here would buy such stereotyped stupidity. You and I know from 
firsthand experience that there is no "fourth dimension" to blindness—no 
miraculous new powers awakening, no strange new perceptions, no brave new worlds 
to explore. Yet, the words I have quoted are those of a blind character in a 
popular novel of some time back. (I don't know whether the term has 
significance, but a blind "private eye," no less.)
The association of blindness with compensatory powers, illustrated by the blind 
detective I have just mentioned, represents a venerable tradition, reaching back 
to classical mythology. A favorite method of punishment among the gods of 
ancient Greece was blinding—regarded apparently as a fate worse than 
death—following which, more often than not, the gods so pitied the blinded 
victim that they relented and conferred upon him extraordinary gifts, usually 
the power of prophecy or some other exceptional skill. Thus, Homer was widely 
regarded as having been compensated by the gift of poetry. In the same way 
Tiresias, who wandered through the plays of Sophocles, received for his 
blindness the gift of prophecy.
The theme of divine compensation following divine retribution survived the 
passage of the ages and the decline of the pagan religions. Sir Arthur Conan 
Doyle (one of the most eminent novelists of the last century, and the creator of 
Sherlock Holmes) conjured up a blind character with something of Holmes's 
sleuthing talents, in a book entitled Sir Nigel. This figure is introduced as 
one who has the mysterious ability to detect by hearing a hidden tunnel, which 
runs beneath the besieged castle. His compensatory powers are described in a 
conversation between two other people in the novel:
"This man was once rich and of good repute [says one], but he was beggared by 
this robber lord who afterwards put out his eyes, so that he has lived for many 
years in darkness at the charity of others."
"How can he help in our enterprise if he be indeed blind?" [asks his companion.]
"It is for that very reason, fair Lord, that he can be of greater service than 
any other man. For it often happens that when a man has lost a sense, the good 
God will strengthen those that remain. Hence it is that Andreas has such ears 
that he can hear the sap in the trees or the cheep of the mouse in its burrow . 
. ."2
The great nineteenth-century novelist Victor Hugo, in The Man Who Laughs, 
reflected the view of a host of modem writers that blindness carries with it a 
certain purity and ecstasy, which somehow makes up for the loss of sight. His 
blind heroine, Dea, is portrayed as "absorbed by that kind of ecstasy peculiar 
to the blind, which seems at times to give them a song to listen to in their 
souls and to make up to them for the light which they lack by some strain of 
ideal music. Blindness," says Hugo, "is a cavern to which reaches the deep 
harmony of the Eternal."3
Probably it is this mystical notion of a "sixth sense" accompanying blindness 
that accounts for the rash of blind detectives and investigators in popular 
fiction. Max Carrados, the man who talked of living in the "fourth dimension," 
first appeared in 1914 and went on to survive a number of superhuman escapades 
through the nineteen twenties. In 1915 came another sightless sleuth—the 
remarkable Damon Gaunt, who "never lost a case."4 So it is with "Thornley 
Colton, Blind Detective," the brainchild of Clinton H. Stagg; and so it is with 
the most illustrious of all the private eyes without eyes, Captain Duncan 
Maclain, whose special qualities are set forth in the deathless prose of a dust 
jacket:
"Shooting to kill by sound, playing chess with fantastic precision, and, of 
course, quickening the hearts of the opposite sex, Captain Maclain has won the 
unreserved admiration of reviewers."5
Even the author is carried away with the genius of his hero: "There were 
moments," he writes, "when powers slightly greater than those possessed by 
ordinary mortals seemed bestowed on Duncan Maclain. Such moments worried him."6
They might worry us, as well; for all of this mumbo jumbo about abnormal or 
supernatural powers doesn't lessen the stereotype of the blind person as alien 
and different, unnatural and peculiar. It makes it worse.
