D's Homemade Periscope

D's Homemade Periscope turns looking into a physical instrument: a boy who hopes to become stronger builds a device that lets him see from concealment, and gradually mistakes its mediated view for protection from the world. Its first use seems to confirm that promise. When D tries to use it to spy on a neighboring teacher, however, the instrument cannot establish the angle he needs; the attempt ends with his discovery rather than the view he sought. The periscope thus links the novel’s fascination with vision to a reversal in which the watcher becomes visible.

Construction and First Test

D builds the periscope from plywood, cardboard, and mirrors. Two parallel mirrors, each set at a forty-five-degree angle at opposite ends of a tube, redirect his line of sight so that he can look from one end while the other reaches beyond an obstacle. Paper hinges and a cord let him adjust the upper mirror’s angle. The device is homemade and adjustable, but its usefulness depends on careful positioning: the view must travel through a narrow, hand-controlled arrangement rather than arriving directly.

For its first test, D takes it to a narrow blind space between an apartment fence and a shed, a place he remembers from childhood games of hide-and-seek. From there he cautiously raises the upper end over the fence toward a sloping street. The position appears favorable: pedestrians are lower than the wall, and few look above eye level. Yet the first view unsettles him. The street seems to look back with reproach, and he ducks; the periscope’s tip hits the fence and breaks off. D repairs it with cellophane tape, a practical fix that allows the experiment to continue but also makes the device’s fragility unmistakable.

The second attempt changes D’s relation to the view. He keeps watching despite the pressure he feels from the scene, then recognizes that there is no reason to fear that someone will look back at him. His guilt falls away, and the reflected street appears to change with it: hostility seems absent, the scene’s roughness softened. D experiences this not simply as a clearer image but as a shift in his relation to the world. He imagines a peace between himself and the scene, and, encouraged, moves about while looking through the instrument. The periscope’s first apparent success is therefore partly optical and partly psychological: it gives D a position from which he feels the world has become welcoming.

From Confidence to Surveillance

D’s confidence grows beyond the original experiment. Having looked at the street from several places, he trusts his ability to manage the instrument and begins to plan a more private use. A neighboring cottage, associated with a gymnastics instructor who sometimes practices piano there, stands close to the fence. D has noticed the sounds around it and has secretly surveyed possible sightlines. He considers a low opening used for sweeping dust and, if it is closed, a higher vent with an insect screen; the fan has been removed. He prefers a view from below.

The periscope lets D imagine that concealment might make his conduct acceptable, or even create an unspoken understanding with the person being watched. Yet this imagined protection rests on an assumption: that he can control what is seen and remain outside the scene himself. He times his attempt around the teacher’s piano practice and his mother’s trip out. After confirming that the practice has reached its familiar final piece, he takes the periscope into the garden. From that side, it will not reach the small window. Rather than abandon the plan, he judges that crossing the fence will make him less likely to be challenged.

The Failed View

D slips beneath the board fence into a damp passage scarcely two feet wide between the building and the fence. The dust opening is ajar by about two inches, enough to attempt a view with the periscope held horizontally. He sees the toilet bowl, which is blue rather than the white he expected, along with white floor tiles, silver-painted sandals, and walls printed to resemble wood. But these fragments do not add up to the view he needs. As he adjusts the mirrors, the image shifts from side to side, and he cannot find the necessary angle.

The failure is more than a technical inconvenience. The device that had seemed to grant D confident access to the street cannot give him command of this tightly constrained view. While he tries to correct the instrument, a voice from inside directs him to go around to the entrance and tells him not to run away. D cannot see who has noticed him or how he was seen. He follows the instruction, carrying the periscope, which has proved useless for the purpose he chose. Inside the cottage, the teacher appears after he enters. The effort to observe without being observed has instead brought D into her presence.

Seeing, Concealment, and Exposure

The periscope’s changing fortunes echo other viewing devices in the novel without making them interchangeable. The Box Man’s observation window is carefully designed to limit what others can see: a slit in a hanging vinyl curtain stays screened while the box is upright and opens when it tilts. That aperture is also described as a means of expression and self-defense. By contrast, D’s periscope extends his sight beyond a barrier, but it cannot guarantee that he will remain unseen or control what the other person perceives.

Elsewhere, the Box Man Narrator uses a car’s rearview mirror to look through a high window into a clinic room. That improvised method likewise makes vision dependent on an angle and a reflective surface. Across these scenes, looking is never simply possession of an image. The box slit regulates visibility, the mirror redirects it, and D’s periscope both enables and frustrates it. Its distinctive turn is the collapse of D’s imagined safety: after the street seemed to return his gaze without hostility, the failed attempt at private observation makes the possibility of being seen impossible to dismiss.