Reflections in a Golden Eye

novel by McCullers

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Reflections in a Golden Eye, novel by Carson McCullers, serialized in Harper’s Bazaar in 1940 and published in one volume in 1941. The novel is set in the 1930s on an army base in the southern United States and concerns the relationships among forlorn, self-destructive people whose lives end in tragedy and murder.

The novel’s characters include Captain Penderton, a repressed gay man; his wife, who is having an affair with Major Langdon; the major’s wife, who responds to the trauma of her child’s death with self-mutilation; Anacleto, a gay servant who is befriended by the major’s wife; and an army private who engages in voyeurism.

McCullers’s novel was adapted as the film Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), directed by John Huston and starring Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, and Brian Keith.

Portrait of young thinking bearded man student with stack of books on the table before bookshelves in the library

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The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by J.E. Luebering.

Reflections in a Golden Eye

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