Not only is it untrue, but it is also a profound disservice to the blind; for it 
suggests that whatever a blind person may accomplish is not due to his own 
ability but to some magic inherent in blindness itself. This assumption of 
compensatory powers removes the blind person at a stroke of the pen from the 
realm of the normal—the ordinary, everyday world of plain people—and places him 
in a limbo of abnormality. Whether supernormal or subnormal does not matter—he 
is without responsibility, without rights, and without society. We have been 
conned into this view of second-class status long enough. The play is over. We 
want no more of magic powers and compensations. We want our rights as citizens 
and human beings—and we intend to have them!
It is significant that, for all his supposed charm and talent, Maclain never 
gets the girl—or any girl. The author plainly regards him as ineligible for such 
normal human relationships as love, sex, and marriage. Max Carrados put it this 
way in replying to an acquaintance who expressed great comfort in his presence: 
"Blindness invites confidence," he says. "We are out of the running—for us human 
rivalry ceases to exist."7
This notion of compensatory powers—the doctrine that blindness is its own 
reward—is no compliment but an insult. It robs us of all credit for our 
achievements and all responsibility for our failings. It neatly relieves society 
of any obligation to equalize conditions or provide opportunities or help us 
help ourselves. It leaves us in the end without the capacity to lead a regular, 
competitive, and participating life in the community around us. The blind, in 
short, may (according to this view) be extraordinary, but we can never be 
ordinary. Don't you believe it! We are normal people—neither especially blessed 
nor especially cursed—and the fiction to the contrary must come to an end! It is 
not mumbo jumbo we want, or magical powers—but our rights as free people, our 
responsibilities as citizens, and our dignity as human beings.
Negative as it is, this image of compensatory powers is less vicious and 
destructive than some others which run through the literature of fiction and 
fantasy. The most damaging of all is also the oldest and most persistent: 
namely, the theme of blindness as total tragedy, the image summed up in the 
ancient Hebrew saying, "The blind man is as one dead." The Oedipus cycle of 
Greek tragic plays pressed the death-in-life stereotype to its farthest extreme. 
Thus, in "Oedipus Rex", in which the king puts out his own eyes, the statement 
occurs: "Thou art better off dead than living blind." It remained, however, for 
an Englishman, blind himself, to write the last word (what today would be called 
"the bottom line") on blindness as total disaster. John Milton says in Samson 
Agonistes:
Blind among enemies, worse than chains, Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!... 
Inferior to the vilest now become of man or worm; the vilest here excel me, They 
creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and 
wrong, Within doors, or without, still as a fool, In power of others, never in 
my own; Scarce half I seem to live, Dead more than half.... a moving grave.8 
What is most striking about this epic poem is not the presence of the disaster 
concept (that might have been expected) but the fact that Milton of all people 
was the author. His greatest writing (including "Paradise Lost") was done after 
his blindness. Then why did he do it? The answer is simple: We the blind tend to 
see ourselves as others see us. Even when we know to the contrary, we tend to 
accept the public view of our limitations. Thus, we help make those limitations 
a reality. Betrayed by the forces of literature and tradition, Milton (in his 
turn) betrayed himself and all others who are blind. In fact, he actually 
strengthened and reinforced the stereotype—and he did it in spite of his own 
personal experience to the contrary. The force of literature is strong, indeed!
The disaster concept of blindness did not stop with Milton. "William Tell", the 
eighteenth-century play by Schiller, shows us an old man, blinded and forced to 
become a beggar. His son says:
Oh, the eye's light, of all the gifts of Heaven the dearest, best! ... And he 
must drag on through all his days in endless darkness! . . To die is nothing. 
But to have life, and not have sight—Oh, that is misery indeed!9
A century later the disaster concept was as popular as ever. In Kipling's book, 
The Light That Failed, no opportunity is lost to tell us that blindness is worse 
than death. The hero, Dick Heldar, upon learning that he is to become blind, 
remarks: "It's the living death .... We're to be shut up in the dark ... and we 
shan't see anybody, and we shall never have anything we want, not though we live 
to be a hundred." 10 Later in the book, he rages against the whole world 
"because it was alive and could see, while he, Dick, was dead in the death of 
the blind, who, at the best, are only burdens upon their associates." 11 And 
when this self-pitying character finally manages to get himself killed (to the 
relief of all concerned), the best Kipling can say of him is that "his luck had 
held till the last, even to the crowning mercy of a kindly bullet through his 
head." 12
Joseph Conrad, in "The End of the Tether", kills off Captain Whalley by 
drowning, as a fate much preferable to remaining alive without sight. In D.H. 
