59 pages • 1 hour read
Mystic River
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Sean Devine
Sean grew up in the Point, the slightly wealthier working-class neighborhood of the Boston suburb. Even from a young age, he can detect this difference between him and his friends, Jimmy and Dave: “he could feel the weight of the street, its homes, the entire Point and its expectations for him. He was not a kid who stole cars. He was a kid who’d go to college someday” (10). He was the type of child who knew opportunities awaited him, and that knowledge causes him to move through life with ease and certainty. As he grows into adulthood, this quality comes across as entitlement: “Jimmy could still see that thing in [Sean’s] face he’d always hated, the look of a guy the world always worked for” (119).
Sean’s childhood desire to do good and make something of himself is fulfilled in his decision to become a detective, but the job turns him into a misanthrope. After seeing the worst of humanity on a daily basis, Sean becomes “hard, intractable, reductive in his thinking” (187). His hope to protect the world becomes a cold “contempt for people [and] an inability to believe in higher motives and altruism” (186).
The imprints of childhood friendship and trauma manifest differently in Sean than they do for Jimmy or Dave; the effect of witnessing his friend’s abduction and being ineffectual in preventing it marks Sean with a need to protect and enforce the law. Of everyone in the novel, Sean is the most patient with Dave; he gives him the benefit of the doubt and, though he doesn’t attempt to nurture their former friendship, he is at least kind to his old friend. However, Sean’s friendship with Dave is only used when convenient; when Whitey is concerned that his history with Dave will compromise the investigation, Sean insists that they are not friends. However, when Jimmy kills Dave, Sean responds with: “You killed Dave […] Our friend” (379). No matter what Sean’s relationship was to Dave at the end of Dave’s life, he knows that he didn’t deserve to die. Sean’s vow to achieve justice for Dave is less about avenging the death of his childhood friend and more about seeing the wrongs of the world righted.
Jimmy Marcus
Jimmy is was raised in the Flats by his temperamental father and his silent mother. As a child, he is reckless and exciting; he made the other boys feel like “[a]nything could happen when you were with Jimmy” (5). He was prone to moodiness, the sort that would place him on edge, “as if he’d pop with the prick of a pin” (8). After Dave’s abduction, Jimmy stops spending time with Dave and Sean and begins hanging out with a more dangerous crowd. He steals a car, gets expelled, and enters a period of his life that revolves around crime. At the age of 17, he begins running his own crew and pulls off several successful robberies. Eventually, though, a member of his crew—Just Ray Harris—gives Jimmy up to avoid a tougher sentence. Jimmy, then 18, married and with an infant daughter, spends a short time in jail. While there, his wife, Marita, is diagnosed with and succumbs to skin cancer. Jimmy gets out a few months after her death and resolves to leave crime behind for the sake of his daughter, Katie. However he commits one more: the murder of Just Ray Harris.
After jail, Jimmy buys a corner store, remarries, and has two more daughters. All of the energy he once put into committing petty crimes is now directed into being a loving husband and committed father. His authority in the community, though, never quite fades: The “aura of command Jimmy possessed was of an effortless sort” (194). He is “quiet and serious”; “he was friendly, but in a reserved way [and] was the kind of guy, when he said something, you listened” (199). Instinctually, people respect and look to Jimmy because he is such an integral part of their community. Everything changes, though, when Katie is brutally murdered. Amidst his grief, Jimmy finds comfort in his rage; it motivates him to dedicate his life to avenging his daughter’s murder.
Like Sean, Jimmy is haunted by Dave’s abduction; when Katie dies, he can’t help but feel that it has everything to do with him not getting into the car too. Similarly, when he believes Dave killed Katie, he wonders if Dave has done it to punish him. At the close of the novel, Jimmy’s sense of pride for the Flats is intensified, and his desire to protect it is reawakened. To Jimmy, the Flats defined his childhood, not his friendship to Sean and Dave. Jimmy’s sense of morality is individualistic. In honoring only his loyalty to his loved ones and neighborhood, Jimmy rationalizes doing just about anything to protect them. In this way, Jimmy can also serve as an antagonist, particularly in his decision to kill Dave. He is sympathetic in his profound grief and unrelenting love for his family, but these are the very things which lead to his most destructive actions. The novel uses Jimmy’s character to question the attainability of justice by letting him get away with two murders without feeling guilty.
Dave Boyle
Dave functions as the greatest red-herring within the search for Katie’s murderer. Like Jimmy, he is raised and remains in the Flats for his entire life. As a child, Dave is described as “a kid with girl’s wrists and weak eyes who was always telling jokes he’d learned from his uncles” (3). He is only a marginal friend of Jimmy and Sean’s; he finds himself in their company only because he made a point to follow them around. At 11 years old, he is abducted while playing with Sean and Jimmy. When he returns four days later, he is irrevocably traumatized, but his suffering is neglected by everyone in his life. After his abduction, he is isolated; Jimmy and Sean distance themselves, his mother is unwilling to discuss what he’s been through, and the rest of the community avoids or outright disdains him. Because he is not equipped with nor given the support to deal with his childhood trauma, Dave copes through dissociation; he imagines that the abduction and molestation happened to the Boy he was, and the Boy was left in the woods. As the narrative unfolds, though, Dave’s consciousness begins to yield to the Boy’s violent desires.
As an adult, Dave fails to make meaningful connections within the neighborhood. He is perceived as strange, which further alienates him and makes him more vulnerable to suspicion. Finally, when he snaps from the psychological torture of his trauma, he becomes frightening and evasive. Others begin to detect the darkness with him but misinterpret its source; rather than recognizing Dave as a man continuing to grapple with trauma, the community vilifies him, ultimately causing his murder.
Dave, like Jimmy, is a complicated character. He is tragic and deserving of sympathy, but his pedophilic fantasies are too unsettling to overlook. Overall, Dave is a victim threefold; first, through his molestation; second, through others’ neglect to properly treat him for trauma; and third, for what he suffered throughout his life simply because of the stigma of being a survivor of molestation. Because he is deeply troubled—and his turmoil manifests through violence and rage—he makes an easy red-herring. However, the novel makes a study of biases by allowing the characters—and perhaps even, the reader—to willingly accept Dave as the murderer. Through Dave, Lehane critiques the treatment of survivors while examining the far-reaching consequences of individual actions and considering how trauma touches an entire community.
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By Dennis Lehane
