To See or Not to See
... first three citizens to meet Nunez, tries to lead him by hand to "the houses," Nunez "draws his hand away" saying, "I can see." Another citizen responds by asking Nunez if he truly can see. Nunez flaunts an affirmative reply, turns around, and promptly stumbles over a nearby pail. Upon meeting with the village elders, Nunez again stumbles over a pair of seated men. He meekly offers, "I fell down. I can't see in this pitchy darkness," in explanation. The villagers simply scoff at the "newly formed idiot" before them. Nevertheless, "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.'" Nunez maintains his arrogance to the point of madness though the blind villagers repeatedly prove his proverb false; this creates tension that Padgett 2 eventually forces him to depart the valley forever. Trying to prove the convenience of sight, Nunez “thought of seizing a spade and suddenly smiting one or two of them [the villagers] to the earth, and thus in fair combat showing the advantage of eyes.” Secondly, Nunez’s inability to surrender sight for love leads to his rather tragic end. After a failed attempt to downplay his opinion on the importance of sight, Nunez falls in love with a blind girl named Medina-sarote. “He watched her; he sought opportunities of doing her little services, and presently he found that she observed him.” He seeks to marry Medina, but the village elders will not allow it because "he is an idiot." At Medina’s plea, the elders decide to "cure" Nunez by "removing [those] irritant bodies" known as his eyes. This news floods Nunez's soul with a "disagreeable doubt" as Medina begs him to consider the operation. Nunez asks Medina how she would feel if he accepted the operation; Medina simply “[flings] her arms about him, weeping wildly.” At first, Nunez consents to give up his sight so that he might wed Medina, but as the operation approaches, he longs to exist only within sight's stunningly beautiful domain. In the end, he "went on and passed through the wall of the circumference and out upon the rocks," and "did not turn aside as he had meant to do." Lastly, the main cause of Nunez’s near death despondence is his inability to survive another death-defying climb. After choosing sight over love, Nunez forces himself to trek back into the wider world "where men have eyes...