Lawrence's "The Blind Man", there is a war-blinded casualty named Maurice, whose 
total despair and misery are unrelieved by any hint of future hope; and Rosamond 
Lehmann, in her novel "Invitation to the Waltz", goes Lawrence one better- or, 
rather, one worse. Her war-blinded hero, although he appears to be living a 
respectable life, is portrayed as if for all practical purposes he were a 
walking corpse. He leads, we are told, "a counterfeit of life bred from his 
murdered youth." And when he brings himself somehow to dance with a former 
sweetheart, it is a sorry spectacle: "She danced with him," says the author, "in 
love and sorrow. He held her close to him, and he was far away from her, far 
from the music, buried and indifferent. She danced with his youth and his 
death." 13
For writers such as these, the supposed tragedy of blindness is so unbearable 
that only two solutions can be imagined: either the victim must be cured or he 
must be killed. A typical illustration is Susan Glaspell's "The Glory of the 
Conquered", of which an unkind critic has written: "It is a rather easy solution 
of the problem to make her hero die at the end of the book, but probably the 
author did not know what else to do with him." 14
Let us now leave tragedy and move to foolishness and helplessness. The blind man 
as a figure of fun and the butt of ridicule is no doubt as old as farce and 
slapstick. In the Middle Ages the role was regularly acted out on festive 
holidays when blind beggars were rounded up and outfitted in donkey's ears, than 
made to gibber and gesticulate to the delight of country bumpkins. Reflecting 
this general hilarity, Chaucer (in "The Merchant's Tale") presents a young wife, 
married to an old blind man, who deceives him by meeting her lover in a tree 
while taking the husband for a walk. The Chaucerian twist is that the old man 
suddenly regains his sight as the couple are making love in the 
branches-whereupon the quick-witted girl explains that her amorous behavior was 
solely for the purpose of restoring his sight. Shakespeare is just as bad. He 
makes the blinded Gloucester in "King Lear" so thoroughly confused and helpless 
that he can be persuaded of anything and deceived by any trick. Isaac, in the 
Old Testament, is duped by his son Jacob, who masquerades as Esau, disguising 
himself in goatskins, and substituting kid meat for the venison his father 
craves—all without a glimmer of recognition on the part of the old man, who must 
have taken leave of the rest of his senses as well as his sense of sight.
An unusually harsh example of the duping of blind people is found in the 
sixteenth-century play "Der Euienspiegel mit den Blinden". The hero meets three 
blind beggars and promises them a valuable coin to pay for their food and 
lodging at a nearby inn; but when they all reach out for the money, he gives it 
to none of them, and each supposes that the others have received it. You can 
imagine the so-called "funny ending." After they go to the inn and dine 
lavishly, the innkeeper demands his payment; and each of the blind beggars 
thereupon accuses the others of lying, thievery, and assorted crimes. The 
innkeeper-shouting "You people defraud everyone!"--drives the three into his 
pigsty and locks the gate, lamenting to his wife: "What shall we do with them, 
let them go without punishment after they have eaten and drunk so much, for 
nothing? But if we keep them, they will spread lice and fleas and we will have 
to feed them. I wish they were on the gallows." 15 The play has a "happy 
ending," but what an image persists of the character of those who are blind: 
criminal and corrupt, contagious and contaminated, confounded and confused, 
wandering homeless and helpless in an alien landscape. Their book of life might 
well be called "Gullible's Travels."
The helpless blind man is a universal stereotype. In Maeterlinck's play, "The 
Blind", all of the characters are portrayed as sightless in order to make a 
philosophical point; but what emerges on the stage is a ridiculous tableau of 
groping, groaning, and grasping at the air.
