The Eyes Have It

“As yet, I haven’t done anything about it; I can’t think of anything to do.”

Readers are immediately introduced to the main character’s point of view. This short passage of characterization reveals the narrator’s essential passivity and further emphasizes the tension between thinking and doing.

“I wrote to the Government, and they sent back a pamphlet on the repair and maintenance of frame houses.”

Blending a farcical element with the story’s over-the-top situation, this compound sentence demonstrates the Government's disinterest in the narrator’s concerns. Furthermore, in sending him a pamphlet that he finds useless in response to his report of an invasion by extraterrestrials, the Government reveals its own ineptitude, indicating that both the individual and organizations/bureaucracies are incompetent in relation to reality.

“Anyhow, the whole thing is known; I’m not the first to discover it. Maybe it’s even under control.”

Dismissive of both the situation and his own contribution to it, the narrator suspects that the invasion is part of some larger scheme that he has stumbled upon. Not only is his interpretation of the book deeply flawed, but his reading of others’ reactions is also askew.