The Diamond Eye

Throughout the text, Mila’s clothing reflects her environment, including its social expectations; clothing and appearances are therefore a motif highlighting thematic ideas of gender norms. When, as a girl of 15, she met Alexei, she was “entranced by the music and the laughter and the violet dress swirling about [her] legs” (15), only for the excitement to give way to disillusionment with realities of marriage and motherhood. Years later, when she decides to enlist in the military, Mila is still dressed for the opera, and she is eventually angered by American journalists’ obsession with her appearance, telling one, “I wish you could experience a bombing raid, ma’am. Trust me, you would forget about the cut of your outfit” (279). At the same event, Eleanor Roosevelt’s outfits are practical, not decorative—and this is Mila’s first sign that the two may have something in common.

Both Mila’s rivals and her closest confidants make much of her appearance. Alexei continually focuses on her small stature, calling her kroshka, or “breadcrumb,” to diminish her, just as the American sniper called her “pint-sized” (346). Kostia, in contrast, sees Mila’s beauty and worth no matter what she wears, telling her to bare her scars to the world without shame. Mila’s ability to best the American sniper while wearing a formal gown and fur coat is significant. To best the American sniper, Mila has embraced all sides of her nature, and she takes advantage of the deceptive aspects of appearances as she places her fur coat on a decoy to lure him. Afterward, she reflects that “maybe [she] looked just like another Washington elite hurrying home from a dinner party” (387), but the reality was far different, and deadlier.

Quinn not only introduces the American sniper with his “pocketful of diamonds” but also uses diamonds in figures of speech throughout the work, hinting at their significance for Mila as a character. This motif functions as a kind of foreshadowing that Mila’s key test will somehow involve the jewels. At her first shooting range test, Mila reflects that the bottle shatters into “diamond shards” (30). Lena tells Mila that Lyonya “would be bringing [her] diamonds if he had ‘em” (190), while Kostia customizes a rifle for her so that it is “polished to a diamond gleam” (205). Jewelry is both a gift between couples and a mark of favor—Mila can make her own diamonds with her shooting skills, but those who love her also bring (or long to bring) gifts that shine. Eleanor Roosevelt, seeing all sides of Mila, says that she has “an eye like a diamond but a heart for friendship” (375).

The metaphor becomes more literal, and a matter of life and death, in the escalating contest between Mila and the anonymous American sniper. The sniper gives Mila diamonds he took from another woman he murdered, imagining that Mila’s fear will be the same. Mila also uses diamonds, both literal and figurative, to save herself and those she loves. She uses the diamonds that the sniper gave to her, weaponizing them as she puts them on a dummy so that her adversary will assume she is “unaware that the diamonds were catching the moonlight” (391). She then uses the remainder of the diamonds to save Kostia’s life, underlining that the real key to her power is not her lust for death but her dedication to safeguarding those she loves.