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H.G. Wells's "The Country of the Blind" (1904) tells the tale of a traveller to a remote region of South America who happens upon a curious village in an isolated valley after an avalanche separates him from his party. The buildings, he observes, are strange affairs, cobbled together with a perplexing variety of multi-coloured stones, while the streets are lined with low-lying curbs as if to guide the pedestrians who use them. Reflecting on these and other odd features of the place, he soon comes to the conclusion that whoever these people are, one thing is certain: they have no sense of sight. Recalling the old adage "In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king," he enters the village as a kind of conqueror, confidently expecting the afflicted people of this valley to bow before his self-evident superiority. "I can see," he grandly announces to the group that comes to greet him.
"See?" said Correa.
"Yes, see," said Nunez, turning toward him, and stumbling against Pedro's pail.
"His senses are still imperfect," said the third blind man. "He stumbles, and talks unmeaning words. Lead him by the hand."
(547)
Having lost the faculty of sight many generations ago, the people of this valley have developed an entire culture that is adapted to their sensory abilities, from a creation myth to a system of governance. They treat the traveller as a kind of "unformed" man, a creature of the rocks who lacks the capacity to manage the simple, day-to-day tasks that their children perform with ease. Puzzling over Nunez's physical impairment, they finally conclude that he "must have been specially created to learn and serve the wisdom they had acquired, and for all his mental incoherency and stumbling behaviour he must have courage, and do his best to learn" (550). No king, then, the traveller becomes a kind of charity case to the people of the valley, a pitiful creature to be cared for and assisted in his efforts to become more fully formed—to become, to their minds, human.
Wells's ironic tale depicts a sighted man who learns to understand his supposed normality as a kind of affliction, one that puts him at the mercy of a community where the senses of hearing,...