The Watchers

“It looked so dismally uninviting beneath the blue sky, like a renaissance impression of heaven and hell.”

This is Mina’s impression of the forest when she begins to walk through it. By invoking the often-ominous artistic depictions of liminal realms that were created during the Renaissance, Shine imbues the grim setting with the sense that hidden realms are present and watching, just like the watchers themselves.

“Her artist’s imagination fancied a hundred horrible things that could have been responsible. Every horror movie she had ever seen and every Gothic tale she had ever read, they all paid their contribution.”

Again, Shine uses vague allusions to literature and pop culture alike, allowing for a wide range of interpretations. Ironically, by making the description so generic, the author opens up a range of visceral possibilities, deliberately inviting readers to invoke personalized images of horror.

“For all she knew this was some sadistic attempt at a reality show, with a nation of viewers in the comfort of their homes mocking the gullible girl with the parrot who believed it was all so real.”

This section of the novel takes on new meanings given the subsequent creation of a film adaptation of The Watchers, in which the director adds a decisive new element to the coop: a television playing a reality show. In the novel, there is only this brief mention of a hypothetical reality show, and the contrasting approaches of the book versus the film provide a prime example of the ways in which art is adapted for a new medium.

“In an instant Mina was staring at her reflection. Both palms pressed against those of her mirrored double.”

This is one example of the crisis of identity that gradually takes hold due to the constant presence of mirrors and doppelgängers in the narrative. The coop’s mirror hides watchers who have the ability to take on Mina’s form; thus, behind her actual reflection is another, far more dangerous reflection, and the mirrored surface only allows her to imagine what might lurk behind it.

“The night had never been so riotous nor so defined by absolute terror. Bodies hammered against the glass, sending distorted reflections quivering against their will.”

In this scene, the reflections in the mirror are affected by the violent activity of the watchers, who are themselves doppelgängers of the prisoners. In the midst of this fury, the terrified captives find themselves changing their own expressions out of sheer terror, and thus, the presence of the watchers has a direct effect on the mirrored reflections of the captives. In this way, the captives are confronted with visions of their own terror even as they must endure the threat of the watchers beyond the glass.

“None of them were soldiers. But they were survivors.”

This passage obliquely alludes to the fact that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been most commonly associated with trauma that arises from military combat, but here, Shine indirectly acknowledges that many civilians also have PTSD. Notably, there are records of soldiers being attacked by the watchers, and this fact prompts the captives’ comparison to soldiers. While Mina survives, The Impact of Trauma on Creativity causes her to undergo deep internal changes, even after she has escaped.

“The rest of the building was no different, defiled, and undeserving of the word home.”

The coop was originally built as a home for Madeline, but Mina and the other humans also come to think of it as a makeshift home while they are trapped there. Once the watchers attack the glass and destroy the living room, the captives are no longer able to think of the coop as a home, for the scant form of safety that it once offered them has vanished.

“She resembled more so the woman who had lived within the pages of her sketchbook; the bravery and beauty that was always there but stood just off-stage, behind the curtain that was Madeline’s way with people; ill-tempered and cold even when spitting orders from beside a hot fire.”

Here, Mina compares the double of Madeline in her art with the living person of Madeline herself. The reference to a curtain obliquely invokes a theater metaphor, comparing Madeline’s strictness to a performance and her internal identity to something that remains hidden backstage. As a cold-hearted watcher, Madeline comes to represent the ways in which even humans “perform” their identities.

“She had looked to the mirror, squinting in disbelief at who she had become.”

In this passage, Ciara’s identity in the mirror is surprising to her, as she now looks like a different person due to the harshness of her captivity. Having been unable to get completely clean or obtain enough food or rest in the coop, she now bears physical signs of this strain. Constantly faced with her own eroding reflection, she is forced to reckon with the extent of the torture that she has endured.

“Mina stood beside Madeline, surprised by how she had come to be there, nestled in the wings of a woman whom she couldn’t make up her mind to trust or not.”

This scene develops the ambiguous relationship between Mina and Madeline, and Shine also takes the opportunity to strengthen the novel’s use of bird symbolism. Mina describes Madeline as a protective figure whose “wings” offer shelter to the others, and this image of safety conflicts with Mina’s growing apprehension about the other woman’s nature and secrets. While Mina doesn’t completely trust Madeline, she knows that Madeline protected her when Daniel locked them out, and as she struggles to reconcile her conflicting thoughts, the moment reflects The Tension Between Caution and Compassion.

“It looks like whoever lived down here was watching the watchers.”

Mina says this when she finds Kilmartin’s surveillance cameras, which have been destroyed. Mina and Kilmartin are similar in how they watch others; Mina watches people—and sometimes, inadvertently, the watchers—to create art of their appearances. Later, she watches people to see if they are human, adopting a stance closer to Kilmartin’s, given that he watched the watchers to see how they adopt human attributes.

“In their faces I saw my own likeness, almost indistinguishable. But there was no emotion. No capacity to express feeling and so no true means to mimic our kind without noticeable flaw.”

In his video, Kilmartin points out that being emotional and expressive are human characteristics. In his view, it is inhuman to lack these characteristics, and he believes that a fully convincing physical imitation must be accompanied by a perfect emotional imitation. Within this context, the coldness of the Galway woman whom Mina calls an android therefore hints that the figure is really a watcher.

