What She Knew

A negative image of the media runs as a recurring motif throughout What She Knew. It provides a chorus of contradictory voices that bedevil Rachel during her search for her son. Rachel’s encounter with the press during her public statement depicts news people as rabid dogs running down prey, and depicts her exhaustion from the hunt. She is “[not] appealing prey, a wide-eyed antelope, say, tottering on spindly legs, but prey that’s been well hunted, run ragged, and is near the end” (4).

The image of the press as baying hounds persists when the media makes camp outside her home. Rachel and her family can’t make a move out of doors without being chased by reporters. The version of events that is reported in the papers is skewed toward sensationalism.

I was their target because I was socially unacceptable, and so they did everything they legally could: they publicly lanced me with words which were written, examined, and edited, each process carefully honing them in a calculated effort to push people’s buttons once they were published (325).

Pushing people’s buttons has dangerous consequences when Rachel and her family become the object of neighborhood vandalism and violence. The newspapers also act as the catalyst for a vicious blog attack directed at Rachel as the potential murderer.