The Eye Essay & Criticism

The Eye Critical Overview

Midnight Mass has not received the critical attention of Bowles's other writing because it was published by Black Sparrow, a small but well-respected press. Writing for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Allen Hibbard notes that many of the stories in the collection "taken together, represent certain stylistic and thematic shifts." These shifts, Hibbard claims, "depend more on the movement of memory than actual physical movement." Writing for Harper's, Francine Prose zeroes in on Bowles's darkness, the darkness that befalls most characters in his stories. Prose argues, "Paul Bowles's obsessive subject is the tragic, even fatal mistakes that Westerners so commonly make in their misguided and often presumptuous encounters with the mysteries of a foreign culture." Noting how the opening sentence of "The Eye" could have been written by "other writers who have focused on the confrontation between East and West," Prose observes, "But as the opening paragraph progresses, we can...
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