Title: Can't See Out of Your Eye
Author: George S. Peart
Publisher: Derek Press
Reviewer: Barbara Nelson
Can't See Out of Your Eye is a satire - a literary work that uses mockery or ridicule to expose human frailty - of a middle-class and working-class family.
The story is set in the small town of Bridgetown, Pennsylvania, in the United States, in the 1950s and revolves around two youngsters, Jane Walcott, the oldest daughter of a working-class family, and Vaughn Hernan, the son of a typical middle-class family.
Jim Walcott, Jane's father, wore blue overalls to work at the John Deere factory, while Anthony (Tony) Hernan managed one of the banks in town and wore a business suit to work.
Different lifestyles
There were other differences in their lifestyle. For example, the Walcotts lived in a "modest two-storey house with merely a back porch" while the Hernans lived in a "Victorian mansion with a wrap-around porch and large yard full of weeping willows".
The two families had to share the school, library, church, playing fields and the streets of the community.
Jane and Vaughn were born only a few months apart. When they were eight years old, they began to like each other's company. As time progressed, they developed a relationship that slowly morphed into love.
The spin-off from the relationship was that the young people had to face the reality that class mattered very much in their lives.
For example, when Jane decided she would like to go to college, her mother told her, "Our family members are not college material".
Her father nearly had a fit when Jane told him of her decision.
"What do you mean, it's your idea? Who do you think you are, young lady? You are my daughter and I am the decision maker in this house," he said.
Upset with parents
On the other side of town, Vaughn's parents were very annoyed that their son was "dating that Walcott girl from across the way".
"I thought your father told you that they are different?" Vaughn's mother asked him cynically.
"Aren't they red-blooded Americans just like us?" Vaughn responds.
"Red-blooded American, but they don't live or think like us, and you know that," his mother replies.
Vaughn is particularly upset that his parents say that they believe the Bible, and even teach it, but do not think they have to practise it.
"All this stuff about everyone being the same; they don't believe it," he tells Jane. "I just wish we all could see out of the same eyes."
"Seeing through the same eyes is only a theory," Jane replies, somewhat bitterly.
In fact, each young person was saying "I can't see out of your eyes".
The story is long, sentimental and quite tedious in parts.
Plot to keep apart
The reader is introduced to the Reverend Goodfellow, the local pastor who is clever enough to hide his true feelings behind a mask. Although he preaches that Christianity is the great equaliser, he also feels that people should marry within their social class because, in his opinion, people of different classes think differently and should not mix with each other. He plots with the Hernans to keep Jane and Vaughn apart.
Vaughn's parents are particularly mean to him. For example, his father refused to lend him his new Buick to take Jane to the prom, so he had to take her in a taxi.
The two young people go off to different colleges, but the attraction they feel for each other continues to grow even though they are apart.
Vaughn's mother, meanwhile, does everything possible to throw a monkey wrench into the relationship.
Seeing eye to eye
While on holiday from college, Jane and Vaughn go out on a date to a wayside inn at Palmerton, a town some distance away.
On the way home, they are involved in a serious car accident. The two families are called to the hospital, but, unfortunately, even in the face of this difficulty they could not see eye to eye.
Jane's eyes are badly damaged as a result of the accident. She cannot see. Vaughn was also injured but his eyes were not as badly hurt as Jane's.
He learns from Dr Michaels that he can help Jane to see again if he is prepared to undergo a retinal transplant and give her one of the retinas from his eyes. He would then have sight in one eye and she also would have sight in one eye.
While Jane and her parents were overwhelmed and happy at Vaughn's altruism, his parents were alarmed and upset.
Is this love or madness his father growled? Once again, they could not see eye to eye with Vaughn on this matter.
Peart's "intriguing look at love and relationships in the church family" ends with Vaughn refusing to change his mind, even in the face of his parent's disapproval.
"I gave my eye, now I want to give my heart," he says prior to their wedding.
At last, the couple could see out of each other's eye.