One of the very worst offenders against the truth about blindness is the eminent 
French author of our own day, Andre Gide, in "La Symphonie Pastorale". A blind 
reviewer of the novel has described it well: "The girl Gertrude at fifteen, 
before the pastor begins to educate her, has all the signs of an outright idiot. 
This is explained simply as the result of her blindness .... [Gide] asserts that 
without physical sight one cannot really know the truth. Gertrude lives happily 
in the good, pure world the pastor creates for her .... Gertrude knows next to 
nothing about the evil and pain in the actual world. As a sightless person she 
cannot consciously know sin, is blissfully ignorant, like Adam and Eve before 
eating of the forbidden fruit. Only when her sight is restored does she really 
know evil for what it is and recognize sin. Then, on account of the sinning she 
has done with the pastor without knowing it was sinning, she is miserable and 
commits suicide."16
In literature not only is blindness depicted as stupidity but also as 
wickedness, the very incarnation of pure evil. The best-known model is the old 
pirate "Blind Pew," in Stevenson's "Treasure Island". When the young hero, Jim 
Hawkins, first encounters Pew, he feels that he "never saw a more dreadful 
figure" than this "horrible, soft-spoken, eyeless creature"; and when Pew gets 
the boy in his clutches, Jim observes that he "never heard a voice so cruel, and 
cold, and ugly as that blind man's." 17
A much earlier version of the wicked blind man theme is seen in the picaresque 
romance of the sixteenth century, "Lazatillo de Tormes". Lazarillo is 
apprenticed as a guide to an old blind man, who is the very personification of 
evil. 
"When the blind man told the boy to put his ear to a statue and listen for a 
peculiar noise, Lazarillo obeyed. Then the old man knocked the boy's head 
sharply against the stone, so his ears rang for three days......"18
Throughout the ages the connection between blindness and meanness has been very 
nearly irresistible to authors, and it has struck a responsive note with 
audiences--audiences already conditioned through folklore and fable to believe 
that blindness brings out the worst in people. Given the casual cruelty with 
which the blind have generally been treated, such villainous caricatures have 
also provided a convenient excuse and justification. After all, if the blind are 
rascals and rapscallions, they should be handled accordingly- and no pity 
wasted.
Alternating with the theme of blindness as perfect evil is its exact reverse: 
the theme of blindness as perfect virtue. On the surface these two popular 
stereotypes appear to be contradictory; but it takes no great psychological 
insight to recognize them as opposite sides of the same counterfeit coin. What 
they have in common is the notion that blindness is a transforming event, 
entirely removing the victim front the ordinary dimensions of life and humanity.
Blindness must either be the product of sin and the devil or of angels and 
halos. Of the latter type is Melody, in Laura Richards' novel of the same name: 
"The blind child," we are told, "touched life with her hand, and knew it. She 
knew every tree of the forest by its bark; knew when it blossomed, and how .... 
Not a cat or dog in the village but would leave his own master or mistress at a 
single call from Melody." 19 She is not merely virtuous; she is magical. She 
rescues a baby from a burning building, cures the sick by her singing, and 
redeems alcoholics from the curse of drink.
It is passing strange, and what is strangest of all is that this absurd creature 
is the invention of Laura Richards, the daughter of Samuel Gridley Howe, a 
pioneer educator of the blind. Like Milton, Mrs. Richards knew better. She was 
betrayed by the forces of tradition and custom, of folklore and literature. In 
turn she betrayed herself and the blind, and gave reinforcement to the 
stereotype. Worst of all, she doubtless never knew what she had done, and 
thought of herself as a benefactor of the blind and a champion of their cause. 
Ignorance is truly the greatest of all tragedies.
The sickest of all the romantic illusions is the pious opinion that blindness is 
only a blessing in disguise. In "The Blind Girl of Wittenberg", by John G. 
