Sight and Perception

Throughout the novel, the author uses Joe’s lazy eye and eye patch as ways to toy with notions of sight and perception. At the start of the novel, Joe tells Treacle Walker that he has to wear the patch because, “I’ve got Lazy Eye . . . I must wear the patch over the good one so the other will catch up. But it’s not doing well. It gives me headaches. And I can’t see proper” (10). Although the lazy eye is a real ocular condition, Joe’s lazy eye gains symbolic significance over the course of the narrative. The more he questions the dimensions of what is real and what is not, the more concerned Joe becomes that his eyes are tricking him into seeing a version of reality that does not exist. Indeed, at the end of Part V, the eye doctor...