In the following essay excerpt, Hibbard comments on the narrative aspects of "The Eye."

The stories brought together in Midnight Mass (1981) and Unwelcome Words (1988) have not yet enjoyed the popularity that those in Bowles's Collected Stories have, despite the inclusion of many of them in A Distant Episode: The Selected Stories (1988). These recent volumes, however, contain many splendid stories, demonstrating the author's versatility and mastery of the genre. Bowles does not simply serve up tried and popular dishes, though familiar flavors are recognizable. He rather offers novel treats, lending both expected and surprising pleasures.

These later stories, consistently sharper than those of Things Gone and Things Still Here, depict a more settled mode of life and experience. There are, to be sure, expatriates in many of these stories, yet they tend now, like Bowles himself during this period, to be rather sedentary, and the conflicts that arise...