Morris, a young man says to the heroine: "God has deprived you of sight but only 
that your heart might be illuminated with more brilliant light." Every blind 
girl I know would have slapped his face for such insulting drivel; but the reply 
of this fictional female is worse than the original remark: "Do you not think, 
sir," she says, "that we blind people have a world within us which is perhaps 
more beautiful than yours, and that we have a light within us which shines more 
brilliantly than your sun?" 20
So it goes with the saccharine sweet that has robbed us of humanity and made the 
legend and hurt our cause. There is Caleb, the "little blind seer" of James 
Ludlow's awful novel, "Deborah". There is Bertha, Dickens' ineffably sweet and 
noble blind heroine of "The Cricket on the Hearth", who comes off almost as an 
imbecile. There is the self-sacrificing Nydia, in "The Last Days of Pompeii"; 
and there is Naomi, in Hall Caine's novel, "Scapegoat". But enough! It is 
sweetness without light, and literature without enlightment.
One of the oldest and cruelest themes in the archives of fiction is the notion 
of blindness as a punishment for sin. Thus, Oedipus was blinded as a punishment 
for incest, and Shakespeare's Gloucester for adultery. The theme often goes hand 
in hand with the stereotype of blindness as a kind of purification rite--an act 
which wipes the slate clean and transforms human character into purity and 
goodness. So Amyas Leigh, in Kingsley's "Westward Ho", having been blinded by a 
stroke of lightning, is instantly converted from a crook to a saint.
Running like an ugly stain through many of these master plots- and, perhaps, in 
a subtle way underlying all of them-is the image of blindness as dehumanization, 
a kind of banishment from the world of normal life and relationships. Neither 
Dickens' blind Bertha, nor Bulwer-Lytton's Nydia, when they find themselves in 
love, have the slightest idea that anybody could ever love them back- nor does 
the reader; nor, for that matter, do the other characters in the novels. 
Kipling, in a story entitled "They," tells of a charming and apparently 
competent blind woman, Miss Florence, who loves children but "of course" cannot 
have any of her own. Kipling doesn't say why she can't, but it's plain that she 
is unable to imagine a blind person either married or raising children. Miss 
Florence, however, is magically compensated. She is surrounded on her estate by 
the ghosts of little children who have died in the neighborhood and have 
thereupon rushed to her in spirit. We are not meant to infer that she is as 
crazy as a hoot owl--only that she is blind, and therefore entitled to her 
spooky fantasies.
The last of the popular literary themes is that which deals with blindness not 
literally but symbolically, for purposes of satire or parable. From folklore to 
film the image recurs of blindness as a form of death or damnation, or as a 
symbol of other kinds of unseeing (as in the maxim, "where there is no vision, 
the people perish)." In this category would come H.G. Well's classic "The 
Country of the Blind"; also, "The Planet of the Blind", by Paul Corey; and 
Maeterlinck's "The Blind". In the short story by Conrad Aiken, "Silent Snow, 
Secret Snow," blindness becomes a metaphor for schizophrenia.
In virtually all of these symbolic treatments, there is an implied acceptance of 
blindness as a state of ignorance and confusion, of the inversion of normal 
perceptions and values, and of a condition equal to if not worse than death. The 
havoc wrought upon the lives of blind people in ages past by these literary 
traditions is done, and it cannot be undone; but the future is yet to be 
determined. And that future, shaped by the instrument of truth, will be 
determined by us. Self-aware and self-reliant-neither unreasonably belligerent 
nor unduly self-effacing—we must, in a matter-of-fact way, take up the challenge 
of determining our own destiny. We know who we are; we know what we can do; and 
we know how to act in concert.
And what can we learn from this study of literature? What does it all mean? For 
one thing, it places in totally new perspective the pronouncements and writings 
of many of the so-called "experts" who today hold forth in the field of work 
with the blind. They tell us (these would-be "professionals," these hirelings of 
the American Foundation for the Blind and HEW, these pseudoscientists with their 
government grants and lofty titles and impressive papers) that blindness is not 
just the loss of sight, but a total transformation of the person. 
