59 pages • 1 hour read
Dennis LehaneMystic River
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Mystic River
Throughout most of the novel, the Mystic River is an obscure entity only briefly mentioned. It is first alluded to by Jimmy: “[H]e tried to ignore images from that night by the Mystic River—the guy on his knees, saliva dripping down his chin, the screech of his begging” (96). This anchors the significance of the river in Jimmy’s past, suggesting that the connection he has to it is sinister. As the story unfolds, it becomes increasingly clearer that the river works to symbolize Jimmy’s violent past—and perhaps even his future. When he dreams of it, Jimmy has the feeling of “Just Ray Harris and the Mystic River knocking at his door” (298). The novel positions the Mystic River as cosmically linking Jimmy, Katie, and Just Ray through fate. This proves to be exactly right when the Mystic River is revealed as a metaphor for karma; Jimmy’s murder of Just Ray Harris in the river is poetically avenged when Just Ray’s son murders Katie.
However, if the river is a metaphor of karma, then Jimmy’s murder of Dave must have its own cosmic consequences. Though the novel ends without justice being achieved, the possibility of the scales being rebalanced against Jimmy are alluded to: Jimmy claims to have had his sins washed clean by Dave’s murder, but after the deed, he “plunged his hands into the river, oily and polluted as it was” (368). The river, associated with corruption through its description of pollution, cannot wash Jimmy’s sins away and stains him instead.
Silence
As a motif, silence illustrates the characters’ failure to communicate. Silence first becomes prominent when, on the day that Dave is abducted, Jimmy shows up unusually quiet and moody that day, leading to a fight between the three. Then, as Dave is being abducted, neither Jimmy nor Sean say anything to help their friend. Their silence on that day weighs heavily on both boys for the rest of their lives.
The greatest representation of silence in the novel is Silent Ray Harris, Brendan’s younger mute brother. Jimmy has always been unsettled by Ray, finding the “blankness living in his face like an act of defiance” (73). This blankness becomes more disconcerting as the novel progresses; Silent Ray appears apathetic to his brother Brendan’s grief and remorseless when it is revealed that Silent Ray helped kill Katie. Silent Ray represents the failure of communication and its effects; killing Katie wasn’t planned; they worried she would tell on them for having a gun, so they ensured her silence. Moreover, Silent Ray’s access to communication is limited because only Brendan is shown to understand sign language. Ironically, though, the only person he can communicate with is the last person he could tell. Symbolically, it is silence that kills Katie.
Lehane also emphasizes the effects of silence through Sean’s relationship to his dad: “His father was a man of silences and half-sentences that trailed off into nothing, and Sean had spent most of his life interpreting those silences, filling in the blanks left in the wake of those ellipses” (271). Here, the novel touches upon the very issue with choosing silence over open communication: It causes us to make assumptions, fill in the blanks with very limited information, and has the potential to be permanently destructive.
Old MacDonald
In the novel, the song “Old MacDonald” conveys the repression and neglect Dave suffered by the adults in his life when he needed help in healing from his traumatic event. When Dave returns home, he begins asking his mother questions about why his captors took him and why they did what they did to him, but she ignores him and hums “Old MacDonald.” From this interaction, Dave gathers that his trauma is to be ignored—that other people are afraid of or disgusted by it. He internalized that he must repress his pain and pretend to be happy. The song itself symbolizes this lesson: “Old MacDonald had a farm. And everything was hunky-dory on it […] no one needed to talk about anything, because nothing bad ever happened” (111). The song also connotes how isolating trauma can be; Dave’s suffering is increased because he is made to feel that his abduction separates him from his peers and that he is not allowed to talk about it. This is doubly traumatizing and causes Dave to apply this lesson to future relationships. Ultimately, “Old MacDonald” symbolizes the comfort that Dave was denied.
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By Dennis Lehane
