Eye of The Wolf Quotes

“He’s starting to get on my nerves, the wolf thinks to himself. For the last two hours the boy has been standing. in front of the wire fencing, as still as a frozen tree, watching the wolf walking.”

Two allegorical stories, one of a boy named Africa and one of a captive Alaskan wolf who has only one eye, Blue Wolf, merge through a unique device in this unusual tale.

The wolf has lost nearly everything on his journey to the zoo, including an eye and his beloved pack. The boy too has lost much and seen many terrible things.

This opening up paves the way for another—he can finally open his scarred second eye. As the boy tells his own tale, which, like the wolf’s, reveals the cruelty of human beings, we learn of his gift with animals, from his long desert days upon a camel’s back.

The wolf then tells his story to the boy, through images in his pupil, and their communication slowly melts Blue Wolf’s mistrust of humans.

“The pupil blazes like fire as it fills the eye. But no matter how fat it gets, the boy never looked away. When everything has become pitch black, he discover what nobody has ever seen in the wolf’s eye before: the pupil is alive. There, staring and growling at the boy, is a black she-wolf snuggled up with her cubs. ”

They stand eye-to-eye on either side of the wolf’s enclosure and, slowly, each makes his own extraordinary story known to the other.

The boy stays each night until the wolf is asleep and returns before he wakes. One day Africa does something “strange that calms the wolf and makes him feel more at ease. The boy closes an eye.”

“But there’s something bothering the wolf. A silly detail. He’s only got one eye and the boy’s got two. The wolf doesn’t know which of the boy’s eyes to stare into. He hesitates. His single eye jumps, right-left, left-right. The boy’s eyes don’t flinch.”

“The boy mysteriously appears at the wolf’s cage. “He stands there silently, without moving a muscle. Only his eyes shift.”