Aaron Pharr
12/23/23
Devil in a Blue Dress and the subsequent sequels popularized Easy Rawlins as an LA private detective in American literature. In Walter Mosley’s prequel novel, Gone Fishin’, the reader experiences Easy’s journey in the swamps of Pariah, Texas as a nineteen-year-old. What results is a nightmarish coming-of-age story intertwined with spirituality and racism. Gone Fishin’ paints a gothic image of America and illuminates a young boy’s entrance into manhood, showing that much of one’s soul can be lost but one’s humanity will endure.
The novel is centered around two contrasting characters and friends, Easy and Mouse. Mouse is bolder, more charming, impulsive, and violent to an unsettling degree, while Easy is more reserved and thoughtful. They are both young black men living in Texas in 1939. Easy needs money, and Mouse offers to pay him for help with a road trip in order to confront his evil stepfather. What ensues is an encounter with a bayou “witch” and a trail of destruction that makes Easy question his faith.
In the scene invoking the titular fishing, Mouse wades into the swamp. Easy watches with fascination, writing, “Mouse looked like a big man, bigger than life, out in that water. He was taller than the trees, and the only thing that stood out from the pond.” (Pg. 92) This imagery invokes Mouse as a monument in Easy’s mind. Everything he embodies is larger than life, always making Easy feel small and boyish in comparison. The alliteration and comparison to the trees dwarf the world in Mouse’s presence, while the image of him in the water sets up a religious connotation.
Their friend, Domaque, whispers his own version of the Genesis story as Mouse stands before Easy in the water: “In the beginnin’ God made the heavens an’ the lands. And there was darkness in the land and the face of God was on the water. And God went beyond the waters and he called that heaven…” (pg. 92) The parallel positioning of the dialogue and imagery intentionally positions Mouse as a divine figure. It directly invokes symbolism and compares Easy’s best friend to God. The reverence one might have for God, a mixture of admiration and fear, is the reverence that Easy has for Mouse. Easy yearns for Mouse’s confidence and ease-of-ability through life, yet is horrified as Mouse slaughters the fish in the water.
This establishment of Easy’s wonder and trepidation is essential to the narrative arc. Easy is an observer in Mouse’s story. As the narrator, he does not push the story forward as much as he watches it happen, much to his dismay. Mouse brought them to Pariah so he could seek revenge on Reese, his stepfather. Reese abused Mouse and his mother and has dowry money that the young man claims ownership to.
Easy later watches Mouse confront Reese: “You is the devil! The devil, you hear?” (pg. 106) The explicit connotation of ‘the devil’ is a continuation of Mosley’s extended metaphor and focus on Mouse as being godlike. Satan, or the devil, is the pinnacle figure positioned against God, just as Reese is positioned as the arch nemesis of Mouse’s existence.
The confrontation escalates when Mouse aims his gun at Reese’s pets, “and blasted that poor shivering dog. Then he shot the other three: crack, crack, crack; like ducks in an arcade.” (pg. 109) It all happens so fast, marked by onomatopoeia and a simile, which highlights the ease with which Mouse can kill. Easy is horrified, understanding that if Mouse is godlike, then he is powerful and capable of delivering swift death. The imagery of Reese’s dog dying is poignant and haunts Easy for the rest of the novel. He begins to become mentally and physically sick, plagued with visions of his childhood as a fever sets in from the swamp.
Through his sickness, Easy takes refuge in the mansion of Miss Dixon, an old white woman who is a remnant of the slavery and sharecropping era.
Miss Dixon feels his fever, resulting in an ominous description from Easy: “She could’ve been made from solid bone from the way her hard hand felt against my forehead.” (pg. 112) The diction of “bone”draws immediate, intentional connections to death in the same way “skeleton” was used to describe Miss Emily Grierson’s body in William Faulkner’s short story, A Rose for Emily. Both women occupy a similar role in American literature: they are a relic of the South, living alone in a house positioned above the townspeople and on the verge of death by the 1930s.
Similarly to how Miss Emily was a “monument” to her town in Mississippi, Easy reflects in Texas that “Miss Dixon was our sacred cow.” (pg. 120) The allusion to Hinduism is direct, intentionally making Miss Dixon divine, and Mosley’s spiritual focus continues: “She was white and being white was like another step to heaven… Killing her, or even thinking of it, would be like killing the only dream we ever had.” (pg. 120) Like with Mouse in the water, heaven is mentioned again. Easy is focused on heaven because he is so close to death, literally with his fever and symbolically through Miss Dixon’s bone-like hand and her wealth built on slavery, not to mention Mouse’s uncontrollable rampage.
During his stay in her house, an allusion to the Book of Ezekiel continues the spiritual symbolism that permeates the novel. Miss Dixon says, “Reading is one of the few things that separates us from the animals, Ezekiel. You’d know all about the man they named you for if you could read.” (pg. 116) In Christian theology, Ezekiel was a prophet whose story outlines being in the presence of God. While Easy’s birth name is mentioned throughout Mosley’s mystery novels, it never has as much weight as it does in Gone Fishin’ when the entire story basks in the awe-inspiring and awful presence of a godlike Mouse.
