Green Eyes Symbol Analysis

The narrator inherits his bright green eyes, like “a bucket of summer peas,” from his Dad—and fittingly, their shared eyes symbolize the various mentalities and skills that Dad passes on to the narrator. Early on, the two men are caught in a moment of eye contact (“like looking in a mirror”) when Dad gets into a car accident; determined to prioritize his own family’s safety, Dad keeps driving, effectively engaging in a hit-and-run. The narrator internalizes this lesson, learning from Dad the importance of “thinking defensively” in moments of crisis—and for the rest of the novel, the narrator will do the same, putting his own survival over the safety or desires of others.

Yet because the narrator’s green eyes come to stand for his anxious survivalism, they also represent the exhaustion he feels at trying to adapt to an ever-changing set of crises. In the novel’s final scene, he returns to Dad’s home, struck again by the bright color they share in their irises. But instead of communicating with eye contact, Dad helps the narrator relax in what is (ambiguously) a death scene: “without a sound, without the slightest incantation,” the narrator describes, “he closes my eyes.” Just as green eyes represent the defensive, paranoid thinking the narrator has learned from his father, closing those eyes means the narrator is giving up his constant state of panic—and with it, ceasing to survive.