Everyone Is Watching

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses sexual assault, abusive relationships, violence against children, and gun violence.

“This got Matthew’s attention. Someone could die? How? Why? What was this? Squid Game?”

The reference to Korean drama Squid Game puts Everyone is Watching in conversation with other fictional media that criticize the capitalist ethos of reality television competitions. While Heather Gudenkauf does not quite offer the same critique of capitalism—Maire’s financial woes, in particular, are consistently legitimated—she does, like Squid Game, ask what The Value of Money is in comparison to one’s life or safety.

“Her cystic fibrosis was stable for the moment, but she was fragile. Her last infection required a two-week hospital stay, a PICC line with multiple antibiotic infusions, therapies, and nebulizer treatments.”

Maire’s daughter, Dani, needs ongoing medical care that is both consistent (she always needs care) and variable (sometimes her needs are more intensive care). Similarly, thinking about her daughter’s illness has a dual and contradictory effect on Maire; it keeps her determined to win the competition even as it distracts her. Dani’s illness is thus a way to characterize Maire; Dani herself is absent from much of the text.

“Fern pushed back from the railing and felt a slight wobble of the iron. Fern would have to remind the guests not to lean against the railing and get it fixed as soon as possible.”

Fern’s reference to the wobbly iron railing early in the novel serves as a form of Chekhov’s gun, a trope that dictates that a dangerous object that appears early in a text (such as a gun) must influence the plot later (i.e., the gun should go off). The iron railing almost fulfills this trope: Cat and Ned nearly die when the railing gives way, only to actually fall because Cat pulls them to their deaths.