The Eye of the Scarecrow by Wilson Harris
"The Eye of the Scarecrow" by Wilson Harris is a complex and introspective novel presented in the form of a diary. The narrative follows a character known as N., who reflects on significant events from 1948, particularly a miners' strike in Georgetown, while also grappling with memories from the Great Depression era of 1929. The novel's structure leads N. to explore a "visionary organization of memory," allowing past experiences to unfold without the constraints of conventional realism. Throughout the text, themes of life and death intermingle, symbolized by the continuous presence of the scarecrow, which represents various facets of human suffering, including the victims of labor struggles and the decline of imperial power.
N.'s introspective nature contrasts with his practical friend L., whose character embodies a grounded perspective amidst their shared experiences. This dynamic fosters a profound exploration of relationships, personal identity, and the dualities within human experience. Harris employs a unique linguistic style characterized by lengthy sentences that challenge readers to engage deeply with the text. Ultimately, the novel presents a philosophical inquiry into language itself as a means of expressing complex emotions and the silent struggles of existence, all set against the tumultuous backdrop of Guyana’s history. This dense yet evocative narrative invites readers to contemplate the interplay of memory, language, and the human condition.
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The Eye of the Scarecrow by Wilson Harris
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1965
Type of work: Novel
The Work
The Eye of the Scarecrow is one of Harris’s more disjointed novels as far as language and sequence of events are concerned. The novel is in the form of a diary. Over nine months, the diarist, N., seeks a new way of rendering life by letting past events speak for themselves as he surrenders to a “visionary organization of memory,” free from tedious realism.
Through the diary entries, the reader perceives N. as introspective, prone to hallucinations, and highly sensitive, while his friend L. is practical and levelheaded, “the engineer in charge of the expedition.” In his diary, written in 1963 and 1964, N. is trying to reconstruct the events of the year 1948, which witnessed a major, if abortive, miners’ strike in Georgetown. That year is confused, in N.’s recollections, with 1929, the year of the beginning of the Great Depression. The diary itself covers a nine-month period, symbolic of gestation, the creation of a new person. It opens with N. describing the funeral processions of the fallen strikers of 1948. The confusion between years and between the symbols of birth (N. writes that he is “riding out of the womb”) and death (the funeral hearse) gradually takes over the whole novel, and it leads in the final section to a full fusion of the narrator and L. This is rendered more baffling by the occasional repetition of earlier segments of the book. This fusion of apparent opposites is hinted at in an earlier reference to L. and N. sending for a prostitute together on their expedition in 1948. N. is first shown as disapproving of L.’s exploitation and manipulation of the woman, Hebra, and shrinking from even touching her, yet he soon finds out that he has behaved with no less blind and insensitive lust himself, as he awakens by her side.
The scarecrow, a metaphor that runs throughout the book, assumes various guises in different sections, shifting from a desiccated look on L.’s face, to the dislocated image of the Georgetown coastline, to the figure of the dying governor of Guiana (representing the end of the British Empire), to the tenements of Waterloo Street. All the while the scarecrow also represents the fallen victims of 1948 and 1929: the strikers, the beggars, the nameless paupers, the many living dead.
The narrator’s quest concludes with “THE MANIFESTO OF THE UNBORN STATE OF EXILE,” in which he describes language as the vehicle for expressing silence. Language alone, readers are told, can express “the ultimate ’silent’ and ’immaterial’ complexity of arousal. And this is the stuff of one’s essential understanding of the reality of the original Word, the Well of Silence.”
Harris, in this novel, employs some of his longest sentences ever: many take more than one dozen lines and require a second and third reading before they can be comprehended. Since the novel itself is relatively short (less than one hundred pages), the result is a compact matrix of themes, ranging from the analysis of relationships, to the quest for inner harmony through the wedding of opposites, to a philosophical discussion of language, couched in the historical background of Guyana as a land of violence, conquest, and cross-fertilization.
Bibliography
Adler, Joyce. Exploring the Palace of the Peacock: Essays on Wilson Harris. Edited by Irving Adler. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2003.
Fazzini, Marco, ed. Resisting Alterities: Wilson Harris and Other Avatars of Otherness. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004.
Gilkes, Michael. Wilson Harris and the Caribbean Novel. St. Augustine, Trinidad: Longman Caribbean, 1975.
James, C. L. R. Wilson Harris: A Philosophical Approach. St. Augustine, Trinidad: University of the West Indies, 1965.
Maes-Jelink, Hena. The Labyrinth of Universality: Wilson Harris’s Visionary Art of Fiction. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006.
Maes-Jelink, Hena. Wilson Harris. Boston: Twayne, 1982.
Maes-Jelink, Hena, and Benedicte Ledent, eds. Theatre of the Arts: Wilson Harris and the Caribbean. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002.
Munro, Ian, and Reinhard Sander, eds. Kas-Kas: Interviews with Three Caribbean Writers in Texas. Austin: University of Texas at Austin, 1972.
Van Sertima, Ivan. Caribbean Writers: Critical Essays. London: New Beacon Books, 1968.
Webb, Barbara J. Myth and History in Caribbean Fiction. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992.