The two most important lessons that the Magistrate learns throughout the year are how blindness has a larger metaphorical context, and the reality of who the real “barbarians” are.
The Magistrate comes to realize that the “barbarians” are not the people of the village, but really the invading Empire. The “barbarians” from the desert never kill, rape, or torture anyone in the novel; in fact, they never come to the town at all. They are a peaceful people, never meaning harm to others. However, the Magistrate thinks that the Warrant Officer from the Empire was the savage: “sight of one of the new barbarians usurping my desk and pawing my papers” (76). The Magistrate concludes through his many observations that the military and officers from the Empire are the ones who rape, pillage, plunder, etc., not the “barbarians” from the frontier settlement.
The first idea of the novel: “I have never seen anything like it: two little discs of glass...Is he blind? I could understand it if he wanted to hide blind eyes. But he is not blind. The discs are dark…” (1) is supportive of the Empire’s being “blind.” It is unaware not only of its actions, mentalities, and consequences toward the “barbarians,” including understanding their true motives (food gathering and survival). Even the Magistrate wrestles with his “blindness,” physically and metaphorically, when he struggles to remember the barbarian girl’s face in his sleep, then repeatedly asking her where she was when she first came into the prisonyard. Throughout the novel he slowly gains insight to his feelings and disillusionment, mostly by exposure, toward the real “barbarians” - the Empire.
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