Blue Eyes Symbol in The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim

What Blue Eyes Are in the Novel

In Monika Kim's The Eyes Are the Best Part, blue eyes function as the novel's most concentrated symbol: a single physical feature that compresses the narrator Ji-won's obsession with George, her mother's boyfriend, into something she can see, touch, and ultimately consume. The symbol builds from the novel's opening image of fish eyes—food, luck, and maternal ritual—into something far more disturbing: a fixation on the pale blue irises of the white man who has inserted himself into her family's life.

The literal object is straightforward. George has pale blue eyes, first noted when he pulls the narrator onto a wet bench at an ice cream shop in chapter 12. From that moment, blue eyes become the narrator's private obsession. She dreams of them, researches them online, and eventually begins killing men with blue eyes and eating their eyeballs.

Where the Symbol Recurs

The symbol appears in a clear progression across the novel:

Chapter 12: The narrator first notices George's pale blue eyes during the family's awkward first meeting at the ice cream shop.
Chapter 13: In a nightmare, the narrator finds herself trapped in a room whose walls are covered in eyes. She eats them to escape, and the room expands into her family's old house. On a plate sits a single human eye with a familiar blue iris—which she realizes, upon waking, looked exactly like George's.
Chapter 21: During a stress-induced migraine at a philosophy final, the narrator envisions one of George's blue eyes. She flees the exam, then searches online for images of blue eyes and reads about eyeball anatomy. A student with vivid blue eyes interrupts her; she remembers nothing about him except his eyes, which matched the shade of morning glories her father loved.
Chapter 36: Walking alone at night, the narrator becomes fixated on blue eyes in the crowd, calculating that roughly three hundred people on campus meet her criteria. She feels the eyes recognize her.
Chapter 37: She discovers the body of the homeless man she gave coins to earlier that day. Lifting his eyelid, she sees his blue eyes and, flooded with memories of George, cuts the eye out with a knife and her fingernails.
Chapter 38: In a gas station bathroom, she washes the eye, debates whether she has done wrong, and eats it.
Chapter 45: She finds an injured man in an alleyway, sees his blue eyes, and kills him, removing and eating both eyes.
Chapters 53–54: She picks up a drunk man with blue eyes, stabs him in the neck, and eats his eyes.

How the Meaning Changes

The symbol's meaning shifts in three distinct phases.

Phase one: fish eyes as inheritance. The novel opens with the narrator's mother declaring that the eyes are the best part of a fish. She eats them for luck, hoping to bring the narrator's absent father back. Fish eyes here are maternal, superstitious, and tied to the family's Korean heritage—a ritual the narrator initially refuses but later finds herself drawn to.

Phase two: blue eyes as obsession. Once George enters the picture, blue eyes become the narrator's private fixation. The nightmare in chapter 13 is the turning point: she eats a blue human eye and the space around her expands, suggesting that consuming the eye grants her power or release. By chapter 21, she is researching eyeball anatomy and fantasizing about how blue eyes would taste.

Phase three: blue eyes as target. The symbol hardens into something predatory. Blue eyes cease to be objects of desire and become targets of violence. The narrator kills men specifically because of their blue eyes, which she associates with George. The eye she eats in chapter 38 is rich and meaty, unlike fish eyes—a clear escalation from the fish-eye rituals of the opening chapters.

Character Connections

Ji-won (the narrator) is the symbol's carrier. Her obsession with blue eyes is inseparable from her role as protector of her mother and sister. She frames her violence as necessary—she is neither too weak like her mother nor too young like her sister. Blue eyes give her a target for the rage she cannot direct at her father or George.

George is the original blue-eyed figure. His eyes are the template for every eye the narrator consumes. He is also the man who disrupts the family, mocks Ji-hyun, and ultimately abandons Umma—repeating the father's pattern. The narrator's fixation on his eyes is a fixation on the predatory white male gaze itself.

Geoffrey provides the contrast. His eyes are brown, which the narrator describes as rot and unappetizing. He is the persistent suitor she rejects, and his brown eyes mark him as outside her obsession—until the novel's end, when he is framed for the murders.

Umma connects blue eyes to the fish-eye tradition. Her belief that fish eyes bring luck and her ritual consumption of them give the narrator a template for eating eyes. But Umma's eyes are about hope and superstition; the narrator's are about violence and control.

Theme Connections

The symbol ties directly to the novel's major themes:

Consumption as a coping mechanism for inherited trauma: The narrator inherits her mother's eye-eating ritual but transforms it. Where Umma eats fish eyes to summon luck, Ji-won eats human eyes to destroy the source of her family's pain.
The politics of looking and the reversal of the gaze: Blue eyes represent the gaze of the white man—George watching the family, the narrator feeling watched by blue eyes in the crowd. By consuming the eyes, the narrator reverses the power dynamic: she becomes the one who looks, who takes, who destroys.
Domestic ritual as a site of control: The fish-eye ritual begins in the kitchen, at the family table. The narrator's violence extends this domestic ritual into the world, but it remains rooted in the same logic: eating eyes is a way of taking control.
The cycle of abandonment: George repeats the father's abandonment of Umma. The narrator's obsession with his eyes is partly an attempt to break this cycle—to destroy the man before he can leave.

Study Questions

1. How does the meaning of the fish-eye ritual change from the novel's opening to its conclusion?

The opening chapters present fish eyes as a maternal ritual of luck and hope. Umma eats them to bring her husband back, and the narrator initially refuses. By the novel's end, the narrator has transformed this ritual into something violent: she eats human eyes, not fish eyes, and she does so not to summon luck but to destroy the men she blames for her family's suffering. The ritual's form survives, but its meaning inverts from hope to vengeance.

2. Why does the narrator associate blue eyes with George specifically, and what does this reveal about her psychology?

George is the first blue-eyed man to enter the narrator's life after her father's departure. His eyes become the template for her obsession because he represents the predatory white male presence that has disrupted her family. The narrator's fixation reveals that her violence is not random—it is directed at a type, and George is the original instance of that type. Her inability to separate blue eyes from George suggests that her murders are, in a sense, attempts to kill George repeatedly.

3. What role does the library scene in chapter 21 play in the symbol's development?

The library scene marks the moment the narrator's obsession becomes explicit and researched. She searches for images of blue eyes, reads about eyeball anatomy, and fantasizes about how blue eyes would taste. The student who interrupts her has eyes the exact shade of morning glories her father loved—a detail that connects blue eyes to her father as well as George. The scene establishes that the narrator's fixation is intellectual as well as visceral, and it links the symbol to both the father's absence and George's presence.

4. How does the narrator's perception of blue eyes differ from her perception of brown eyes, and what does this contrast reveal?

The narrator describes brown eyes as rot and muck, while blue eyes are gorgeous and stunning. This contrast is not aesthetic but moral: brown eyes belong to Geoffrey, the persistent suitor she rejects, while blue eyes belong to the men she kills. The contrast reveals that the narrator's obsession is not about beauty but about power. Blue eyes represent the gaze she must destroy; brown eyes represent a gaze she can simply ignore.