They tell us that blindness is not merely a loss to the eyes, but to the 
personality as well—that it is a "death," a blow to the very being of the 
individual. They tell us that the eye is a sex symbol, and that the blind person 
cannot be a "whole man"—or, for that matter, presumably a whole woman either. 
They tell us that we have multiple "lacks and losses." 21
The American Foundation for the Blind devises a 239 page guidebook22 for our 
personal management," with sixteen steps to help us take a bath, and specific 
techniques for clapping our hands and shaking our heads. We are given detailed 
instructions for buttering our bread, tying our shoes, and even understanding 
the meaning of the words "up" and "down." And all of this is done with federal 
grants, and much insistence that it is new discovery and modern thought.
But our study of literature gives it the lie. These are not new concepts. They 
are as unenlightened as the Middle Ages. They are as old as Oedipus Rex. As for 
science, they have about as much of it as man's ancient fear of the dark. They 
are not fact, but fiction; not new truths, but medieval witchcraft, decked out 
in modem garb—computerized mythology. What we have bought with our federal tax 
dollars and our technology and our numerous government grants is only a 
restatement of the tired old fables of primitive astrology and dread of the 
night.
And let us not forget NAC (The National Accreditation Council for Agencies 
Serving the Blind and Visually Handicapped). When the members of NAC and its 
accredited minions try to act as our custodians and wardens, they are only 
behaving in the time honored way of the Elizabethan "keepers of the poor." When 
they seek to deck us out in donkey's ears and try to make us gibber and 
gesticulate, they are only attempting what the country bumpkins of 600 years ago 
did with better grace and more efficiency.
We have repudiated these false myths of our inferiority and helplessness. We 
have rejected the notion of magical powers and special innocence and naivete. 
Those who would try to compel us to live in the past would do well to look to 
their going. Once people have tasted freedom, they cannot go back. We will never 
again return to the ward status and second-class citizenship of the old 
custodialism. There are many of us (sighted and blind alike) who will take to 
the streets and fight with our bare hands if we must before we will let it 
happen.
And we must never forget the power of literature. Revolutions do not begin in 
the streets, but in the libraries and the classrooms. It has been so throughout 
history. In the terrible battles of the American Civil War, for example, the 
writers and poets fought, too. When the Southern armies came to Bull Run, they 
brought with them Sir Walter Scott and the image of life he had taught them to 
believe. Ivanhoe and brave King Richard stood in the lines with Stonewall 
Jackson to hurl the Yankees back. The War would have ended sooner except for the 
dreams of the poets. And when the Northern troops went down to Richmond, through 
the bloody miles that barred the way, they carried with them the Battle Hymn of 
the Republic and Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was Uncle Tom and little Eliza who 
fired the shots and led the charges that broke the Southern lines. Never mind 
that neither Scott nor Stowe told it exactly as it was. What they said was 
believed, and believing made it come true.
To the question IS LITERATURE AGAINST Us, there can be no unqualified response. 
If we consider only the past, the answer is certainly yes. We have Conventional 
fiction, like conventional history, has told it like it isn't. Although there 
have been notable exceptions, 23 the story has been monotonously and negatively 
the same.
If we consider the present, the answer is mixed. There are signs of change, but 
the old stereotypes and the false images still predominate—and they are 
reinforced and given weight by the writings and beliefs of many of the "experts" 
in our own field of work with the blind.
If we turn to the future, the answer is that the future—in literature as in 
life—is not predetermined but self-determined. As we shape our lives, singly and 
collectively, so will we shape our literature. Blindness will be a tragedy only 
if we see ourselves as authors see us. The contents of the page, in the last 
analysis, reflect the conscience of the age. The structure of literature is but 
a hall of mirrors, giving us back (in images slightly larger or smaller than 
life) exactly what we put in. The challenge for us is to help our age raise its 
consciousness and reform its conscience. We must rid our fiction of fantasy and 
imbue it with fact. Then we shall have a literature to match reality, and a 
popular image of blindness to match the truth, and our image of ourselves.
