27 pages • 54 minutes read
Cornell WoolrichRear Window
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1942A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Rear Window
The title of the story refers to the rear window of the protagonist’s apartment, through which he views the lives of his neighbors. It also directs readers toward the neighbors’ rear windows, which allow Hal Jeffries visual access to their homes. It’s a heavily loaded symbol that represents isolation, vulnerability, and transgression.
The window is the literal barrier between the protagonist and the people he watches, but it’s also his point of access to their lives. Jeff understands that the people he watches are vulnerable. He even takes measures to prevent others from seeing him in his apartment, retreating into the shadows when Lars Thorwald gazes toward him. When he sends Sam to break into the other man’s apartment, he turns the window into a site of physical transgression, the means of illegal entry.
The object’s position as a “rear window” also matters. People have an expectation of privacy and security from this direction, which Jeff exploits. He continually directs Thorwald to pay attention to his door rather than his window, and when Sam breaks in, Jeff tells him to latch the window behind him and return out the front: “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” (41).
Jeff’s perception that his window could make him equally vulnerable is apt. Thorwald turns the tables on him and uses the windows to figure out his extortioner’s identity.
Crickets
Crickets symbolize death in “Rear Window.” Sam tells Jeff that its chirp is an ill omen, signifying that death is close. Like the murdered body, the crickets are perceived but not seen. They contribute to an ominous, oppressive atmosphere in which something dark hovers just out of reach.
Woolrich uses the noise to characterize the restless nights of Jeff and Thorwald. Their first appearance follows the murder. Jeff is uneasy but has yet to decide that, in the words of the original title, “it had to be murder.” Neither character can sleep, and Jeff observes, “The night brooded down on both of us alike, the curiosity-monger in the bay window, the chain-smoker in the fourth-floor flat, without giving any answer. The only sound was that interminable cricket” (24).
They again appear on the final night of the story. Jeff senses danger but fails to identify it precisely. Meanwhile, Thorwald, who has discovered Jeff’s identity, heads across the courtyard to murder him.
Delayed Action
Jeff repeatedly notices a time lag between an event and its result or between an observation and its conclusion. He names this motif “delayed action,” and it contributes to the suspense of the narrative as Jeff announces dramatic, upcoming discoveries of what has been hidden. These gaps further remind readers of the importance of perspective. The story is limited to what Jeff knows.
Woolrich makes his readers aware of impending actions and realizations, creating a shapeless foreboding in which readers know something is coming but not precisely what. Readers might also worry about the consequences of the delay, which almost proves deadly.
Jeff first uses the term to describe his neighbors who forget to turn off the lights before leaving, almost immediately returning when they remember, but it becomes a way for him to describe the way that rational explanations lag behind intuitive suspicions.
Thorwald’s death is also described as a delayed action, though Jeff doesn’t use that phrase. After being shot, Jeff says, “He took a minute to show anything, standing up there on the parapet. Then he let his gun go, as if to say: ‘I won’t need this anymore.’ Then he went after it” (52). There’s a gap between the shooting and the death.
