Mystic River Analysis

The three young boys, Sean, Dave, and Jimmy were outside playing in the street. They started arguing and all of the sudden, an unknown car shows up. Minutes later, Dave is gone, and Jimmy and Sean are wondering what just happened. Their lives are changed forever. This novel is filled with tragedy, that ultimately takes a toll on the three. Dave, Sean, and Jimmy were friends from their youth, and were reunited through a shocking tragedy. In the shocking and suspenseful novel, Mystic River, tragedy significantly affects the lives of Sean, Dave, and Jimmy; this devastating event at such a young age ultimately sets up problems in their future, specifically for Dave, and leads to his inevitable death. To begin with, the day when Dave was abducted,
Jimmy Marcus owned a convenient shop as an adult, Sean Devine was a homicide detective, and Dave had a steady blue-collar job. On the day of Jimmy Marcus’s younger daughter’s communion, his oldest daughter, Katie is nowhere to be found. Initially, Jimmy and his wife are not worried, but eventually they start wondering where did she go. Katie was found murdered at a nearby park. The investigation was led by homicide detective Sean Devine. Around the same time, Dave Boyle struggled with his own demons from the past. Specifically, “ Dave comes upon Larson engaged with a young male prostitute and takes out all his pent-up rage on Larson,... he does not tell anyone the truth about what happened.” (Literary Newsmakers) Dave finally snapped as a result of his traumatic childhood, when he came across this. All his bottled up anger from that day emerged, and he constantly punched and attacked Larson. Dave became wounded, and when he came home, he told Celeste he was mugged, and that he might have killed his attacker. Celeste questions his story, but she still helps him get cleaned up and hide any evidence. This event happening at a similar time to Katie’s murder, consequently makes Dave susceptible to questions as to what really happened, when he came home bloody. At the start of the investigation, Sean finds a car with blood leading towards the park. A search
The missing pieces and questionable aspects of Dave’s story begins to take a toll on Celeste, his wife. Celeste and Dave mutually trust each other the most, but Celeste begins to question Dave’s story. “ Because of Dave’s unexplained injury, his wife suspects him of killing Jimmy’s daughter and she leaves him.” (Literary Newsmakers) Evidently, the baffling current events proved to overcome Celeste, emotionally to the point where she no longer trusted Dave, and the motive for this can again be traced back to Dave’s molestation. After Dave was assaulted as a child, he began to become secretive, and bottled up his anger. This caused him to eventually erupt and let out his anger, coincidentally at the time of Katie’s death, which sets him up to be the perfect suspect. With all this incriminating evidence towards Dave and an increasing rise in suspicions, Jimmy, and others were certain Dave was their guy. Sean had some trouble and doubt believing the true killer was Dave, but he knew that Dave appeared guilty. Consequently, Jimmy becomes so enraged that he murders Dave in cold blood. In the story, it says, “ I (Jimmy) killed him and buried him in the Mystic (River) and now I’ve discovered, as if the crime weren’t bad enough, that he was innocent. … I think I should go to jail, I should confess to Dave’s murder and go back into jail, because I think I belong there.” (Mystic River) Not only does Jimmy kill