Blindness

This segment in the novel serves to show how much worse the epidemic is getting inside the mental asylum and outside. The fact that there were so many blind people flooding into the wards shows how much more the plague has spread. The government must not be doing that great of a job keeping the blindness contained. This segment also shows the tense and hostile environment that is starting to form in the asylum. A group of people can be easily managed and usually are charitable to one another. With the sudden increase in blind people, now there will be conflict. People will fight over food and turn the place into a sewer. The chaotic situation on the inside almost mirrors the one on the outside. Both the outside world and the asylum are barely keeping themselves together and the government is struggling to keep order in both of these places.