The Eyes
Are Not Here [also known as The Girl on the Train and The Eyes Have It] is a short story by
Ruskin Bond, an Indian writer. The story exudes . The story uses first person point of view.
Not far into the story, the reader discovers that the narrator is blind but apparently has not
always been. Riding on a train and sitting in a compartment provides the setting of the
story.
This story is an excellent example of situational
irony which employs a plot device in which events turn out contrary to
expectation yet are contrarily appropriate. Further use of irony involves verbal
irony when a character says one thing but means another.
The
narrator listens as a couple sends their daughter off on the train to visit an aunt.
Initiating the conversation, the narrator becomes intrigued by the girls voice. She is quite
surprised to find someone else in the compartment.
Hoping to keep her from
realizing that he is blind, he describes the scenery from his memories. He asks the girl a
question, and she tells him to look out the window for himself.
To continue
the ruse, the narrator tells the girl that she has an interesting face. She remarks that people
normally tell her that she has a pretty face. Her trip is short, so soon she gathers her things
and bids good-bye to the blind man. One thing that he remembered after she left was her
perfume.
You may break, you may shatter the vase if you
will, but the scent of the roses will linger there still€¦
A man coming into the berth runs into the girl. The blind man decides to play a game
with this new train companion. Pretending to be observing the scenery, the blind man stays
silent. Finally, the other man comments that the narrator must be disappointed that the new
fellow traveler is not as nice looking as the girl. Remarking that she was interesting, the
narrator ask about the girls hair.
Finally, the cat is out of the
bag:
€˜I dont remember, he said, sounding puzzled. €˜It
was her eyes I noticed, not her hair. She had beautiful eyes but they were of no use to her.
She was completely blind. Didnt you notice?
Much like
the endings of O. Henry, the reader receives an extra jolt at the end of the story when he
learns as does the narrator that the girl was blind. The blind man was not only able to fool
the young girl but himself as well. Both blind-- neither realizes that the other one is as
well. Ironically, the narrator makes a statement that had he not been trying to fool the girl,
it might have clued him into her blindness:
Well, it often
happens that people with good eyesight fail to see what is right in front of them.
The new travel mate does not grasp that the man is blind either
until he admits that he did not know how long the girls hair was.
Mason
Cooley stated: Irony regards every simple truth as a challenge. The truth here is that
everyone was duped. Ironically, Bond employs two blind people as his main characters, yet
neither knows that the other is blind. After listening to the parents conversation with the
daughter, the narrator could not distinguish any unusual advice or information that led him to
believe the girl had any handicap herself. The narrator fooled himself. Apparently, he also
misleads the girl because she did not realize that her fellow traveler was blind
either.
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