An essential question often posed by theology is whether God can be all good if he is all powerful. In the aftermath of Mouse’s brutality, it appears that God is powerful but not good. Mouse killed the dogs without hesitation; Miss Dixon’s family had enslaved all of the black people in the area in the 1800s; Easy’s father was only a memory.
Easy reflects on the triviality of his later World War II experience, emphasizing his fever in Pariah and how “I never felt so close to death as when I saw those dogs die.” The weight of the memory and visions of the past collide as he says, “I wanted my father again… I wanted him to come back and protect me from death.” (pg. 128)
His father had stood up to a racist boss, leaving Easy as a child because authorities sought revenge. While never capitalized in the theological way God would be written as Father, Easy’s father arguably fills a third depiction of divinity in Gone Fishin’. He was a man who was all good, but not all powerful. He could read and write, and he encouraged Easy to do the same.
In many texts, such as John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, there is a focus on God as creation. If humans write or read something that someone else wrote, then they are engaging in a godlike art of creation. I believe it is the culmination of these ideas and the search for spirituality in the face of death that wakes Easy up to the powerful realization:
“That’s when I decided to learn how to read and write.” (pg 128) This emotionally intense passage highlights literacy as a choice – that engaging with literature can be a personal journey equivalent to spiritual enlightening. This passage marks a beginning in Easy’s consciousness where it is clear he will not choose the path that Mouse took and needlessly kill to exercise his power in the world.
The infinite hole in Easy’s heart deepens through his dreams, nightmares, and memories. “My father had picked me up into his arms and he was running fast. You could see the fear in his face, and that fear is what I remembered the most. A scared little colored man with his child in his arms; the world shaking up and down like it was about to break apart and we were panting like dogs on the run.” (pg. 156) The word choice of dogs by Mosley draws immediate and sharp comparisons to the vivid deaths of Reese’s dogs at the hands of Mouse. The same quick and aimless murder could and would happen to Easy, his father, and his community solely because of the color of their skin.
This racist violence and the violent Mouse engulf the narrative. Mouse is not just God, but he is Death. Easy is a witness to Mouse murdering Reese. He is a complacent accomplice in Mouse’s revenge. Despite not lifting a finger, his guilt comes out in the acknowledgement that: “I was part of the murder of a man’s father.” (pg. 184) The loss of his own father weighed heavily on his soul, and the direct death of someone else’s father empties it completely. This notion of the father has spiritual connotations and rises above other, darker images of divinity. Easy reflects, “I had the image that we were all, all of us in Houston and Pariah, living between Miss Dixon and Mouse. It was a deadly line we had to walk and the only thing that kept us going was some kind of faith. (pg. 194)
If Mouse and Miss Dixon are the opposite extremes of power and human divinity, then familial connection and the father, only a capital letter away from the Christian Father, are what would ground a man the most in this world. Easy continues his reflection with, “Either you believed in God or family or love. I didn’t believe in any of those things anymore.” (pg. 194) Easy’s relationship with his faith deteriorated based on his interactions with Mouse as a barbaric murderer, Miss Dixon as a racist monument, and the constant memory of his father’s absence.
While many readers may be interested in Mosley crafting a story out of Easy Rawlins’ WWII experiences, it seems apparent after Gone Fishin’ that no such novel is necessary. Easy could care less for his role in the white man’s war. He reflects that if his own future son asks, “I’ll tell him about the time I had in Pariah. I’ll tell him that was my real war.” (pg. 198) This marks the novel as incredibly foundational for his character and invokes an indifference in the politics of white America. Easy’s emergence out of adolescence into becoming a black man is characterized as war. He was metaphorically fighting against his friend, his faith, and the loss of his father, losing “what a religious man would call his soul.” (pg. 191)
The novel concludes with Easy in Paris at the end of the war. He hopes that Mouse and his violence are dead by now, as how could such a man endure? In contrast to his friend and enemy, Easy Rawlins is a man who endures. Despite the literal and metaphorical war, he returns to America. The final line reads, “All I could do is follow my footsteps, not at all like my father, and go back home.” (pg. 199)
The final reference to his father is poignant because he ran away from home under the threat of racism. Easy is aware of the threats and the fine line between Mouse and Miss Dixon awaiting him, yet he acknowledges that there is only one way forward. He takes ownership of Texas, calling it home. The subtle possibility and hope of having his own son is the beginning of a restoration of his faith, as there can be a world where Easy is a father. He can read and write and teach his son the same, channeling a different godlike nature than his foil in Mouse.
Gone Fishin’ critiques aimless violence in America’s history and questions how faith could exist with such violence. Through a teenager’s coming-of-age journey comes the realization that time and a man can only move forward despite the presence of death. The subtle but powerful focus on reading and writing paints all literature as a temporary escape from the death that pervades our world.
Citations:
Mosley, Walter. Gone Fishin’. January 1997
Faulkner, William. A Rose for Emily. 30, April 1930
Photo by Alexander Sinn on Unsplash