The Gaze

Required Blog Prompt:
What are 3 words to describe how you felt when you were reading Darkroom?
Uncomfortable, confused, and at times shocked.

The Gaze

It starts on the cover of Darkroom, those faceless eyes cropped into a thin rectangular frame like Weaver has slid the peephole open in the door of her book and is inspecting the reader before letting he or she in. Perhaps the reader is being screened to make sure they are equipped to handle, “how white people reacted” (7). Or maybe Weaver wants to know if the reader can engage with the crowd of protestors that, “grin at Daddy’s camera as it sweeps form face to face” (9). The gaze reaches off the page on a regular basis, but the gaze that is contained in the rectangular frame (as seen on the cover) is reserved for moments of witness.

The reader discovers on page 68 that these eyes belong to Lila when the same rectangular panel of eyes appears with, “I saw this with my own eyes.” Her eyes stare out from the center of the page and are surrounded by images that are, “the black experience” (68): black maids sitting in backseats segregated waiting rooms, and “a distinct interpretation of respect” (69). (side note: I found her claim of seeing these scenes with her own eyes interesting because a few pages later she gets glasses, which could lead the reader to believe that her “own eyes” are not reliable (72-73)).

The next time Weaver’s eyes appear the left eye is cropped out of the same rectangular frame. I suppose the cropped frame is referencing the way “Ginny’s books and music helped me peek over to the other side” (77). She is “peek(ing)” out of the frame rather than giving us the full gaze, in other words, the peephole is partially shut allowing for just a little look. Again, the eyes here depict the way Lila is struggling to witness “the other side.”

Next, we catch her in a lie. The same rectangle appears along the bottom of 129 and the image of her eyes is zoomed out. Lila is facing the reader but her eyes shift over to the left avoiding our gaze. She is lying about her parents being sick and not able to attend the play. Her leftward gaze leads the reader right off the corner of the page as if urging us to keep moving or change the subject. Applying the gaze to this moment added an element of humanity to Lila’s character, and lets the reader witness her moment of truth…telling the reader that she is telling a lie.

Weaver gives the gaze to Lila’s father during the protest. His gaze is the first thing we see soon after the rioting begins (162). The rectangle appears again and he looks directly at the reader with wide and terrified eyes. He is cropped in a way that alludes to him either looking over his shoulder at something horrible, or turning to run from something. Either way, “My father witnessed the madness,” similar to how Lila “saw this with my own eyes.”

A small rectangular frame on 175 contains the right eye of a black man wearing a hat who is attending Jimmie Lee Jackson’s funeral. Weaver gives us very little of his gaze as if to remind us that he is a small witness. For me, lending the gaze to this man added weight to the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson. Previously, this panel of the gaze was reserved for members of Lila’s family. By lending the gaze to this man it reference the way Lila will align herself with the black characters.

The last gaze we get leaves us with Weaver’s mantra, “the line ‘man’s inhumanity to man,’ which I overheard from Ginny, stuck with me, and I went around applying it to things near and far” (183). The gaze disappears after this point because the story becomes Lila’s and the reader witnesses along with her for the rest of the book.

Margaret Seelie