Are deformities and scars therefore always significant? Perhaps not. Perhaps sometimes a scar is simply
a scar, a short leg or a hunchback merely that. But more often than not physical markings by their very
nature call attention to themselves and signify some psychological or thematic point the writer wants to
make. After all, it’s easier to introduce characters without imperfections. You give a guy a limp in
Chapter 2, he can’t go sprinting after the train in Chapter 24. So if a writer brings up a physical problem
or handicap or deficiency, he probably means something by it.
Now, go figure out Harry Potter’s scar.
22 – He’s Blind for a Reason, You Know
p. 201HERE’S THE SETUP: You have a man, a largely admirable man—capable, intelligent, strong, if
slightly quick to anger—with a problem. Unbeknownst to him, he has committed the two most hideous
crimes in the human catalog of evil. So unaware is he of his sins that he agrees to hunt down the criminal,
promising all kinds of punishment. An information specialist, someone who can shed light on the search
he has undertaken, who can show our hero the truth, is summoned. When the specialist arrives, he’s
blind. Can’t see a thing in the world. As it turns out, though, he is able to see things in the spirit and divine
world, can see the truth of what’s actually happened, truth to which our hero is utterly oblivious. The
blind specialist gets into a heated argument with the protagonist, whop. 202accuses the specialist of
fraud, and is accused in turn of being the worst sort of malefactor, one who by the way is blind to what
really matters.
What did this fellow do?
Nothing much. Just murder his father and marry his mother.
Two and a half millennia ago Sophocles wrote a little play called Oedipus Rex. Tiresias, the blind seer,
does indeed know the whole truth about King Oedipus, sees everything, although that knowledge is so
painful that he tries to hold it back, and when he does blurt it out, it is in a moment of such anger that no
one believes him. Oedipus, meanwhile, who until the very end remains in the dark, makes constant
reference to sight. He will “bring the matter to light,” will “look into things,” will “show everyone the
truth.” Every time he says one of these things, the audience gasps and squirms in its seats, because we
see what’s going on long before he does. When he finally sees the horror that is his life—children who
are also siblings, a wife-mother driven to suicide, a curse like no other on him and his family—he exacts a
terrible punishment indeed.
He blinds himself.
There are a lot of things that have to happen when a writer introduces a blind character into a story, and
even more in a play. Every move, every statement by or about that character has to accommodate the
lack of sight; every other character has to notice, to behave differently, if only in subtle ways. In other
words, the author has created a minor constellation of difficulties for himself by introducing a blind
character into the work, so something important must be at stake when blindness pops up in a story.
Clearly the author wants to emphasize other levels of sight and blindness beyond the physical. Moreover,
p. 203such references are usually quite pervasive in a work where insight and blindness are at issue.
For example, first-time readers or viewers will observe that Tiresias is blind but sees the real story, and