The Watchers

Before being imprisoned in the coop, Mina is a habitual people watcher; she sees people as her muses and draws their portraits. However, after being imprisoned and learning about the existence of the watchers, Mina’s people watching takes on a much more serious and survival-tinged tone. Rather than scanning crowds for interesting faces to sketch, she finds herself in a state of hypervigilance, anxiously surveying faces for signs of emotionlessness that might indicate the presence of the sinister watchers. Thus, it is clear that her experience has changed her ability to access her natural artistic creativity, and her personality has been deeply altered as well.

At the beginning of The Watchers, Mina is artistically inspired by the people she sees on the street, and she takes pleasure in sketching strangers with unusual features. As the narrative indicates, “For months Mina had been collecting her strangers, as she called them. She only had to glance at a face to perceive its subtleties, to fasten it to her memory. And her sketchbook was full of them; page after page after rain-speckled, coffee-stained page” (15). Mina likes looking at unfamiliar faces and has an excellent memory of nuances.