Those Empty Eyes

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Interlude 1-Part 1

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Part 4

Parts 5-7

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Themes

The American Cultural Obsession With True Crime

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses murder, death by suicide, rape (including rape of minors), child pornography, and gun violence.

Those Empty Eyes offers a searing critique of the true crime genre and the obsession with true crime narratives. The novel presents the tragedy of Alex’s family’s murders as a prototypically American true crime story: a disturbing act of violence in a suburban community spun into a titillating tale of familicide and psychopathy. Tracy Carr’s branding of Alex as “empty eyes” on the night of the murders begins to turn her into a character in the drama of her family’s tragedy—a drama that audiences obsessed with true crime will consume and feel they have a stake in, just like fans of media properties feel they have stake in those stories.

In the novel’s very first section, Garrett verbalizes its critique of true crime in his prosecution of Alex’s case. He declares: “A teenaged girl loses her entire family, and because of our society’s appetite for the morbid details of other people’s suffering […] that girl wasn’t allowed to properly finish high school” (48-49). Exemplifying this “appetite” for true crime stories are the characters Drew Estes and his girlfriend, Laverne. They stalk Alex across Europe, hoping to extort her identity as “empty eyes.” Their motives for stalking her reflect the substance of the novel’s critique of true crime: Drew and Laverne, once they’ve trapped Alex in her own apartment, don’t want to know what really happened to Alex’s family. For them, the “truth” of Alex’s story is their interpretation of the portrayal that the media created, and they’ve already rendered their judgment. Instead, they demand money from Alex in exchange for not exposing her. This impulse toward extortion reflects the relationship between true crime stories and the audiences that consume them: Crime stories like the one that Tracy Carr builds out of Alex’s life are meant to satisfy the audience’s base desires: Carr creates value for the consumer at the expense of Alex’s well-being.

Another, more sustained criticism of true crime derives from the novel’s portrayal of Alex’s day-to-day life. In the wake of her successful case against the state of Virginia, Alex restructures her life to avoid public scrutiny: She moves from isolation in the Appalachians to England and, when she’s identified abroad, abandons her identity as Alex Quinlan, changing her physical appearance along with her name. The “appetites” of true crime aficionados force Alex into self-erasure, which nearly extends to Alex’s memories of her past too: She purchases her family’s home “to collect something near and dear to her heart before the fanatics who continued to trespass onto the property eventually found their way to the attic and pillaged what was there” (70). Her reference to “collecting” and “pillaging” reveals the reality that Alex’s history has been commodified by forces beyond her control. She must literally purchase her past to maintain control over it. The ultimate impact of true crime obsession on the lives of those whom these narratives depict is thus erasure and the losing control of their own stories.

The Effects of Sexual Violence

The specter of sexual violence abounds in the novel. From the rape of the unnamed McCormack student who “forced herself to laugh” at her rapist’s advances “despite feeling terrified” (141), to the sex trafficking practices of Roland Glazer, sexual abuse is a real presence in Alex’s world. Only at the end does the novel reveal that trauma stemming from sexual violence motivated all the traumatic events of Alex’s life. Jacqueline’s quest for justice for victims of childhood sexual abuse creates the traumas that motivate Alex to help give voice to women like Laura McAllister—women who suffered from sexual violence but are unable to tell their own stories.

The Camp Montague sections explore the silencing effect of sexual abuse, especially childhood sexual abuse. The unnamed boy in these sections, eventually revealed as Garrett Lancaster, doesn’t act when he sees Lolland take a girl, Jacqueline Jordan, into his cabin. He reflects that he should have immediately sought help for her, “but to do that would mean to admit that the same thing happened to him, and the shame he harbored from his time in Jerry Lolland’s cabin was greater than the guilt he felt for allowing it to happen to someone else” (181). Lolland’s abuse leads Garrett to engage in a double self-silencing: He keeps the truth of his abuse from society at large and from himself. This need to protect himself from the reality of Lolland’s violence keeps him from helping Jacqueline in the moment. The novel explores the ways that this silencing effect happens not only at the individual level but also at the institutional level. Laura hopes to uncover the truth of rape at frat parties because McCormack “hoped they could bury the story deep in the ground, where it would die and decay before anyone knew it existed” (160). Sexual violence creates and thrives on silence.

Those Empty Eyes models a few different means through which survivors of sexual assault can cope with this silence. Garrett and Jacqueline deal with Lolland by articulating the truth of the abuse to one another; by combining their resources and creating a small community with one another, they devise a means for seeking vengeance against perpetrators of sexual violence and those who are silent about it. Similarly, Alex, Laura, Annette, and Tracy work together to address the sexual abuse at McCormack, forming a network of women who shed light on the university’s rape culture. These communities function very differently, however: Garrett and Jacqueline operate outside the law (which explores another theme, The Limits and Possibilities of Extrajudicial Violence), while Alex uses Tracy’s social platform to create maximum visibility for Laura’s story and thereby deal with sexual abuse by exposing it. Despite this major difference, both approaches depend on creating community to address a type of violence that works to silence individuals.

The Limits and Possibilities of Extrajudicial Violence

Jacqueline and Garrett’s plotline in the novel explores the personally liberating possibilities of revenge. When Jacqueline murders Lolland, she claims that she does so as “reprisal for all his victims—past, present, and future” (296). Of course, Lolland won’t commit his crime in the “future,” so what Jacqueline is referring to is open to interpretation. She may be taking a broader view of what Lolland represents: He’s not just one man but one of many predators who must be stopped. She may also be considering how Lolland’s abuse will continue to affect her into the future: Throughout her life, she’ll be one of Lolland’s “victims.” Revenge, then, is an outlet through which Jacqueline can redefine her own experience. The agency she finds in murdering sexual predators (and those who remain silent about them) is an antidote to the lack of agency she felt as a result of her rape.

The novel’s final chapter articulates the moral underpinning of Garrett’s endeavor with Jacqueline: “He and Jacqueline were the ones fighting for the innocent. They were the ones exacting justice on the truly vile members of society, justice the American system could not properly provide” (356). His justification for their murders references some of the novel’s organizing quandaries, such as whether the American justice system adequately and/or correctly addresses the injustices of sexual violence and, if not, how these injustices can be rectified. Another question implicit in his justification is what recourses exist for those outside law enforcement. Jacqueline and Garret find their own solution to these questions: If the law doesn’t adequately address sexual violence, then proper recourse must be outside the law.

Of course, this approach has limitations. As Jacqueline and Garrett discover with the Quinlans, their extrajudicial justice can have unintended consequences—in this case, the murder of the innocent Raymond and the orphaning of Alex. Jacqueline’s means of coping with her trauma creates trauma for Alex. In addition, enacting violence outside the law begins a cycle of trauma that eventually ends in Jacqueline’s demise. Regarding the rape culture at McCormack, Alex apparently agrees with Garrett’s assertion that the American justice system insufficiently addresses the reality of sexual violence; like Laura, Alex sees the ways that the university uses its institutional power to silence rape survivors. Like Jacqueline and Garrett but in a nonviolent way, Alex, Annette, and Laura work outside the system to expose the story of the university’s rape culture: Laura intends to publish the story using her own resources, and Alex acquires the story through theft. Alex’s approach to seeking justice outside the legal system allows her to find solace while giving rape survivors a voice; Garrett and Jacqueline’s perpetuates violence and brings about Jacqueline’s death.