So what's up with Jack's eye? And, more importantly--since it is (yet another) instance of the surreal symbolism that defines this book--what's up with all the stuff it represents? (And there's a lot)
After a heated discussion with the narrator, Jack's glass eye pops right out of his head. Knowing Ellison, the meaning of this incident goes a little deeper, but the gravity of what the eye represents for us and for the narrator takes some looking into.
First, it represents the fatal flaw of the Brotherhood. The speech Jack gives that leads his eye to detach from his face tells all. The flaw comes from within; from among the leaders, who, however open minded and rational they pride themselves in being, will argue till their eyes pop out if their authority is challenged. They claim to be "brothers", but, like the narrator points out, act more like fathers, who refuse to acknowledge that they might be wrong, and more importantly, refuse to give the narrator any power of his own. Remind you of any/everyone else?
The speech also shows how they fail to take emotion and individual importance into account in their tactics and internal affairs. Jack makes it clear that when Clifton sold the dolls, he became completely dead to them, and his actual death was of no consequence.
There is a sentence a couple of pages before the eyeball incident in which Jack mentions that the Sambo dolls could "explode" in the "face" of the brotherhood. The narrator assures them that their faces are safe. He's wrong. A couple minutes later, Jack's face literally explodes, but it's not the dolls that are at fault, it's Jack's own inappropriate response to the narrator's speech.
Most importantly, the eye represents blindness. Though the narrator's realization of the blindness of the others around him is gradual, it culminates in the moment he sees Jack with no eye.
Like I said, he works up to it: In his speech about Clifton he tells people not try try to understand Clifton because there's no way they can see him fully. Just before everything comes together in his head, he sees into the dark half of the room for the first time--I don't claim to fully understand this, but something is happening in his mind-- and then, POP! It all comes together, he blabbers for a paragraph and comes out realizing that Jack's lack of sight is not only literal.
The blindness it represents gives us a new look at what Jack likes to think it represents; sacrifice and discipline. Jack lost his eye fighting for a cause, which he sees as a display of his virtue, but it could imply that to completely follow a cause, one must become a little blind. Certainly it could imply that to follow orders thoughtlessly causes and/or indicates blindness. Sure enough, after the narrator has his epiphany--thanks in part to Jack's glass eye--he starts to stop following the Brotherhood's orders.
In a way, the Narrator has also been blind like Jack up until this point in the novel. Though he has been working with Jack for months, he never once noticed Jack's glass eye until that night. In a similar sense, he too has been blind to the Brotherhood's faults, but unlike Jack, he now sees things more clearly. Jack, on the other hand, has sacrificed his sight both literally and figuratively so he can follow the Brotherhood's cause blindly.
ReplyDeleteAnother part of this scene I found strange was the Narrator's reaction to Jack's glass eye. He tells Jack "I don't give a damn how you lost [your eye] as long as you keep it hidden." I thought that was really rude of him to say (even though I really dislike Jack), because if you find out someone you know is disabled like that, your first reaction shouldn't be 'Can you hide it better?' But then I thought, perhaps the Narrator is not reacting to Jack's eye so much as his figurative "blindness." He is not disgusted by Jack's glass eye, but rather his stubborn insistence to remain blind to all the injustices the Brotherhood perpetrates.
You describe well how the glass eye doesn't simply represent Jack's figurative "blindness" but the narrator's dawning realization of it. In other words, the glass eye *disguises* blindness (as opposed to the dark glasses of Rev. Homer Barbee, which are a more obvious indication of blindness, but which the narrator doesn't pick up on right away). It creates the illusion that the person can see, when in fact he cannot (or he can see, but only partially).
ReplyDeleteI like how deep you looked into this scene. With so many strange incidents happening in this book, I had already almost forgotten about Jack's fake eye, but I'm glad you brought my attention back to it. I agree that this eye has a lot of symbolism, and I think it's important to notice that it shows the blindness of not only Jack but also the narrator (like ashley said, he hadn't noticed this fake eye for months). I think that the brotherhood is a whole lot of blindness piled together, from the leaders to people like the narrator to also the community/public that they're addressing. I also really liked how you related this eye falling out to the fact that the leaders will argue their case until their eyes figuratively fall out. This shows the literal and non-literal sense of not being able to see, exploding, etc. Interesting post!
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