63 pages • 2-hour read
Do Not Disturb
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Themes
The Psychological Impact of Trauma and Abuse
As a psychological thriller, Do Not Disturb emphasizes the thoughts and feelings of the characters, focusing more on their psyches than the events of the story. While the present narrative only covers a few days, McFadden uses a shifting first-person perspective to explore the histories of her characters. In particular, Quinn, Claudia, and Rosalie experience extreme trauma and/or abuse, then struggle throughout the text to grapple with its ongoing impact on their lives.
One way that the lasting effects of trauma appears is through the motif of dreams. Both Claudia and Quinn experience nightmares after Derek’s death, conveying how their psyches continue to struggle with it. For Claudia, she dreams of Quinn, repeatedly waking up after remembering their childhood. While this initially seems as though she is worried about her, the reality is that she is suffering from the loss of the man she loves and is haunted by the woman who killed him. For Quinn, she repeatedly dreams of her different dates with Derek, each time waking up when he begins to bleed from his chest. These moments convey the complexity of the abuse she suffers. Even after she kills him, he still haunts her, while she struggles with the guilt of what she did—even though it was in self-defense.
Additionally, Quinn’s fears—and her need to run—convey just how psychologically impacted she is by the abuse that she has endured. As she flees in her car after killing Derek, she contemplates calling Claudia, then reconsiders, noting that, “She doesn’t know the extent of the connections Derek’s family has. And even though she doesn’t like Derek, she doesn’t really understand quite how bad he is” (23). This quote conveys several important aspects of abuse. First, it shows the power that Derek has in their relationship due to his money and his familial connections. Second, it shows the lengths that Quinn went to hide the abuse, refusing to tell even her sister out of fear of repercussions from Derek. Finally, it shows Quinn’s fears that no one will understand her situation, believing that it is too complex to explain what she has been through. These thoughts convey the very real impact of spousal abuse, as well as the fears that surround revealing that abuse to others.
The trauma that Rosalie experiences, both her miscarriage and her diagnosis, deeply impact her ability to move forward with her life. For years, she is overwhelmed by the ways that her life has changed. Rosalie experiences suicidal ideation and becomes obsessed with watching Nick and the motel. She convinces herself both that he is cheating on her and that he would be better off without her. Just moments before she is attacked by Claudia, she decides to let Nick go, thinking, “Do I still love him? Of course I do. He’s the only man I ever loved. The only man I ever will love. But he has a chance to be happy again. I don’t” (258). These thoughts portray the depth of the trauma that Rosalie has experienced. Instead of turning to Nick for love and support, she instead decides that her situation is helpless, wishing instead for Nick to move on without her.
All three of these women thus experience trauma that deeply affects their ability to move forward with their lives. They are haunted by nightmares, overwhelmed with grief and guilt, and struggle to reconcile their lives after the traumas they experience. McFadden emphasizes the psychological impact that trauma has on people, only allowing Rosalie and Quinn to find relief after confronting what they have been through—and surviving.
The Dangers of Jealousy
McFadden explores the dangers of jealousy through the characters of Rosalie and Claudia. While they represent extreme examples, with one falling into deep depression and the other attempting murder, they nonetheless point to the danger of jealousy and resentment when such emotions are not properly addressed.
Although Claudia initially seems like a caring and supportive sister, she actually holds years of jealousy and resentment toward Quinn. After the death of their parents, Claudia dropped out of college to care for Quinn. As a result, she believes that every aspect of her life—her job, her house, her income, and even her husband—is directly tied to this event from years ago. She thinks, “Whenever I would see Quinn with Derek, I would think of the guy I got stuck with—the balding plumber—and feel a surge of jealousy. Why did her life have to work out so well and mine so badly?” (283). By extension, she holds Quinn directly responsible, constantly comparing her life to Quinn’s and thinking how “she didn’t even appreciate” (281) anything in her life.
Claudia is so consumed by jealousy that she starts an affair with Derek and tries to convince him to leave Quinn. Once he dies, her resentment deepens, as she refuses to acknowledge Derek’s culpability and instead entirely blames Quinn for his death. Claudia’s jealousy also leaves her unable or unwilling to see that Quinn’s life was actually far from perfect due to Derek’s abusive behavior, while also driving Claudia to destroy her own chances at happiness by undermining her marriage to Rob. In these ways, Claudia’s jealousy becomes self-destructive as well as a danger to others.
Similarly, a primary component of Rosalie’s narrative is her obsession with watching Nick with different women at the hotel. She spends hours in front of her window, even begging Greta for a pair of binoculars. These binoculars symbolize her distorted view of the outside. Feeling as though she is stuck in the room—and, by extension, “stuck” due to her illness—she becomes fixated on watching the world from a distance, rather than becoming actively involved in it. She repeatedly rebuffs Nick’s attempts to try to get her to move downstairs, start at the restaurant again, or do physical therapy, instead becoming bitter about her situation. As a result, as Nick finds happiness with Christina, she becomes jealous and resentful. Rosalie begins contemplating death by suicide or breaking up with Nick so he can be with the women she sees as better than herself.
Ultimately, Rosalie finds redemption in the novel. After she nearly dies at Claudia’s hands, she reconsiders her life, recognizing that she has more life to live. She overcomes her jealousy, instead recognizing the value in herself. At the novel’s conclusion, she has begun to make attempts to better her own life, not allowing herself to fixate on jealousy over what she lacks. By contrast, Claudia never learns to overcome her jealousy, destroying her life for good and landing herself in prison.
Appearance Versus Reality
McFadden uses a shifting first-person point of view in Do Not Disturb to explore the ways that people hide their true identities and motives. She emphasizes that people have two versions of themselves: The one they show to others, and the one they truly are underneath. The novel thus explores the tensions between appearance and reality.
Claudia’s role as an unreliable narrator embodies how appearances can be deceiving. Throughout her first point of view section, she expresses her distress over Quinn running from the police, insisting that she needs to find her before they do. She lies to Scott and secretly retrieves Quinn’s phone, both of which imply that she is protecting Quinn’s whereabouts. However, when she opens her second point of view section, she immediately admits to “hating” her sister. When reexamined, the desperation she feels to find Quinn is only because of her devastation at the loss of Derek, as she actually wants to kill Quinn. She has been cheating on her husband for months, with the intention of leaving him for Derek. Claudia thus presents an outward façade that disguises the dangerous, manipulative person she is underneath.
Sometimes a character’s behavior can also be misleading, appearing one way when the truth is something else. The most significant example of this is when Rosalie fears that Nick was Christina’s murderer, due to what he appears to have done on the night of her death: Took something to the dumpster in the middle of the night, and spent several minutes washing his hands upon his return. In light of what she has witnessed, Nick appears to be a suspect, even though he is actually innocent. By contrast, Derek is a man who appears charming and seductive on the surface, while behaving abusively in private. One of the reasons why Quinn is so afraid of turning herself in after killing him is because she fears no one will believe her when she exposes his abuse—Derek has done such a good job of pretending to be someone he isn’t that she worries that how he has appeared will continue to obscure what he was really like.
By the end of the novel, the reality behind appearances is finally revealed to all of the characters. Claudia’s violent hatred and jealousy lead to her arrest, while Quinn admits to killing Derek but explains why she had to act in self-defense, finally sharing the ugly truth about her marriage. Nick, meanwhile, is fully exonerated, enabling him and Rosalie to reconcile and begin their life together anew, full of trust in one another.
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