Surveillance and Secrecy: How Watching and Withholding Protect Predators in Jackal

In Jackal, Erin E. Adams crafts a small town where everyone watches everyone else, and silence is the most common language. The theme of surveillance and secrecy operates on multiple levels: neighbors spy on one another, families hide uncomfortable truths, and law enforcement actively suppresses evidence to maintain a status quo that protects a cycle of violence against Black girls. The result is a community that polices itself through observation, while official secrets allow predators to remain hidden in plain sight.

The Thematic Claim

The novel argues that surveillance and secrecy are not neutral; they are tools used by those in power to preserve racial hierarchies and class divisions. In Johnstown, being watched means being controlled, and withholding information means colluding with harm. This double-edged dynamic traps residents—especially Black women and girls—in a system where their suffering is both observed and ignored.

Police Secrecy and Evidence Suppression

The Search for Caroline

When Caroline Parker disappears, the police response is marked by deliberate opacity. In Chapter Ten, a search-and-rescue volunteer brings a cadaver dog, but an officer condescendingly dismisses the pit bull, wanting “the German shepherd, not the pit bull.” The volunteer corrects him: her dog Max is a cadaver dog, forcing the officer to admit he had already signaled that the search was no longer a rescue. This brief exchange reveals that the police are withholding the true nature of the search from the family. They know the probability of finding Caroline alive is low, yet they present a facade of hope.

The Story of Ace

Later in the same chapter, Nick shares the story of his father’s dog, Ace. The black Lab bit a toddler, and Nick’s father immediately shot him. Liz sees this as more than a story about a dog: it’s a parable about Mr. Parker’s rigid morality—one that discards anything that cannot be trusted. The secrecy here is the town’s refusal to examine the roots of violence. Mr. Parker’s response is presented as common sense, but Liz recognizes it as a pattern of elimination. What else has he sacrificed to his morality? The question hangs unspoken, connecting the dog’s fate to the missing girls.

Doug and the Suppressed History

Doug Nowak, the forensic technician, studies town history and demography. He knows Johnstown is “fourteen percent African American,” but his knowledge does not translate into action. In the station, Oswald intimidates Liz into giving fingerprints, and Doug plays the good cop. Their partnership—one brutal, one friendly—embodies the duplicity of the system. Later, Doug himself becomes a predator, using the Jackal’s ritual to pursue power. The police force, originally tasked with finding Caroline, includes the very man who will harm her. The ultimate secrecy is the department’s failure to connect the dots across decades.

Community Surveillance

Neighbors Watching

From her mother’s house, Liz spots a car parked deliberately outside. When she moves to close the blinds, the car speeds away. This small moment exemplifies the constant surveillance in Johnstown. Neighbors monitor each other’s comings and goings, but this surveillance does not protect; it imposes social control. Liz’s mother Marie criticizes her appearance, and the community quickly labels anyone who deviates as suspicious.

The Search Party as Performance

When the wedding dissolves into a search party, volunteers flock to the site. Yet the firefighters and police argue about jurisdiction, and the search becomes a spectacle of authority. The real work—listening to the hidden stories of missing girls—is avoided. The mothers of other victims, like Keisha Woodson’s mother, are shunned. Their grief is a secret the town prefers to forget.

Character Connections to Surveillance and Secrecy

Liz Rocher

Liz returns to Johnstown after fourteen years, wearing a wig and a suit as armor. She is hyperaware of being watched, and she keeps secrets about her past trauma in the woods. Her own scar—a remnant of Jack’s bite—is a physical secret she hides. When Jack later speaks inside her, it is a surveillance so intimate that she cannot escape it. Liz’s journey involves learning to see, to stop being merely the object of observation and to become the one who uncovers truth.

Melissa Parker

Mel, Liz’s best friend, has kept secrets from her husband and her parents. She never told Liz about her father Jacob taking Garrett on a hunt that felt like a display of violence. Mel’s denial protects her from seeing her father’s darkness. The secrecy between the two friends—Liz lying by omission about Keisha, Mel hiding the hunt—poisons their trust and isolates them when Caroline goes missing.

