The Eye Roll

I was reading to my grandchild the other day and in Where the Wild Things Are I came across the wild things “roared their terrible roars and rolled their terrible eyes.” That was striking because I just assumed that the eye roll is popularized by a moody teenager who was told something by their clueless dad. The teen’s eye roll is dismissive or disrespectful. But adults also can use the eye roll for the same things. A, too often told story, can prompt the eye roll that silently and sarcastically says, “Here we go again.” 

The eye roll is usually not for the “offending party.” Rather, it is to show the audience that the listener is not amused. Instead of verbally stating the displeasure a silent eye roll gets the point across. But according to Decoder Ring (an interesting podcast) there is a history to the eye roll and not the modern invention I thought it was. They cite (and the internet confirms, when have they ever been wrong?) that the eye roll has origins as early as John Milton’s Paradise Lost in which it is a physical expression. A character, filled with lust, starts to “troll the tongue and roll the eyes.” A response to intense emotion. 

At the Battle of Bunker Hill, the orders were “don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.” Not an eye roll of disdain, but one of proximity. On TV, mostly sitcoms, an eye roll is played for comedic effect. But comedians Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin would sometimes roll their eyes when a beautiful woman entered the scene as a show of desire. 

The history of the eye roll is more than what meets the eye.