The Man With The Bound Eyes Critical Analysis

Can what is lost ever be recovered? Wing Ming-Yi’s “The Man with the Compound Eyes” translated into English by Darryl Stark is an exploration into the tidal nature of grief. Set in a near future, the novel an earth where global warming has irreparably changed the world’s weather patterns and the strange and untouched Island of Wayo Wayo, where every second son is given to the sea to appease and give thanks to the Sea God. As a result of the worlds changed weather patterns, a trash vortex has formed in the middle of the ocean and crashes into the coast of Taiwan. Drawn together by the trash vortex, loss and grief, “The Man with the Compound Eyes” tells the stories of Alice, a woman preparing for her suicide after her son and husband vanish in the Taiwanese mountains, and Atile’i, a second son from the Wayo Wayo Islands whose destiny is that of a human sacrifice for the Sea God. At face value the story is just that, on the morning that the trash vortex slams into the coast of Taiwan Alice after years of wrestling with the idea that her son and husband are gone, plans to take her own life. Meanwhile on the Island of Wayo Wayo Atile’i is cast out into the sea, however Atile’i fights back against the sea and eventually swims towards the trash vortex, creating a makeshift home there.
The Man with the Compound Eyes, is a bizarre and wonderful mix of a novel within a novel, nothing is as it seems and Ming-Yi weaves an invocative tale where the mountains and environment of the earth are just as much main character as Alice and