Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra and Mystic River by Dennis Lehane, are two crime thrillers, which involve young boys as the main protagonists, and follow the boys' lives into adulthood. Bothe these books look at the effect an incident in the boys’ youth has on their future lives. In both books, the protagonists undergo a life changing experience that sets the stage for their later actions. The books both look into the concept of justice and lawlessness and attempt to define justice, as well as lawlessness. In both of these bestsellers, families play a crucial role, as does the society. The societal experiences of the characters in both books end up having an impact on whom they become later on. This essay looks at both books in detail focusing on the power of the past as a central theme and how this history affects future actions, particularly in relation to justice and lawlessness.
Lorenzo Carcaterra’s book is a powerful and emotional narration of the life of the author growing up in the Hell’s Kitchen region of New York in the 1960’s. The book is classified as a true story, and it narrates how an innocent incident of juvenile delinquency forever changes the lives of four young boys. The four young boys, Tommy, John, Michael, and Shakes, have a lifelong and inseparable friendship. The four boys are intelligent and love to have fun, with wisdom far beyond their years. They all share a particular penchant for playing pranks on the fellow citizens of Hell’s Kitchen.
These pranks are usually innocent, and the boys usually are not caught. However, one day, their luck runs out. On this particular day, the boys engage in a prank, which is the theft of a hotdog cart, which they push down a subway station stairway. The prank goes horribly wrong, and the boys find themselves facing a one-year prison sentence at a reform school, the Wilkinson Home for Boys. This gives the book its name since sleepers is an urban slang reference to a juvenile sentenced to an imprisonment term greater than nine months in a state run facility.
At the home, the boys, whose age ranges between twelve and fifteen years undergo all manner of humiliation, including beatings and sexual harassment. The book then skips to the adult lives of the four boys. One has become a lawyer, another a journalist, and two are professional hit men. The boys decide to avenge their experiences at Wilkinson through a manipulation of the legal system. This culminates in a sensational murder trial that paints the picture of street justice and loyalty to friends.
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane is a story of the lives of three childhood friends, and how a childhood experience changes the boys’ present lives forever, and later comes to have an impact on their future lives. The book, which opens in 1975, is set in the East Buckingham area of Boston, and it has three major protagonists. These characters are Dave Boyle, Jimmy Marcus, and Sean Devine, who are between ten and eleven years of age. As children, the three boys are very close friends. However, one incident changes all this.
One day as the trio are playing along a street in the neighborhood; a car with two men pulls up. The two strangers pretend to be police officers and invite the boys to take a ride. Whereas the other two boys are reluctant to take up the offer, Dave gladly accepts. The men turn out to be kidnappers and child molesters. Dave goes missing with no word of his whereabouts. After four days, he reappears, having escaped from his captors. However, he is emotionally broken by the traumatic experience, which he does not relate to anyone, and it is generally thought that he was molested sexually. This incident results in the breaking down of the three boys’ relationship.
The book continues twenty-five years later, with the three all grown up. Sean Devine has become a detective in Boston, working in the criminal department, with a personal life that appears to be falling apart. Jimmy Marcus is now a convenience store owner with some ties to organized crime in addition to having served a prison sentence. Dave Boyle is a married man, who leads a troubled life thanks to his past. In fact, Dave’s wife describes him as being less of a human being and more of a monster.
When Jimmy’s nineteen-year old daughter is found brutally murdered, the case is assigned to Sean. His primary suspect is Dave, who on the fateful day had arrived home to his wife covered in blood. Hence, the three again find themselves intertwined in each other’s lives. Jimmy not satisfied with waiting for the judicial process to run its course, does his own investigation. His previous life as a criminal drives him to execute justice for himself in a brutal way, murdering Dave and hiding the body.
One central theme, which runs through the two stories, is the power of the past. From the two books, it is evident that the future actions of the protagonists are influenced heavily by their past. One illustration of this comes from the book Sleepers. In this book, Tommy, John, Michael, and Shakes are the young boys who love playing pranks. However, when they are in prison, the boys suffer sexual abuse. The sexual abuse suffered at the hands of the warders in the Wilkinson Home stays with them all their lives.
Although this experience takes place in their youth and is a part of their past, it later affects their future lives. This is evident where the two boys, heavily influenced by the memory of the experience at the hands of the warders decide to take revenge. The events in the past, in this case, the sexual harassment, influence future decisions, which are represented by the vengeful actions.
Similarly, in Lehane’s Mystic River, the past appears to have a significant influence on the future lives of the protagonists. Whereas the friendship between the three characters in this book is not as strong as that in the Sleepers, the kidnapping, and sexual abuse ties them together. This one incident weighs heavily on all three characters’ minds and shapes what they become.
