Eileen

“That car was the one thing in my life that gave me any hope. It was my only means of escape.”

Though Eileen’s car has a broken exhaust pipe, she does not fix it or look to buy a new one. She is attached to the car as it represents her way out of X-ville; she has long planned to run away to New York City and start her life over.

“I didn’t know there were others like me in the world, those who didn’t ‘fit in,’ as people like to put it. Furthermore, as is typical for any isolated, intelligent young person, I thought I was the only one with any consciousness, any awareness of how odd it was to be alive, to be a creature on this strange planet Earth.”

Eileen hates living in X-ville. She considers herself to be fundamentally different than the people she interacts with on a daily basis. These lines also reflect Eileen’s self-obsession and egoism.

“It’s funny how love can leap from one person to another, like a flea.”

While describing her crush on Randy, the narrator foreshadows her infatuation with Rebecca. With Rebecca, Eileen finally receives the attention she has long desired from Randy, allowing her to quickly forget her crush on him.

“My daydreams of fingers and tongues and secret rendezvous in the back hallways of Moorehead kept my heart beating, or else I think I would have dropped dead from boredom. Thus, I lived in perpetual fantasy.”

Eileen occupies herself with daydreams of Randy, her coworker at Moorehead. This coping mechanism is Eileen’s only respite from boredom, depression, and frustration at her life in X-ville. The daydreams also compel her to drive by Randy’s apartment and keep watch outside, hoping that he is not in a relationship. She lacks genuine connection and intimacy with others.

“All I had to offer were my skills as a doormat, a blank wall, someone desperate enough to do anything—just short of murder, let’s say—simply to get someone to like me, let alone love me.”

Though Eileen devotes a lot of time to dreaming about Randy, she does not believe herself worthy of love. These lines reflect Eileen’s poor mental state prior to Rebecca’s arrival and foreshadow the events with Mrs. Polk. They explain the motivation behind Eileen’s actions—she wants to be loved.

“And at the time, I didn’t believe my body was really mine to navigate. I figured that was what men were for.”

Eileen feels disgust for her body. She believes that she lacks control over her sexuality, that it should be a man’s jurisdiction. This quote reflects the novel’s theme of imprisonment, particularly the social and cultural prisons of acceptable femininity.

“It soothed me to think of us together, perhaps reunited after several years which I’d have spent becoming a real woman, his type—whatever that meant—and we’d embrace each other and cry at the sadness of our lost love and separation.”

After Eileen’s car fails in making it to Boston, Eileen returns to X-ville and sits outside Randy’s house, consoling her disappointment with daydreams of them together. Eileen believes that she has to change herself to appeal to men, and that this change is only possible outside of X-ville.

“But I really think I wore her clothes to mask myself, as though if I walked around in such a costume, nobody would really see me.”

Eileen wears her mother’s oversized and outdated clothes exclusively. The narrator says this is an attempt to hide from others. She does not acknowledge the emotional connection she felt for her mother. However, she reveals this emotional connection by describing her mother’s final days alive.

“It’s a romantic story and it may not be accurate at this point since I’ve gone over it again and again for years whenever I’ve felt it necessary or useful to cry.”

The narrator remembers her dog Mona’s death a few days prior to her mother’s, and how much more significant Mona’s loss was to her. The narrator acknowledges that her memory may be influenced by her own emotional needs. The narrator says that Mona’s death is “useful” to her, suggesting that her love for Mona may be inauthentic.

“What is that old saying? A friend is someone who helps hide the body—that was the gist of this new rapport.”

When Eileen first meets Rebecca, Rebecca comments on her preference for small breasts. Eileen has body dysmorphia, and Rebecca’s comment makes Eileen see her as an instant and close friend. Eileen is relieved to have someone to help “hide” her own body.

“Despite the brutal misery of Moorehead, the way I picture the prison that day is less like a prison and more like a children’s nursey.”

During Moorehead’s annual Christmas pageant, the inmates perform the nativity scene. Eileen considers the strangeness of the scene, particularly as the boys are mere children to her. Their presence in a prison is disorientating, and prompts her to question the system.

“But as a young woman in X-ville, I had no idea that other people—men or women—felt things as deeply as I did. I had no compassion for anyone unless his suffering allowed me to indulge in my own.”

The narrator acknowledges that Eileen’s misery and suffering are entirely egotistical; Eileen is unable to connect to others who may also be suffering. After Eileen meets Rebecca, she become more resolute on her plan to leave X-ville, not caring whether the people she leaves behind will suffer from her disappearance.

“Everybody was broken. Everybody suffered. Each of those sad mothers wore some kind of scar—a badge of hurt to attest to the heartbreak that her child, her own flesh and blood, was growing up in a prison. I tried my best to ignore all that.”

