The Horror within “The Country of the Blind” by H. G. Wells

Note: this review is based on the 1904 publication of “The Country of the Blind.” The excerpts in this review are all from this publication, as published in The Strand Magazine, April 1904.

I was an utter book nerd in childhood. As the simplicity of that statement really lacks the gravity of what I’m trying to convey, but as I also want to refrain from much digression, I will better sum up the severity of my book nerdism with a brief anecdote:

My mother once purchased me a large, red dictionary as a birthday gift, which I was ecstatic to receive. I kept it (often open) on the reading/writing desk she had also purchased for me, so that it was immediately accessible for reference. I often read above my reading level, and I thus cannot overstate the frequency with which I flipped those pages. I doubt any child of elementary school age had spent as much time in the pages of a dictionary as childhood me. I would read and reread sentences with unknown words, search the words in the dictionary, reread the sentence with new understanding, and then spend the next week forcing those words into conversation with adults. I must have been insufferable in my youth.

As with any young book nerd, I fell into a fan camp with a specific author of fantastical fiction. For many, it was Tolkien, Verne, or Asimov. For me, it was H. G. Wells. I could not get enough of his works, both short and long-form. The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, and my favorite, The War of the Worlds … I ate them up like secret Halloween candy. I did not read them in secrecy, and I certainly never had to hide any of my books. But I never shared them with anyone. I suppose I never had anyone with whom I could talk about these tales.

So, reader or not, I am taking this opportunity to share with you “The Country of the Blind,” a short story by H. G. Wells that has stuck with me since first reading it nearly three decades ago.

The story begins, as many of his works do, with a recounting of an experience, a retelling of another man’s retelling. It begins with that fantastically adventurous feeling that so many stories of the time permeated. This was first published in 1904 (and re-released a few years later in an expanded revision). So, consider the difficulties and inaccessibility of travel at the time. For the literate of that time, reading may very well have been their only means of travel, of adventure. In this tale, we learn of a man—a mountaineer by the name of Nuñez—exploring the long forgotten, as H. G. Wells describes, “… wildest wastes of Ecuador’s Andes …” He ventures from his mountaineering group and is lost to an avalanche, which carries him into the outskirts of a valley. As he descends further into the valley, he discovers a community comprised entirely of blind persons.

All the old stories of the lost valley and the Country of the Blind had come back to his mind, and through his thoughts ran this old proverb, as if it were a refrain :—

“In the Country of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King.”

“In the Country of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King.”

(H. G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind”)

So begins the mountaineer’s first contact with a people lost to time, and Wells’s first reflection on an aspect of humanity: hubris. The protagonist has survived an avalanche and, at first encounter with civilization, considers not the prospect of salvation but his possible leverage over these natives. Is this a familiarity to anyone? (Looking at you, history buffs.)

Hereafter, we explore the horror-adjacent aspects of the story. Wells immediately subverts the expectation established with the proverb. In this environment, blindness is the norm. Blindness is the known. There are but four senses. That is the known world. Enter our protagonist, an outsider with claims of a fifth sense and a vision of power. He is certain that he can dominate this situation, if not by reason, then by violence. But he soon learns how powerless he truly is. No one—not a single inhabitant of this valley—will accept the existence of a fifth sense. And the more he asserts his claims of vision, the more deranged he appears.

Over the course of fourteen generations, the blind inhabitants of this valley had determined that they occupied the world in its entirety. There was the valley, and there was nothing beyond. Steep, unforgiving, rocky mountains surrounded them on all sides. They were unclimbable, which mattered not, as they only rose to the rock ceiling that was theorized to have encased them. These were their truths, unchallengeable. So, they were at an impasse, with each side considering the other an inferiority.

They little know they've been insulting their Heaven-sent King and master …

(H. G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind”)

As Nuñez becomes increasingly aware of his inability to convince them of his superiority, he decides to resort to violence, arming himself with a shovel, but finds himself initially unable to attack any of these people. His restraint is not necessarily motivated by morality or humanity, though. It is that he still considers these people so beneath him, so disadvantaged compared to himself.

He began to realize that you cannot even fight happily with creatures who stand upon a different mental basis to yourself …

(H. G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind”)

So, he ran, seeking time and space from the situation. And he was followed, quite successfully even. A group of blind men had armed themselves with tools and taken chase. Again, Nuñez flees but finds himself trapped at the rocky periphery of the valley.

“You don't understand,” he cried, in a voice that was meant to be great and resolute, and which broke. “You are blind and I can see. Leave me alone!”

(H. G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind”)

At this point, he does lash out, knocking a blind man to the ground with the swing of a shovel. He runs into hiding at the outer edge of the valley, lamenting and perseverating. The proverb is repeated in his mind and he remains certain that he should be the dominant figure in this world—he, the man with sight. Again, his mind turns to violence.

He thought chiefly of ways of fighting and conquering these people, and it grew clear that for him no practical way was possible. He had no weapons, and now it would be hard to get one.

