Feathers and Black Eyes
Cathcart nightly makes lists of "feathers in his cap" and "black eyes", often finding something in the former category is in fact in the latter one, considering all the possible ways in which his superiors could react to them. In his attempts to please nearly everyone, Cathcart discovers that all the other soldiers hate him. This perception lives largely in his mind, but it affects his relationships with the others and they soon begin to actually dislike and/or avoid him. His paranoia, matched only by his arrogance, worsens throughout the course of the novel.
Read more about this topic: Colonel Cathcart
Famous quotes containing the words black eyes, feathers, black and/or eyes:
“But who would rush at a benighted man,
And give him two black eyes for being blind?”
—Thomas Hood (1799–1845)
“Too many feathers can sink a boat, and too many knick-knacks can break an axle.”
—Chinese proverb.
“Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men’s affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“A hovering temporizer, that
Canst with thine eyes at once see good and evil,
Inclining to them both.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)