Those Empty Eyes

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Interlude 1-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Parts 5-7

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

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Symbols & Motifs

Empty Eyes

Journalist Tracy Carr, seeing a young girl emerge from her parents’ house after her family is murdered, articulates the descriptor that comes to publicly define Alexandra Quinlan: “the empty-eyed girl” (31). This heavily used moniker haunts Alex throughout her trial, and the stigma associated with the image of “empty eyes” is partly what gets her convicted. In addition, the “empty eyes” identity becomes the image that true crime fanatics obsessed with Alex’s life use to describe her. The origin, interpretation, and use of the “empty eyes” label throughout the novel represent how true crime as a genre sensationalizes and often misrepresents the truth of a crime and often has devastating results for innocent people.

Why Alex’s eyes appeared “empty” in the wake of the murders is open to interpretation: The reason is likely that she was devastated by her family’s murders and didn’t yet have the emotional capacity to respond to what she was experiencing. Tracy and her fans, though, choose to interpret the emptiness as apathy and a sign of guilt. Consumers of true crime, seeking a sensational explanation, reduce ambiguities to their most salacious interpretations. The sensationalized epithet “empty eyes” thus unfairly brands Alex and creates a single narrative of what could have happened in her home the night of the murder. For a novel that critiques the use and impact of true crime stories, this symbol is a fitting title.

The Grandfather Clock

Alex hides behind the grandfather clock on the night of January 15, 2013, when the rest of her family is murdered. This action saves her from Jacqueline. In these early stages of the novel, the clock takes on a dual symbolic value: It is a comforting, physical touchstone that reminds Alex that she was able to save herself, something “grand and protective” (348), but it also represents the promise of the mundane, suburban life that Jacqueline ripped from her. When Alex sells the house at the end of the novel, symbolically releasing the emotional burdens and trauma tied to it, the grandfather clock is the only object she chooses to keep. The act of moving the clock into her new London flat is symbolically complex. On one hand, it demonstrates that Alex isn’t entirely willing to let go of the past; she needs the physical reminder of what her family meant to her and what she and her family endured. On the other hand, taking the clock out of its original context and rehousing it is an act of reclamation, of Alex refusing to let her trauma define her. Alex is comforted by the clock’s presence in her new flat; she describes it as “keeping her company” (349), and its sound lulls her to sleep. Her emotional relationship with the clock suggests that she views her choice to keep it as a reclamation and that she’s closer to coming to terms with her past.

Photographs

In Those Empty Eyes, photos feature prominently. From the photos that Jacqueline scatters around her victims’ bodies to the initial image that Tracy captures of Alex emerging from her house, many of the novel’s most significant images are captured in photos. In a novel in which characters’ identities constantly shift and are hidden, photography provides a means of surveillance, a way to capture a static version of a person’s identity. This power of photography is used for good and ill throughout the novel: Jacqueline gets Reese Rankin to identify the Chadwicks only because of photos, but photos are also the means by which Drew, Verne, and Tracy identify Alex when she wants to stay hidden. If photography represents a stable, unbiased means of capturing a “true” image of a person or object, it’s significant that Jacqueline covers her victims’ bodies in images of their victims: It’s simultaneously an act of condemnation and of creating visibility. In using the victims’ images, Jacqueline refuses to let their identities be erased or go unseen. In using images that explicitly link the sex offenders to the crimes, however, Jacqueline uses the photographs as a way to reveal the offenders’ true identities, making visible what they concealed.