Animals, Eyes, and the Soul

Blog Post #2

     Other students have expressed feelings of discomfort and being disturbed from the poems in Yamanaka’s Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre. I experienced similar feelings about Yamanaka’s work, but one of the only bright spots in the book is the character of Bernie and his friendship with Lucy. Lucy and Bernie’s relationship is showcased in “Pueo Don’t Fly” (97-8). The motif of dead animals and their eyes are prominent in this poem. First, Lucy considers the rabbit that Bernie previously stuffed for her and his eye. Lucy knows that Clyde looks the same, but “his eyes no was the same” (97). Bernie also stuffs a dead owl, “pueo.” Lucy investigates the animal, “The pueo eye all gray/ like loose skin  and sunken in./I put my fingers on the eye and make um open/ but no more nothing there. Nothing./Just one dark, black hole” (97). This emptiness in the animal haunts Lucy throughout the rest of the poem. At the end of the poem, Lucy feels like the owl’s “big, yellow glass eye/looking for me” (98).  The idea that these animals’ eyes have been replaced with glass eyes deeply disturbs Lucy. I believe that this act bothers Lucy so much because she feels there is an intrinsic link between the eyes and the soul. Without their real eyes, the animals do not have a soul, “nothing” is there. The soul is replaced with a “big, black hole” when the real eyes are replaced. This is why Lucy feels that her pet is not the same after being stuffed, because his eyes are not the same, thus to her the essence of his being is not the same. Because Lucy is aware of this change in the dead animals, the owl’s glass eye haunts her dreams. To Lucy, the animals eyes represent it’s “soul,” thus with death and the replacement of the eyes the soul is gone. 

-Mary Rowan