Poetry is the song of the spirit and the language of the soul. In the drama of 
our struggle to be free—in the story of our movement and the fight to rid the 
blind of old custodialism and man's ancient fear of the dark—there are epics 
which cry to be written,and songs which ask to be sung. The poets and novelists 
can write the words, but we must create the music.
We stand at a critical time in the history of the blind. If we falter or turn 
back, the tragedy of blindness will be great, indeed. But, of course, we will 
not falter, and we will not turn back. Instead, we will go forward with joy in 
our hearts and a song of gladness on our lips. The future is ours, and the 
novelists and the poets will record it. Come! Join me on the barricades, and we 
will make it come true!
FOOTNOTES
1. Ernest Bramah, "Best Max Carrados Detective Stories", p. 6.
2. Arthur Conan Doyle, "Sir Nigel", p. 102.
3. Victor Hugo, "The Man Who Laughs", p. 316.
4. Isabel Ostrander, "At One-Thirty: A Mystery", p. 6.
5. Baynard Kendrick, "Make Mine Maclain", dust jacket.
6. Ibid., p. 43.
7. Bramah, op. cit., p. 7.
8. John Milton, "The Portable Milton", pp. 615-616.
9. Friedrich Schiller, "Complete Works of Friedrich Schiller", p. 447.
10. Rudyard Kipling, "Selected Prose and Poetry of Rudyard Kipling", p. 131.
11. Ibid., p. 156.
12. Ibid., p. 185.
13. Rosamond Lehmann, "Invitation to the Waltz", p. 48, quoted in Jacob Twersky, 
"Blindness in Literature".
14. Jessica L. Langworthy, "Blindness in Fiction: A Study of the Attitude of 
Authors Towards Their Blind Characters," "Journal of Applied Psychology", 
14:282, 1930.
15. Twersky, op. cit., p. 15.
16. Ibid., P. 47.
17. Robert Louis Stevenson, "Treasure Island", p. 36.
18. "The Life of Lazatillo de Tormes", summarized in Magill's
"Masterplots", p. 2573.
19. Laura E. Richards, "Melody", pp. 47-48.
20. John G. Morris, "The Blind Girl of Wittenberg", p. 103.
21. Reverend Thomas J. Carroll, "Blindness: What It is, What It Does, and How to 
Live With It". This entire book deals with the concept of blindness as a 
"dying," and with the multiple "lacks and losses" of blindness.
22. American Foundation for the Blind, Inc., "A Step-by-Step Guide to Personal 
Management for Blind People". This entire book is taken up with lists of 
so-called "how to" details about the routines of daily living for blind persons.
23. There is a tenth theme to be found here and there on the shelves of 
literature—a rare and fugitive image that stands out in the literary gloom like 
a light at the end of a tunnel. This image of truth is a least as old as Charles 
Lamb's tale of "Rosamund Gray", which presents an elderly blind woman who is not 
only normally competent but normally cantankerous. The image is prominent in two 
of Sir Walter Scott's novels, "Old Mortality" and "The Bride of Lammamoor", in 
both of which blind persons are depicted realistically and unsentimentally. It 
is evident again, to the extent at least of the author's knowledge and ability, 
in Wilkie Collin's "Poor Miss Finch", written after Collins had made a serious 
study of Diderot's "Letter on the Blind" (a scientific treatise not without its 
errors but remarkable for its understanding). The image is manifest in Charles 
D. Stewart's "Valley Waters", in which there is an important character who is 
blind—and yet there is about him no aura of miracle nor even of mystery, no 
brooding or mischief, no special powers, nothing in fact but naturalness and 
normality. Similarly, in a novel entitled "Far in the Forest", H. Weir Mitchell 
has drawn from life (so he tells us) a formidable but entirely recognizable 
character named Philetus Richmond "who had lost his sight at the age of fifty 
but could still swing an axe with the best of the woodsmen."
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