Blindness

Blindness certainly serves as a powerful and effective theme and plot device. Our senses have a strong impact on our behavior and who we are as individuals. Due to the importance and need we as humans have for sight, its lack has the strongest effect. For the most part humans depend on and take sight for granted. Being without it would cause a huge adjustment to occur.
Just looking at culture and language, we can see how important sight is to our society. “A picture is worth a thousand words”. We depend on sight to interpret the world around us and to give meaning to what our other senses tell us. For example, sight allows us to look at body language to determine what a person is thinking or feeling. Body language says a lot about a person and without sight a person is only getting half the story.
One characteristic that people claim differentiates humans from animals, is the ability to create and appreciate art. Art allows a person to capture a moment, a person, even a feeling, for future generations. Images have a big impact on humanity; a powerful image can cause change or inspire action. Even the sight of sunshine or blue skies has a strong influence on how people. In a world of complete darkness, it is a lot harder to be hopeful of the future.
Blindness seems to symbolize a number of fears that humanity has. The fear that we do not know what is going on around us or that we can’t control what happens to us. Horror movies often showcase humanities fear of the dark and the unknown. Without sight, we do not know what monsters there are and that fear shows a lot about the importance we place on knowing the world around us.