Summary
Joe wakes up and yells out to call Treacle Walker, who is nowhere to be seen. A train that Joe refers to as “Noony” rattles past. As Joe looks out, he notices how empty the area seems. He gets up and goes downstairs, where he sees that the step Treacle Walker told him to rub now gleams white. Joe goes to his “museum,” which is a collection of objects he has. He finds that the lamb’s shoulder blade he gave to Treacle Walker is gone, and in its place, there is a gray stone and the round jar. However, unlike the other day, the jar no longer has Joe’s name on it. Instead, it says the price and the manufacturer.
Joe picks up the jar and notices there is some green paste on the bottom. He tries to wipe it off and then puts the jar back before picking up the stone. Inspecting it closely, he still cannot find any trace of his name along its surface. He puts the stone in his pocket and goes out to his yard, looking over the gate at the Big Meadow that lies beyond a nearby brook.
Joe begins to feel dizzy. Afraid that he’s spent too much time in the sun, he runs back inside and feels a sharp pain in his body, as well as flashing lights in his vision. However, the pain and flashing lights soon stop. Joe removes his eye patch and looks in a mirror, but can’t see anything wrong. Still, he continues to feel sick, and goes to lie down.
The next chapter abruptly begins in another setting—Joe visiting the optometrist. The doctor asks Joe to take his eye patch off and begins to conduct an eye exam. Joe must identify a dot and line, as well as read a chart with rows of letters. Joe is only able to read two lines with his bad eye, but with his good eye, finds that he can read many more lines of letters, getting excited as he is able to show off how good his vision is in that one eye.
The doctor accuses Joe of “faffing” around (fooling around or playing a prank). Joe doesn’t understand and the doctor reveals that the letters Joe thought he was reading with his good eye were simply not there. Joe is surprised and accuses the doctor of swapping out the boards. The doctor conducts another test, having Joe write down what he sees on the board. Once more, he sees things that aren’t there. As Joe asks the doctor what’s wrong with his eyes, the doctor responds that nothing is wrong with his eyes—it’s his sight that is somehow wrong.
Joe returns home and attempts to make sense of what he had written down at the doctor’s office. He suddenly hears a call coming from somewhere in the neighboring forest. He cannot make sense of where the voice is coming from and wades into a bog, hearing a cuckoo call over and over. Joe begins to hear the cuckoo call coming from all around him, as if the bird is taunting him, and becomes disoriented trying to chase it. He switches his eye patch to his bad eye in order to use his good one and suddenly feels the cuckoo call coming from everywhere: in the air, his ears, and even his lungs and head. He feels the bog pulling him down but continues trying to walk deeper into the woods.
A man emerges out of the bog. He wears a leather hood, but besides that, is naked. He calls Joe by his name—mysteriously, as if he already knows him—and notes that Joe has the stone in his pocket, even though he can’t see it. The man accuses Joe of waking him up. Joe realizes that he cannot see the man with his bad eye and can only see him with his good eye, as if he magically appears through the good eye. Joe feels increasingly dizzy and cannot make sense of his inconsistent vision.
The man tells Joe that he has the “glamourie” in his good eye—an antiquated word meaning glamour or magic. The man tells him that this isn’t a bad thing, so long as Joe learns how to use it. He tells Joe to shut his good eye; when Joe does this, the bog vanishes, and Joe finds himself back in the familiar Big Meadow. However, when he opens his good eye and shuts his bad eye, he finds himself in the bog. The man accompanies Joe back and tells him to use both eyes in order to get home. Joe begs him to accompany him all the way home, but the man refuses, telling him that the bog is his home. He offers to sit with Joe until he feels ready to head back.
Joe tells the man he wants to see the cuckoo in order to collect its eggs to put in his museum. The man laughs and thanks Joe for telling him such an amusing story about how he collects the eggs. He then reveals his name—Thin Amren—before returning to the bog, telling Joe that he must go back to the “wetness.” The man vanishes, leaving Joe with a vague mention that he should use the “glim” (his sight) that’s in the “mirligoes,” which Joe cannot make sense of.
Analysis
Following Treacle Walker’s first visit, Joe discovers that his sight is altered. Where previously, he simply had a lazy eye, now he finds that his vision is totally altered in a disorienting way. His bad eye sees the world as it is, but his good eye now sees things in the world that aren’t physically there, as he first realizes while at the optometrist’s office as he reads lines of letters that aren’t actually on the optometrist’s exam.
The doctor’s final comment—that eyes and sight are different, and that Joe’s sight is what’s different—points toward one of the novel’s overarching themes. Sight, and the ability to perceive, can sometimes change and shape how we understand the world around us. Perception can be inconsistent, even when the physical “eyes” may have nothing “wrong” with them. Perception is subjective; Thin Amren, too, affirms this as he says that “what sees is seen,” a statement that also clues the reader into the novel’s exploration of what it means to not only perceive what is around us, but also to be perceived by others. The novel divorces physical reality, like the eyes, from what we may see and perceive, emphasizing the role of personal interpretation. The fact that the optometrist cannot see what Joe can through his good eye, which now possesses the "glamourie," also reinforces this theme, because it demonstrates how two people may have different perceptions of the shared world around them.
Like Treacle Walker, Thin Amren is one of the fable-like characters to enter Joe’s life. Thin Amren, who lives in a bog, may be an allusion to or reinterpretation of a “bog body” —a form of mummy that is particularly common in northwest Europe and the United Kingdom. Bog bodies are skeletons preserved in the moist environment of bogs; their commonality has led some to theorize that throughout history, and especially in the Iron Age, people buried in or exiled to bogs were thought to possess witch-like power. The bog, thus, was perhaps perceived as a liminal space between the physical world and the dark or spiritual world.
Simultaneously, Thin Amren recalls a common trope in fables and folktales: the “helper” figure, as folklorists commonly refer to characters that arrive along a hero’s journey in order to assist them. Thin Amren helps Joe understand how his vision has changed, with his good eye now allowing him to perceive a level of reality that is magical and separate from the “regular” world.
Throughout this chapter, Garner again continues to rely on British slang. He also incorporates many words that have fallen out of common usage, such as “glamourie,” which was most frequently used throughout the 19th century but is now rarely used at all. Garner’s work, which equally features many aspects of British culture and life that may today seem outdated as well as antiquated words, investigates a form of British heritage that lies within words, objects, and folktales, combining magical elements with linguistic play and humor.