“Even when wearing the mask of man, still they are monsters to the eye.”

The professor calls the watchers’ lack of emotion monstrous, further developing the idea that kindness and empathy are uniquely human characteristics. To be a monster is to uncannily imitate a human’s physical features without replicating the appropriate emotions that make those features come to life. Similarly, humans who lack kindness, such as Daniel’s father, are compared to watchers and are also portrayed as monsters.

“For too long her home had been a place in her past, like the rose-tinted memories of a childhood summer.”

While in the coop, Mina’s apartment becomes just a memory to her: a source of wistful nostalgia for a simpler, safer life. While she remains trapped in the coop, her only form of “home” lies in the captives around her, and the bonds she forms develop the theme of Gaining Strength From Found Family.

“A darkness was falling like a curtain closing over their lives, concluding the tragedy of their final act to riotous, taloned applause.”

Here, Shine uses another theater simile to compare nightfall with a dropping curtain that cuts short the action—in this case, the captives’ very lives. Additionally, while casting the watchers in the logical role of the audience, Shine emphasizes the treacherous nature of this presence by invoking the image of “taloned applause.” The phrase captures both the watchers’ physical monstrosity and their sinister glee at the idea of the humans’ imminent deaths. The passage also adds to the idea that humanity itself has become a performance that the watchers will observe and eventually bring to an end; the fairies are older than humans and might conceivably outlive them.

“They weren’t the watchers’ pets anymore.”

The bitter tone of triumph in this passage further develops the symbolism of birds and pets. While in the coop, the humans are nothing more than pets that the watchers play with, but when they escape, the watchers lose their source of entertainment. Once the humans no longer serve their function as pets, the watchers try to kill them—unlike Mina, who would free her parrot if she knew for certain that she were about to die.

“Nature’s undead things had veiled their course with delusive copycats, tricking them into losing their way.”

Here, the novel’s exploration of doppelgängers is applied to plants. The similarities between plants in the forest cause the humans to go astray, and only by working together do they find the path to the river. Nature’s similarities are not created to attack the humans, but the desperate captives nonetheless find the experience equally disorienting and deceptive in its own way.

“Mina sided with Ciara’s optimism like a stray cat that had finally found a home.”

This passage develops both the symbolism of pets and the theme of gaining strength from found family. Mina metaphorically becomes Ciara’s pet—something for Ciara to care for—and because Ciara is like a sister to her, Mina gains a new sense of equilibrium from this unexpected connection. Being with Ciara offers Mina a form of psychological safety that she cannot get from the cold, calculating Madeline.

“Her window was on the third floor. Only the birds could reach it. But she still felt so vulnerable. Its glass was too thin.”

Being in the coop caused Mina to become used to its huge, thick, mirrored wall, and as a result, she finds regular glass to be flimsy and insecure when she returns to her apartment in Galway. The bird imagery in the passage also indicates that she does not associate her upper-floor apartment with safety, as she recalls the plight of the forest’s birds, which they habitually caught in traps. Thus, Mina remains trapped within the imagery of her former captivity, and her thoughts reveal the impact of trauma on creativity.

“They felt as though they had been stolen from a movie or stage performance; a fictious world populated by actors where only she knew what was real and what wasn’t. She had stepped out from the curtain and seen the monsters that had, all the while, been watching them.”

This quote describes Mina’s memories when she gets to the bus station in Galway. Again, Shines uses theater imagery to introduce a simile that illustrates Mina’s tendency to question even her most mundane memories now that she knows of the existence of the sinister watchers. Thus, the humans who do not know about the existential threat of the fairies are compared to actors in a movie or play, and the watchers are compared to their audience. After Mina’s experience in the forest, she wants no part of this real-life pantomime.

“Mina recognized its every inch. Despite the sketch’s simplicity, she could feel again its cold concrete.”

When Mina looks at Kilmartin’s sketch of the coop, her sense memory of living in that space is immediately triggered. She experiences a tactile sensation merely by looking at a picture, and this visceral response illustrates the impact of trauma on creativity, as merely seeing an art object causes her traumatic memories to resurface.

“It was the skeleton within the cloth that Mina couldn’t imagine.”

This quote develops the symbolism of darkness, for it is Madeline’s unseen body, hidden in the darkness of her blanket, that terrifies Mina. In other words, the horror of this image is in Mina’s imagination, not in what she physically sees of Madeline. In this case, the darkness symbolizes the terror of the unknown, not the terror of seeing.

“The eye still wandered, led by that enduring curiosity to watch the world around her, but those faces that once inspired her hands to sketch only caused them to tremble. Even now, the din of voices gathered like a storm on the street; violent and expanding. She would glance and she would look away, and that was enough for now. But still her fingers itched to hold a pencil again.”

This passage contains another description of the impact of trauma on creativity. Mina now deeply fears crowds, as in addition to being reconditioned by the silence of coop, she is painfully aware that such crowds might hide malevolent watchers. Thus, Shine’s simile comparing the “din of voices” to a storm indicates that Mina associates crowded environments with rising threats. Yet, despite her paranoia that the beings around her are watchers, Mina still has a desire to create art, and her artist’s spirit is not completely broken by the trauma she endured.