39 pages • 1 hour read
Carson McCullersReflections in a Golden Eye
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1941A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Reflections
In McCullers's novel, “reflections” aren’t simply physical appearances in a mirror or in a body of water; they are also impressions. Each person is a mirror, forming impressions of those around them. The motif therefore becomes a way to think about how humans understand one another and how limited their perceptions are.
When the narrative perspective shifts between characters, it can drastically alter the depiction of those characters. For example, in the perspective shift at the end of the novel, the Captain thinks about the Private and the Private thinks about the Captain. The Captain is obsessed with the Private and wants to be as close to him as possible. The Private thinks of the Captain as something of a natural phenomenon—near him but otherwise unrelated to him. The Captain notices the Private’s clothing—the way that the Private’s specific body inhabits the clothes of his soldier’s role—and the Captain feels a medley of intense emotions. The Private has no sense of this; the reflection of the Private that exists in the Captain’s mind has little to do with the actual Private.
This motif appears twice to the Captain as a kaleidoscope, first during his wild horse ride, when he finally feels true joy: “The world was a kaleidoscope, and each of the multiple visions which he saw impressed itself on his mind with burning vividness” (354). Here, the Captain can finally see the truth of what the world is and fully live in it. He escapes his repression and the grayness of his world by coming so close to death.
When the kaleidoscope appears again at the very end of the book it also signals the Captain’s clarity and proximity to death. When the Captain sees the Private in Leonora’s room, he is shocked, afterward telling himself that “in this one instant he knew everything” (392), but this is not the case. Rather,
[I]n a moment when a great but unknown shock is expected, the mind itself [...] abandon[s] the faculty of surprise. In that vulnerable instant a kaleidoscope of half-guessed possibilities project themselves, and when the disaster has defined itself there is the feeling of having understood beforehand in some supernatural way (393).
The kaleidoscope and “certain dormant fragments” are reminiscent of pieces of glass (393), or mirror shards, which can only reflect pieces of the truth. When they are reassembled, a fuller truth emerges—though still not the complete one, because reflections can never capture the full truth.
Fireplaces
There are two significant fireplaces in the novel, one in each married couple’s house. Both fireplaces create reflections that reverberate throughout the novel, both from its beginning to its end (Leonora naked in front of her fireplace) and from its center outward (the fireplace in Alison’s room).
Leonora’s fireplace sets off the main plot of the novel: the Private’s obsession with “The Lady,” his version of Leonora. Leonora takes off her clothes and stands before the fireplace to deliberately infuriate and horrify her husband, who is disgusted by her. The narrative itself describes her appearance in loving detail: “Before the bright gold and orange light of the fire her body was magnificent” (317), the narrative says, before delineating different parts of her body. The fireplaces create these reflections of Leonora that shape the rest of the book and turn her into an object, but Leonora undresses before the fire as an act of defiance and freedom. This motivation isn’t reflected in the Private’s eye.
When Anacleto paints the peacock with the golden eye, it is by the fireplace in Alison’s room. This fireplace is the hidden center of the novel. Anacleto is central to Alison’s life (like a hearth), and she is central to the Major and the Pendertons (like a hearth), who are central to the rest of the story.
Sickness and Death
Death hangs over the novel from the very beginning, and death always takes time to resolve itself. The novel’s first paragraph states that the story is about a murder, but the details do not become clear until the final pages. Consequently, readers spend the book in a state of suspension, waiting to find out which character death will take. This is fitting for an army base at peacetime; the entire base is waiting for death to happen.
Death—as well as any illness that leads to it—symbolizes not only fear and the unknown but also entrapment in the way things are. Death and illness trap people in fear of inevitable and profound change. Those who are sick (to the Private’s mind, all women) are already tainted with death. Alison is ill and near to death, but her illness kills her slowly. She is always on the brink of death—it feels as if it might come at any time—but this means she’s stuck in a constant state of waiting to die. Her illness is what prevents Alison from escaping her life with the Major, but it also symbolizes her inability to live differently than her society wants her to. Because she is ill, people treat her as if she isn’t a full person capable of thinking and feeling. She is separate, already part of whatever death is.
For the Captain, who eventually proves to be the murderer, death is always near but rarely ever arrives. His instincts lean toward death, and “because of this the Captain was a coward” (315). The only time when the Captain escapes his cowardice is when he believes he is truly about to die, which happens on his wild horse ride: “And having given up life, the Captain suddenly began to live. A great mad joy surged through him” (354). The Captain is no longer trapped in the eternal fear of death, or the eternal fear of being tainted by it. Death has come, so he believes, and so he has nothing left to fear. He can be who he wants to be and who he truly is, outside of restraints and expectations.
Related Titles
By Carson McCullers
