Tuscherer 1

Morgan Tuscherer
Literary Analysis
Dr. Adam Goldwyn
15 May, 2014
Post-Structuralism in The Country of the Blind
Post-structuralism, when examined in a scholarly perspective, can be described as a
way in which the central ideals in social norms are expanded to include, and therefore
normalise, those who are initially excluded in the margins. The theory has been explored by
many scholars, particularly Jonathan Culler, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Julie Rivkin and Michael
Ryan in their works On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism, Rabelais
and His World, and Introduction: Strangers to Ourselves: Psychoanalysis, respectively. The
ideas brought forth by this overarching theoretical perspective are present in a multitude of
literary works, and in the short story The Country of the Blind by H.G. Wells elements of
post-structuralism are identifiable.
The Country of the Blind tells the story of a narrow-minded man named Nunez who
stumbles, quite literally, upon a civilisation in a mountain range where everybody is blind and
has been for generations. In this valley, called the Country of the Blind, Nunez initially
believes that because of his ability to see he is better than the inhabitants and should be their
leader. It is only after a massive fight between him and the people and falling in love with a
local girl does Nunez realize that his ability does not grant him power. In his Introduction in
On Deconstruction Culler states that structuralists are convinced that systematic knowledge
is possible; post-structuralists claim to know only the impossibility of this knowledge (22);
at the beginning of the story Nunez is a firm believer in this systematic knowledge. He views
the people in the Country of the Blind as being disabled and himself as completely able

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bodied, and because of societal norms he understands this as his right to take power. Wells
uses this belief in the story to challenge Nunezs character and subsequently the readers
beliefs in what is or isnt normal behaviour, as exemplified in the following passage from
page 9:
Nunez hand an eye for all beautiful things, and it seemed to him that the glow upon
the snow-fields and glaciers that rose about the valley on every side was the most
beautiful thing he had ever seen. His eyes went from that inaccessible glory to the
village and irrigated fields, fast sinking into the twilight, and suddenly a wave of
emotion took him, and he thanked God from the bottom of his heart that the power of
sight had been given to him.
The way Wells works this challenge into the story is in a similar manner to how Culler
defines post-structuralists: post-structuralists skeptically explore the paradoxes that arise in
the pursuit of such projects and stress that their own work is not science but more text (25).
The paradox for Nunez is that his so called power of sight is not, in fact, powerful in this
country, instead it is his downfall and what ultimately what reverses his ideas on power
dynamics. In Cullers second chapter, Deconstruction, he states the to deconstruct the
opposition is above all, at a particular moment, to reverse the hierarchy (85), and this
reversal of hierarchy is exactly what Wells is doing in The Country of the Blind.
Another scholar with ideas that fit into post-structuralism is Mikhail Bakhtin and the
information he presents in the introduction chapter of his book Rabelais and His World.
Bakhtin expresses in this chapter the idea of the carnivalesque which is a separate social
space where exaggerated personas are the norm. On page 6 of the book Bakhtin writes they
offered a completely different, nonofficial, extra ecclesiastical and extra political aspect of the
world, of man, and of human relations; they built a second world and a second life outside of
officialdom; this life outside officialdom is exactly what the people in the Country of the
Blind have created in their valley. One of the blind people in the valley says to Nunez There

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is no such word as SEE. Cease this folly and follow the sound of my feet (10), which is
Wells way of showing the reader the second world that the blind people have created in their
valley. Bakhtin also comments on the importance of eliminating hierarchy when he says the
carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established
order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms, and prohibitions.
[] All were considered equal during the carnival (10). Wells depiction of the carnival, the
Country of the Blind, is a place where all physicalities must be equal because one cannot be
distinguished from another. In Nunezs case, he cannot be a part of the carnival if he remains
in the valley with his eyes intact, so he and the people in the community decide that the only
way he can stay is to become their equal and have is eyes removed, which Wells describes on
page 18: for a week before the operation that was to raise him from his servitude and
inferiority to the level of a blind citizen Nunez knew nothing of sleep. The passage makes
clear the idea that in order to join the citizens he must put on this carnivals particular mask.
In contrast to Bakhtin and Culler, Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan discuss a rigid and
structuralist viewpoint in their introduction chapter in Stranger to Ourselves, titled
Psychoanalysis. The chapter deals largely with identity and human desire, centred around a
Freudian way of thinking, and adheres to strict beliefs surrounding psychoanalysis. The
identities in The Country of the Blind are not formed by outside influence like most
societies in our world today; instead the citizens of the valley are able to understand who they
are and their isolation allows them to thrive with their own personal identifications. In
Psychoanalysis Rivkin and Ryan say more real is our overdetermination by the drives, the
unconscious, and the Symbolic Order of our culture, the social languages that identify us and
lend us identities, all of which exceed consciousness and never assume the form of knowable
or conscious identity. Our identity is given to us from the outside, and we are constitutively

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alienated (393). Wells creates this society in a post-structuralist manner by letting the people
create their identities without the outside handing it to them, and he further proves this when
Nunez finds the town and attempts to tell them that they are blind. Nunez speaks to a citizen
and says Has no one told you, In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King? to
which the man responds What is blind? (10). He is attempting to give these people a new
identity and fails every time because of their deviation from the psychoanalytic beliefs on
identity. It is through this defiance of traditional identity achievement that Wells further
creates a post-structuralist society in The Country of the Blind.
Post-structuralism has been explored by many scholars in literary theory, and its goal
of normalising the abnormal can be found in a multitude of texts. H.G. Wells presents a poststructural society in his short story The Country of the Blind, and can be understood when
the theories of Jonathan Culler, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Michael Ryan and Julie Rivkin are
applied.