The Eye Essay | Critical Essay #2

The Eye Critical Essay #2

Sanderson holds a master of fine arts degree in fiction writing and is an independent writer. In this essay, Sanderson examines the narrator and his transformation.

"The Eye" is a story that includes elements of numerous genres. Its most immediate access is as a detective story, in which the narrator searches for the person responsible for the poisoning and ultimate death of Canadian expatriate Duncan Marsh. On another level, it can be read as an adventure tale or as a cautionary tale of Europeans venturing into exotic places better left unexplored. Bowles invokes this genre when he opens the story by describing Marsh as "a man who would have done better to stay away."

The story can also be seen as the narrator's anthropological examination of two cultures clashing: Western and North African. In his opening comments about the actions of the English-speaking expatriates living in Tangier, the...
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