download FREE CULTURE(PDF)

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Chimera
In a well-known short story by H. G. Wells, a mountain climber
named Nunez trips (literally, down an ice slope) into an unknown and
isolated valley in the Peruvian Andes. 1 The valley is extraordinarily
beautiful, with “sweet water, pasture, an even climate, slopes of rich
brown soil with tangles of a shrub that bore an excellent fruit.” But the
villagers are all blind. Nunez takes this as an opportunity. “In the
Country of the Blind,” he tells himself, “the One-Eyed Man is King.”
So he resolves to live with the villagers to explore life as a king.
Things don’t go quite as he planned. He tries to explain the idea of
sight to the villagers. They don’t understand. He tells them they are
“blind.” They don’t have the word blind. They think he’s just thick. Indeed,
as they increasingly notice the things he can’t do (hear the sound
of grass being stepped on, for example), they increasingly try to control
him. He, in turn, becomes increasingly frustrated. “‘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!’”
177