During visiting hours at Moorehead, Eileen observes the mothers that visit their sons. Eileen does not allow herself compassion for these mothers. She keeps herself at an emotional distance so that she can perform her job and indulge in her own suffering. This quote reflects her conscious choice to work for and perpetuate a system that she does not agree with, simply because it is the job she is paid to do.

“The night was young and I was beloved. I was someone important at last.”

After spending the evening drinking at O’Hara’s with Rebecca, Eileen is convinced that she has finally found true friendship. Rebecca’s attention has satiated her loneliness and need for approval.

“Still, I like to think that somehow his instincts as a father—his desire to protect me, to keep me alive—kicked in that night, overrode his madness, his selfishness. I prefer to tell myself that story than to believe in luck or coincidences.”

Eileen passes out in her car after driving home drunk from O’Hara’s. She assumes her father took the keys out of the car’s ignition and saved her from carbon monoxide poisoning. The narrator prefers to believe this story rather than find out what actually happened; this allows her to believe her father wasn’t entirely neglectful.

“Perhaps it was to remind me that I had a job to do, that I was, above all, his caretaker, his minder, his prison guard.”

Eileen’s father returns his shoes to her without a fight. Eileen resents her role as her father’s “prison guard.” She continues to fantasize about disappearing from his life. She does not worry about who might take care of him.

“If you’ve been in love, you know this kind of exquisite anticipation, this ecstasy. I was on the brink of something, and I could feel it. I suppose I was in love with Rebecca. She awoke in my heart some long-sleeping dragon. I’ve never felt that fire burning like that again."

The narrator acknowledges that Eileen’s feelings for Rebecca are closer to passionate love than any other the narrator has experienced. Though Rebecca manipulates her, Eileen is lonely enough to overlook this. Her desperate need for attention allows her to love Rebecca without needing assurance of Rebecca’s true intentions.

“I felt I’d walked into a scene from a movie in which someone was going mad, the air heavy with suspense. I tried my best to look natural, smile, to read Rebecca’s stilted cues.”

On Christmas Eve, Eileen is surprised to find that Rebecca has invited her over to a poor and rundown house and is behaving unlike herself. Eileen stays in the house as she desperately wants Rebecca’s friendship, but she becomes increasingly uneasy.

‘’You’re the only one I trust,’ she said. That was all it took to reel me back in. She respected me after all, I chose to believe.”

Rebecca reveals that she has tied up Mrs. Polk in the basement. By appealing to Eileen’s need for friendship, she convinces Eileen to help her get a confession. Eileen is uneasy and does not agree with Rebecca’s actions. Nevertheless, she wants to believe that they are close friends and that only she is able to help Rebecca out of this situation.

“Just what was her motivation for getting involved in the Polk family drama? Did she honestly think she had the power to atone for someone else’s sins, that she could exact justice with her wit, her superior thinking? People born of privilege are sometimes thus confused.”

Eileen does not understand why Rebecca would want to involve herself with the Polk family as she stands to gain nothing other than a feeling of moral superiority. Eileen is self-obsessed; Rebecca’s compassion and sense of moral justice is incomprehensible to her. Eileen draws a distinction between herself and Rebecca: Rebecca’s is privileged and wealthy enough to believe in acts of social justice, whereas Eileen’s poor and abusive upbringing have only enhanced her self-centered worldview.

“’I thought some men were just like that. I never got used to it, but you have to understand. I couldn’t just leave. You take an oath when you get married to honor and obey your husband. That’s what I did. Where was I supposed to go?’”

Mrs. Polk confesses that she aided her husband’s rape of their son. She tells Eileen how conflicted she felt and how she was unable to separate what she perceived to be her marital duties and what was good for Leonard.

“You can think what you want, that I was vicious and conniving, that I was selfish, delusional, so twisted and paranoid that only death and destruction would satisfy me, make me happy. You can say I had a criminal mind, I was pleased only by the suffering of others, what have you.”

After Rebecca shoots Mrs. Polk and gives her Eileen’s sleeping pills, Eileen realizes that her situation could be the catalyst for her long-planned escape from X-ville. The narrator writes in the past tense, separating her current self from the selfish and violent acts that Eileen takes in order to secure her disappearance.

“I wanted to do something great with my life. I wanted so badly to be someone important, to look down on the world from a skyscraper window and squash anyone who ever crossed me like a roach under my shoe.”

In reflecting on her disappearance from X-ville, the narrator acknowledges how badly she wanted to leave an imprint on the people who had always ignored her. Her desire for this was so extreme that she was willing to help punish Mrs. Polk.