“Binocular Vision” & "Mud"

“Binocular Vision” is written from the point of view of a child living next door to the object of his scrutiny. We do not get to see everything that is going on in the house next door, just what the child sees looking into various windows. We do not get to know more about the residents than what the child observes and assumes. We find out at the end that looks can be deceiving and that the child’s assumptions were incorrect. He assumed that the couple was contentedly married and the man went to work every day while the woman took care of the house. But, he was wrong. They were not a couple but mother and son and they were not both content. The man was depressed enough to commit suicide in the garage. There is very little dialogue in the story.

“Mud” is written from the point of view of a widower. He sees the ghosts or bodies or spirits of those he has lost. We, the readers, do not get a clear understanding of why he is seeing them now. He just sees his father and grandmother doing what they did all the time when they were alive. She was in the kitchen and he was in the living room watching television. He wants to talk to them and to hug them, but he has an important meeting to go to. He has the most difficulty not going to see his wife when he hears her voice. This story unlike the previous one is moved by the dialogue. We don’t get a complete sense of what the people were like before death, we only see his interpretation of them after death. Which is similar to “Binocular Vision” because we are only seeing what the main character saw in his family members.