The first of these characters is Dave. Dave’s traumatic experience as a child, when he suffers four days of sexual abuse stays with him throughout his childhood and his adult life. Never able to completely overcome his ordeal, he becomes an introvert while facing a constant struggle to seem normal. Dave harbors a repressed rage from his ordeal, and this influences his actions. The repressed rage from the memory of his ordeal causes him to beat a man to death in the park when he chances on him apparently having sex with a child inside a parked car.
On the other hand, the abduction and rape of Dave has a different effect on Sean and Jimmy. These two deal with the resultant trauma and distress by allowing it to shape their future livelihoods. Sean is affected by this incident far much more than Jimmy is. The incident affects his thinking and motivation, as well as his concerns. This incident prompts Sean to become a police officer, in order to seek justice. Jimmy is less affected by this incident but still reflects on it from time to time, and these reflections drive him to a life of crime.
The trauma of this first event also ties in with the second incident. The second incident, in this case, is the murder of Jimmy’s daughter. When this murder is assigned to Sean, it means he has to go back to his hometown. This in turn means a confrontation with the demons of his past, which he had left behind. These demons are the memories of what happened to Dave. Hence, his desperation to solve this case is an attempt to obtain closure for the first incident.
Jimmy, on the other hand, is again a victim of the past thanks to his daughter’s murder. Having had a criminal history, Jimmy has managed to walk away from a life of crime and consign it to his past. At present, he is now a reformed person, running a respectable business. However, his past life as a criminal has not left him, and it comes to the fore with his daughter’s death. Convinced that Dave is the man responsible, he relapses to his criminal past to execute justice. This justice takes the form of the cold-blooded murder of Dave, and the subsequent dumping of the body in the river.
A family refers to a basic societal unit that typically comprises a husband, a wife, and the children. Within a family, each member has responsibilities that are assigned to them. One of the primary responsibilities of a family is the raising of the child. The child should be raised from childhood, until when they can take care of themselves. The family must also educate the children, and transmit the societal norms to them. Another of its roles is the provision of emotional, as well as psychological support to the offspring.
Specific family members have different roles. For instance, a father is expected to provide for the family, and make the crucial decisions. A mother is expected to be a homemaker, keeping the home in order. A mother is also responsible for imparting values and morals in the children. However, these parental roles are not cast in stone, and parents often complement each other in performance of the functions. The children are expected to obey their parents and assist in the household chores. The children are also expected to attend school, and obtain good grades.
When the family members fail in the performance of their responsibilities, various outcomes result. One of these consequences is that dysfunctional families may result. Dysfunction is evident in the families in these books. For instance, in the Sleepers, all the four boys are victims of domestic violence at home. Hence, this causes them to band together and form a friendship. Since the children have no one to look up to at home, and no one to offer them moral guidance, they have to look for alternative father figures. They find these figures in Father Bobby, a priest, and King Benny, the local mafia boss.
In the Mystic River, Dave is an example of dysfunction since he is unable to maintain good relationships with his wife. His wife even thinks of him as a monster and not a person. Another character, Sean, also demonstrates this dysfunction through his inability to maintain a stable family. When he is assigned the murder case, his family is on the verge of collapse.
Justice in broad terms refers to action that is taken in line with the requirements of a particular law. According to some, justice, stems from God’s will. However, others see it as comprising of rules that are common to all, and which emerge from consensus. In a narrower sense of the word, justice may refer to fairness. Various people have different opinions on what fairness is. Hence, this sometimes causes lawlessness to be confused with justice.
For instance, in cases where a person believes in the “an eye for an eye” brand of justice, lawlessness may result. An illustration is the behavior of Jimmy in the book Mystic River. Since he is convinced that Dave is responsible for his daughter’s murder, Johnny believes that Dave should also die. Thus, he decides to take matters into his own hands and deliver “justice.” Thus, he ends up killing the Dave, which is a crime in itself. In the book Sleepers, Tommy and John encounter Nokes in a pub and decide to deliver justice on him by shooting him to death. Again, this is an example of justice becoming lawlessness.
Hence, it is evident that these two books share a common theme and are similar to one another. From the portrayal of the characters as children, all the way to their adulthood, the books chart an almost similar path. In both books, the past events come back to haunt the protagonists and influence their actions largely. The two books also have the characters taking it upon themselves to mete out justice in the form of revenge.
Works Cited
Carcaterra, Lorenzo. Sleepers. New York: Ballantine Books, 1995.
Kelsen, Hans. What Is Justice?: Justice, Law, and Politics in the Mirror of Science : Collected Essays. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957.
Lehane , Dennis. Mystic River. New York : William Morrow, 2001.
Otto, Herbert A. "What Is a Strong Family?" Marriage and Family Living (1962): 77-80.