Caroline Parker

Caroline, the missing child, later shows Liz a drawing that contains a hidden jackal silhouette. Her art is a coded message, a secret plea for help. After she is rescued, she clings to Liz and asks questions about star navigation—knowledge she learned from Jack. Caroline becomes a keeper of dangerous secrets, one that Liz must decide how to handle.

Symbolic Anchors

The internal links below connect to important symbols that reinforce the theme:

• The Denim Jacket represents Alice’s disappearance and the police’s return of a blood-soaked item without explanation. The jacket is evidence of violence, yet the town dismisses it as a tragic accident.
• The Orange Bandana is worn by Alice before she vanishes. It signals her vulnerability and the predator’s mark. In the present, orange reappears as the color of search vests—a reminder that looking for girls is a performative ritual.
• The Pink Crayon appears in Caroline’s drawings. It is a tool of communication that bypasses adult surveillance. Caroline uses it to reveal the jackal’s silhouette, a secret the town wants to bury.
• The Crown of Stars / North Star guides Liz through the woods and represents navigation through secrecy. Liz uses the stars to map her way out, but she also uses them to understand Jack’s connection to the sky—a predator that has been watching from above.

For further character analysis, see the profiles of Liz Rocher, Melissa Mel Parker, Caroline Parker, Doug Nowak, Chris Hartmann, and Marie Rocher.

Complexity and Contradiction

Surveillance and secrecy are not solely tools of the powerful; they also protect the vulnerable. Liz’s secrecy about her scar keeps her safe from the town’s judgment. Mel’s silence about her father avoids family rupture. Yet this same secrecy enables Doug to operate for years. The novel’s central contradiction is that the Jackal itself—a supernatural predator—thrives because the town has chosen not to see what it has nourished. The Fellow (Doug’s predecessor) and Doug feed hearts to Jack in secret, and the town’s history of racial banishment (detailed in the Author’s Note) shows how institutional secrecy about past violence creates the conditions for present horror.

In the end, Liz confronts Jack and survives, but she does not know if the monster is truly dead. Doug’s followers spray-paint black stars across town, spreading his ritual of hate. The secrets are not erased; they are rebranded. Liz must learn to live with the weight of what she has discovered—and to use her anger not to destroy, but to choose herself. That choice is the first break in the cycle of watching and withholding.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the police handling of the search for Caroline reflect a pattern of secrecy in Johnstown?
   The police initially refuse to call the search a recovery, hiding the fact that the chance of finding Caroline alive is slim. They also bring a cadaver dog without telling the family, and they fail to connect the case to previous disappearances of Black girls. This secrecy serves to protect the department from scrutiny and allows predators like Doug to remain undetected.

2. In what way does the story of Ace the dog serve as a metaphor for the town’s approach to inconvenient truths?
   Ace is killed instantly for a single mistake, just as the town suppresses anyone who threatens its image. Mr. Parker’s black-and-white morality demands elimination of anything that cannot be trusted. This mirrors the town’s treatment of missing Black girls—their disappearances are hidden or blamed on the victims, and the uncomfortable reality is shot dead.

3. How does Liz’s relationship with surveillance change over the course of the novel?
   Initially, Liz feels watched by the town and she hides behind clothing and silence. Her mother critics her appearance; neighbors spy from cars. But as Liz uncovers the truth, she becomes the watcher. She scrutinizes Doug, questions the hunt, and finally confronts Jack. Surveillance shifts from a tool of oppression to a means of survival.

4. What role do the black summer stars spray-painted on Mel’s house play in the theme of secrecy?
   The stars are Doug’s calling card, spread by his followers even after his arrest. They turn a private ritual into public spectacle, but the meaning remains hidden to most. The constellations are a secret code that only Liz and Caroline now understand. The stars symbolize how secrecy mutates into open intimidation while still concealing the truth.

5. Why does the Author’s Note include the 1923 racial banishment and the Johnstown Flood?
   Both events were the result of negligence and then covered up as acts of God or dismissed by legal systems. Adams connects these historical secrets to the contemporary violence in the novel. The town’s refusal to acknowledge its racist past allows the Jackal myth to thrive. Secrecy about history, Adams argues, is the foundation of ongoing harm.