Book Review: Reflections in a Golden Eye" by Carson McCullers

“Reflections in a Golden Eye” is a Southern Gothic Novel written by Carson McCullers, published in 1941 by Houghton Miffin. The book is dedicated to the Switzerland-based journalist Annemarie Schwarzenbach - a journalist Carson McCullers was very good friends with - who would unfortunately pass away the next year. Many of you, including myself, would think of the film starring Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor that was released in 1967.

Private Ellgee Williams is assigned to stable duty and when he does some work at the home of Captain Penderton, he becomes enamoured with the Captain’s Wife who is called Leonora. Penderton and Ellgee Williams do not know though that Leonora is already having many affairs and is kind of not a very nice human being upon first glance. The current man she is having an affair with is Major Langdon. There is another huge problem though because Captain is hiding a deep secret from basically everyone.

I thought the book was honestly a very raw look at humanity when it is pushed to reveal its own impulses and secrets. But the thing that I always love too much when it comes to a Carson McCuller’s novel is the writing. It is dark, scrumptious and brilliant with an amazing anticipation for something, anything that could happen in these slow and steady moments. Check out these quotations:

“The Captain swallowed his capsules and lay down in the dark with pleasant anticipation. This quantity of the drug gave him a unique and voluptuous sensation; it was as though a great dark bird alighted on his chest, looked at him once with fierce, golden eyes, and stealthily enfolded him in his dark wings.”

Sometimes they can be a supernatural prophecy in some great and un-idealistic way. They can be beautiful and grotesque on the human condition at the same time. It makes you want to turn back the pages and re-read the entire book all over again. The Southern Gothic emotions of tragedy, depression and prophetic downfall are strong in this novel:

“Afterward the Captain was to tell himself that in this one instant he knew everything. Actually, in a moment when a great but unknown shock is expected, the mind instinctively prepares itself by abandoning momentarily 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.”

The nature images within a Southern Gothic novel can be seen in the works of William Faulkner as well as Carson McCullers, but the following quotation has to be one of the best quotations on nature and emotional nature that I have ever seen come out of the writing of Carson McCullers:

“And having given up on life, the Captain suddenly began to live. A great mad joy surged through him. This emotion, coming as unexpectedly as the plunge of the horse when he had broken away, was one that the Captain had never experienced. His eyes were glassy and half-open, as in delirium, but he saw suddenly as he had never seen before. The world was a kaleidoscope, and each of the multiple visions which he saw impressed itself on his mind with burning vividness.

On the ground half-buried in the leaves there was a little flower, dazzling white and beautifully wrought. A thorny pine cone, the flight of a bird in the blue windy sky, a fiery shaft of sunshine in the green gloom - these the Captain saw as though for the first time in his life. He was conscious of the pure keen air and the felt the marvel of his own tense body, his labouring heart, and the miracle of blood, muscle, nerves, and bones. The Captain knew no terror now; he soared the rare level of consciousness where the mystic feels that the earth is he and that he is the earth. Clinging crabwise to the runaway horse, there was a grin of rapture on his bloody mouth.”

Who says something like “there was a grin of rapture on his bloody mouth” as a part of their natural emotional description of someone? It’s like listening to a Bob Dylan song.