Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers

We are all trapped, but the trap is inescapable because the trap is ourselves, our own convictions and hidden secrets and our own shortcomings. McCullers always seems to be saying to us that we really cannot understand one another, no matter how hard we try, because most of what we know of one another is either a lie or something we have projected.

They are despicable in so many ways, and yet sometimes so hopeless trapped and pitiable. I never knew these characters well and yet I felt as if they had bared their very souls to me and I was asking to sit in judgment of them. Like her other works, Reflections in a Golden Eye left me feeling a bit uncomfortable and puzzled in the end. She never allowed herself to be pushed into the round hole and she is constantly asking why all the holes need to be round in the first place. If you know anything of Carson McCullers’ life, you will realize that she was that square peg and she opted to find the square hole and occupy it. In short, it is better, because it is morally honorable, for the square peg to keep scraping about the round hole rather than to discover and use the unorthodox square that would fit it?” ”You mean,” Captain Penderton said, “that any fulfilment obtained at the expense of normalcy is wrong, and should not be allowed to bring happiness. Carson just knows how to put her finger on those people in a way that few authors can. Because underneath every human being alive there is a piece that feels alien to the world and a bit that never (or seldom) gets shared. These are not folks I know.” And then, you realize, you are and they might be. All through this novel you are thinking, “I’m not like this. I know these folks.”? Well, Carson McCullers creates exactly the opposite of that. Do you ever read a novel and love it because you are thinking all the way through, “these people are just like me.

Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers