This paper is an enquiry into the treatment of ‘blindness’ in modernist short story. Blindness has been one of the most powerful metaphors in literature down the age of classicism. With the passage of time, when highly cerebral schools like Existentialism, Absurdism, Modernism and cultural studies began to make their presence felt in literature, the perspective of blindness and sight began to acquire more complex meanings. It is no longer confined to the themes of the blind prophet or the blind rustic innocence. With the penetrating insights provided by Freudian psycho analysis, Lacanian theories and exploration of the immense possibilities the science of optics held out for the writers, the theme of blindness and sight, visibility and opacity began to reach dimensions which till that time remained unexplored. This study proposes to ponder the treatment of blindness in modernist short story.

Keywords: Vision and opacity, Absent father, Oedipal quest, Psychological gaze, Simulacra, Fetishism