The Eyes Are Not Here

Submission
Communication Skill
Government Engineering Collage Bhavnagar

1. Name: Parth Shukla Enrollment No.: 160210106053 Branch: Civil Subject: Communication Skill Guided By: Himanshu Shrivastav sir

2. The eyes are not here The title of the story is The eyes Are Not Here The Girl on The Train The Eyes Have It

3. Introduction The Eyes are not here is short story by Ruskin bound that was originally published in Contemporary Indian English Stories. The narrator of the story , a blind man whose eyes were sensitive to light and darkness, was going to Dhradun by train when he met a girl and had chit-chat with her. It was only after she left and the another passenger came into the compartment that the narrator realizes the girl was blind.

4. About the author Ruskin Bond was born in Kasauli , Himachal Pradesh, on 19 th May, 1934 and grew up in Shimla , Jamnagar, Dehradun and Mussoorie . As a young man, he spent four years in the Channel Island and London. He now lives in Mussoorie . Most of Bond’s writings show a very strong influnce from the social life in the hill stations at the foothills of the Himalayas, where he spent his childhood. His first novel, “the Room On the Roof”, was written when he was 17 and published when he was 21

5. Character in Story The Narrator: He is the main character and the traveller who meets a girl in the train. The Girl: She is a passenger who travels with the narrator for while. The Passenger: He is the passenger who makes the narrator realize that the girl was blind.

6. The Story At the beginning of the story, a man is alone in a train compartment simply waiting for the journey to begin.  The man is blind and can only differentiate between light and darkness.  Soon, he is joined by a young girl who is originally accompanied by her parents.  They seem extra anxious about her well-being in that they tell her exactly where to put her luggage, not to lean out of the window, and not to speak with strangers.  Soon, the girl's parents leave and the man and the girl are alone in the train compartment as the journey begins.

7. The Story Most of the story involves the conversation between the two characters:  the man and the girl.  When the man asks the girl if her destination is the same as his own, she is startled, but is happy to strike up a conversation.  The girls says that she will be met by her aunt in Saharanpur in order to be taken home.  When the girl learns the man is headed to Mussoorie , the hill country, she looks at him in envy.  The hills are beautiful at this time of year. 

8. The Story Just before the girl exits at her stop, the man tells her that she has "an interesting face," which the girl likes because she is usually told she has a "pretty" one.  The girl leaves and another man enters.  Through the comments from this new passenger, the man learns that the girl, too, was blind. 

9. What is the theme of the story Ruskin Bond’s short story “The Eyes Are Not Here” is very brief but is also intriguingly complex. Although most worthwhile stories cannot be easily paraphrased or reduced to a single theme, this story definitely seems to deal with issues of human perception.

10. What is the theme of the story In this tale, three people, at least, prove to be imperceptive in various ways: the unnamed man on the train, the unnamed woman on the train, the story’s reader, and, perhaps, also the new male passenger.

11. What is the theme of the story Bond’s story is the kind of tale that makes readers want to read it immediately a second time as soon as they have finished reading it once. Only on re-reading, in fact, does the story reveal its full richness and complexity as a meditation on human perceptions and perceptiveness and how both are influenced by the assumptions we make.

12. What is the theme of the story Thus, the young man on the train failed to perceive that the young woman was blind, as did the reader of the story. The young woman apparently also failed to perceive that the young man was blind, and this may also be true of the male who enters the compartment near the end of the story.  In a very brief tale, then, Bond has managed to create a remarkably complex story about the limits of human perception and perceptiveness and about how people tend to make assumptions and then take those assumptions for granted in ways that influence what they perceive or fail to perceive.

13. The plot of the story the plot of the story is this: a man (presumably a young man) is sitting in a compartment in a train when a woman (apparently a young woman) also enters the compartment. The woman doesn’t notice that the man is blind, and he does not tell her. Instead, he asks her a series of questions that allow him to infer certain facts about her. She also converses pleasantly with him. After she gets off the train at her stop, another male enters the compartment and mentions in passing that the young woman who just left the compartment was blind. 

14. The story is re-read, the reader notices various intriguing details and clues, including the following: The girl’s parents are very concerned about her when she gets on the train, but both we and the young man assume that there is nothing special about their concern. It doesn’t occur to us that the girl may be blind.

15. The young woman is startled when the young man speaks, but both we and he assume that she is startled simply because he is sitting in the dark. Once again, it doesn’t occur to us that the girl may be blind. The young male, commenting on the fact that the young woman was startled, thinks to himself, Well, it often happens that people with good eyesight fail to see what is right in front of them.

16. Conclusion : We make an assumption, and then we perceive all the rest of the events in light of that assumption. So, too, does the narrator, and so the narrator’s joke at the expense of sighted people is also a joke by the author at the expense of the narrator.  Rather than being offended by the author’s sly trick, we ultimately appreciate all the ways in which he tricks both us the narrator, because we (both readers and narrator) ultimately learn a very valuable lesson about the influence of initial assumptions on the ways we perceive (or fail to perceive) the world and other persons.

17. Thanks For Watching