Aunts Quote by Mervyn Peake
““The Aunts put their arms about one another so that their faces were cheek to cheek, and from this doublehead they gazed up at Steerpike with a row of four equidistant eyes. There was no reason why there should not have been forty, or four hundred of them. It so happened that only four had been removed from a dead and endless frieze whose inexhaustible and repetitive theme was forever, eyes, eyes, eyes.””
About This Quote
Source Novel: Gormenghast, 1946
The description uses grotesque imagery to convey obsession with surveillance and endless observation.
In simple terms: Obsessive watching is unsettling.
Key Takeaway
Beware of constant scrutiny.
Themes
surveillance
obsession
gothic horror
Mood
dark
foreboding
reflective
Type
literary
philosophical
When to use this quote
- authoritarian regimes
- social media monitoring
- privacy debates
- artistic critique
Key Concepts
perception
repetition
symbolism
Questions to Reflect On
- What does the endless eye symbolize?
- How does this reflect modern surveillance?
A Different Perspective
The metaphor may exaggerate and distract from realistic concerns.
![“The disinterest [of my two great-aunts] in anything that had to do with high society was such that their sense of hearing ... put to rest its receptor organs and allowed them to suffer the true beginnings of atrophy.” quote by Marcel Proust](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/08f/marcel-proust-114_atrophy_the-disinterest-of-my-two-great-aunts-in_172597.jpg)
