Rear Window

“Rear Window” explores personal boundaries and transgression. The story is rooted in murder, the ultimate act of violence, and leads the protagonist and his adversary into a game of cat-and-mouse in which each observes, interprets, and ultimately invades the space of the other. Hal Jeffries breaches ordinary manners and morality by watching people at their most intimate moments without their permission, but this transgression leads to the greater good of identifying and solving a murder.

Jeff watches Lars Thorwald and the rest of his neighbors through his rear window, which provides him with a perspective that is at once remote and intimate. As Jeff is confined to his apartment by an injury, the window serves as a literal boundary that marks his relative distance and isolation. When he later uses a spyglass to look at Thorwald, he remarks, “A face leaped up, and I was really seeing him for the first time. Dark-haired, but unmistakable Scandinavian ancestry” (37). Until this point, Thorwald has been a mere silhouette colored in by Jeff’s imagination. Jeff later reminds the reader of the potential distortions caused by windows: “It was like when you’re looking at someone through a pane of imperfect glass, and a flaw in the glass distorts the symmetry of the reflected image for a second” (44).

At the same time, the window offers Jeff an intrusive view of his neighbors’ private lives. Jeff admits that his prying “could even have been mistaken for the fevered concentration of a Peeping Tom” (15), and he never manages to dispel the reader’s discomfort. More than once, he retreats from the window so as not to be caught spying. When Thorwald looks at Jeff, the narrator says, his eyes “hit dead-center at [Jeff’s] bay window,” striking the main character in his own home (46). The protagonist’s voyeuristic tendencies demonstrate his desire to penetrate and, to some extent, control Thorwald’s world. When he watches the police begin to investigate his tip, he says, “I had a grandstand seat. Or rather a grandstand seat in reverse. I could only see from behind the scenes, but not from the front. I couldn’t watch Boyne go to work. I could only see the results, when and if there were any” (30). Jeff attempts to maintain both distance and control. He doesn’t tell Boyne about his surveillance because he doesn’t want his space to be invaded. One could also infer that Jeff is embarrassed by his spying as is hinted elsewhere. As Jeff’s investigation continues, it turns more active and problematic. He starts to use a spyglass and asks his housekeeper to slip a note underneath Thorwald’s door and then break into his apartment. He also calls Thorwald and threatens him with exposure, threatening him to lure him from his apartment.

Jeff’s attempts to maintain control during his obsessive spiral are futile. When he asks Sam to break in, he instructs him to enter through the window but leave through the front door, saying, “I didn’t want him to connect danger with the back of his place, but with the front—I wanted to keep my own window out of it” (42). Of course, his window does come into it. By involving himself in Thorwald’s life, Jeff invites the man into his. Thorwald reverses the gaze and borrows Jeff’s tactics to confirm his identity, calling him and watching his response.

By involving Boyne in his investigation, Jeff initiates a chain of events that goes on independently of him. Boyne continues to talk to his subordinates and to consider the matter, finally discovering that the Mrs. Thorwald his agents met is not the same woman who lived with her husband in the apartment across from Jeff’s. This leads him to rush over to pick up Thorwald for questioning and thus arrive at Jeff’s apartment just when the murderer tries to kill him. Jeff avidly watches the final moments of Thorwald’s life. He says that he “flung [himself] bodily forward at the window” to watch the show and, after Boyne takes the fatal shot, “blew a clearing through the smoke to watch him go” (52). When Thorwald is dead, he sends Boyne to look under the renovated kitchen floor in the apartment above Thorwald’s. In this instance, the detective physically digs beneath the surface.

The story’s implications are ambiguous. Jeff was right—Thorwald killed his wife. The protagonist’s voyeurism is not just a source of entertainment but also a way of uncovering secrets hidden behind closed doors. Jeff’s extrajudicial investigation imperils him, but the official police inquiry leads to his rescue. “Rear Window” explores the need for privacy and the moral implications of invading privacy in the search for knowledge. Readers may question whether the ends justify the means and what price they are willing to pay for the truth.