The canker of civilization had got to him even in Bogota, and he could not find it in himself to go down and assassinate a blind man. Of course, if he did that, he might then dictate terms on the threat of assassinating them all. But—Sooner or later he must sleep! …

(H. G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind”)

Wells does something devilishly delightful here in so few words, as he describes the protagonist’s mindset of having been burdened by edification. Nuñez feels constrained by morality, which is described as a “canker,” a disease or infection. This is his first reflection on his weaknesses after so much consideration of his apparent strengths in comparison to the blind. But even then he still reflects upon his superiority, as he notes that his morality had followed him “even in Bogota.” The rest of the excerpt is a great, creeping realization that he is a prisoner of both his morality and vulnerability. Violence may be the quickest path to power, but it is also the quickest path to demise. His advantage is reliant on his being conscious. In sleep, he is at the mercy of the collective.

Eventually, he accepts psychological defeat and succumbs to the safety and comfort of conforming.

They asked him if he still thought he could “see.”

“No,” he said. “That was folly. The word means nothing. Less than nothing!”

(H. G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind”)

Nuñez denounces his prior assertions, which allows him entrance back into the valley, whereupon he is sheltered and fed, and, more importantly, educated. The great philosophers of the valley meet with him in relentless indoctrination, drilling into him the existence of the great rocky ceiling of the world to such an extent …

… that he almost doubted whether indeed he was not the victim of hallucination in not seeing it overhead.

(H. G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind”)

Though the community is apprehensive, he is given a role, taking up employment to perform the most laborious work in the valley, as befitting of an “other.”

Still, the mountaineer is an outsider, something broken—an invalid. Sight is one of our greatest strengths, and generally considered our greatest sense. But in an environment where it is not understood, it is considered an affliction. 

Nuñez submits to life in the valley and finds love in the “disfigured” Medina-saroté, the youngest daughter of his employer. She is marred by eyelashes and “abnormal” eyes. As the two become more comfortable with each other, he confides more and more in her his experiences with sight, which she considers poetic imaginings. After some time, he professes his love to her and his desire for marriage.

There was from the first very great opposition to the marriage of Nuñez and Medina-saroté; not so much because they valued her as because they held him as a being apart, an idiot, incompetent thing below the permissible level of a man.

(H. G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind”)

Medina-saroté is able to convince her father that Nuñez is a good man, a man she loves and who has been and is still bettering himself within the community. Her father then seeks guidance from the authoritative figures of the community, including an astute physician, who offers a solution to the outsider’s affliction.

“And I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in order to cure him completely, all that we need to do is a simple and easy surgical operation—namely, to remove these irritant bodies.”

“And then he will be sane?”

“Then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirable citizen.”

(H. G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind”)

Nuñez obviously rejects the notion of having his eyes removed, which becomes a brief point of division between him and Medina-saroté. He ultimately determines, at her persistence, that, for the sake of their love, he will have his eyes removed. That is the cost of love in this environment. That is the cost of societal compliance.

“One conformity combo, please. Hold the individualism.”

“All right, sir. That'll be two eyes.”

For a week before the operation that was to raise him from his servitude and inferiority to the level of a blind citizen Nuñez knew nothing of sleep …

(H. G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind”)

It’s a short statement, but it’s also a short story. Here we have a clear timeframe, a countdown to surrender. This inevitability is a psychological torment that denies him sleep for a full week. Here, Nuñez faces his greatest horror, as it is not so much a surrender to love as it is a sacrifice of his identity.

In this first publication of “The Country of the Blind,” Nuñez reluctantly shuffles away from his wife-to-be and toward his surgery. On the way, however, he observes the mountain scenery bathed in sunlight and discovers a greater love in the beauty of vision than he was able to find in Medina-saroté. He decides to take his chances on a natural mountain trail in pursuit of freedom, where his fate is left unknown.

You likely won’t find H. G. Wells in the horror section of your local bookstore (if yours has a section dedicated to horror). He is well known as a science fiction author. However, there is no doubt that some of his works are horror-adjacent. From alien invasions during which groups of people are vaporized by heat rays to human-animal hybrids created on a remote, secret island, his works are great examples of horror that isn’t dependent on gore for the sake of gore. Consider the basic premise of this story, the structure that has become such a trope in current horror media. Here is a man on the outside—from the outside—bringing to a populace something discomforting, unsettling even: change; a possibly life-changing difference in perspective. And what does this populace do in the face of change, with the knowledge of something beyond comprehension? They reject it. They keep the outsider on the outside. They minimize his claims, regarding them as the ravings of a lunatic. Then, the solution to imbalance: create normalcy by removing the “abnormal—” his eyes.

“The Country of the Blind” shines a blinding light on the crushing power of societal pressures and conformity, and a community’s capacity to erase individual truth. The horror here isn’t in the unknown, but in the unquestionable certainty of others—a certainty so fervent, even the sighted are blind.

CCR