Rumble Fish
S. E. Hinton
1975

Introduction

S. E. Hinton's third novel, Rumble Fish (1975), is similar to her first two novels, The Outsiders and That Was Then, This Is Now, in that it stars a troubled teenager from a precarious background and is told from a young man's point of view. However, it's different from the two previous books because they both featured teenagers who were more intelligent and sensitive than their peers and who were wiser by the end of the book. In contrast, in Rumble Fish Rusty-James is a victim of circumstance in a story that does not provide much hope for his future.

Like Hinton's other books, this novel helped to shape the young adult genre, moving it toward realism and away from the wholesome, overly nice story lines that had prevailed before Hinton began writing her gritty tales. Hinton's style has been widely imitated by other writers since her debut in 1967.

The book was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults in 1975, was listed as one of the Best Books of the Year by School Library Journal in 1975, and won a Land of Enchantment Book Award from the New Mexico Library Association in 1982. In 1988, Hinton was awarded the Margaret A. Edwards Award for her body of work.

Author Biography

Susan Eloise Hinton was born in 1950 (some sources say 1948) in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her first book, The Outsiders, was published when she was seventeen. A tomboy, Hinton wrote the book because the teen books then available were too wholesome and sweet for her tastes. The novel deals with rivalry between students of different social classes, poverty, alcoholism, drug abuse, and teenage angst. Because the main character was male, her editors urged her to conceal her own gender by using her initials instead of her full name.

Hinton began writing the book during her sophomore year. She didn't think of publishing it until the mother of one of her schoolmates, who was a professional children's writer, took a look at it and told Hinton to send it to her agent. Hinton did, and the novel was accepted for publication on the night of her high school graduation.

Publication of the book brought intense attention to Hinton, who was busy studying education at the University of Tulsa, marrying her husband, David Inhofe, and having a family. Four years later, she published another book, That Was Then, This Is Now, another story of troubled youth. Rumble Fish came out in 1975, and Tex was published in 1979. Her fifth young adult book, Taming the Star Runner, was published in 1988. She has also written two books for younger readers.

Despite her relatively small number of titles, Hinton's work has had a major impact on literature for children, helping to shape the direction of young adult literature by moving it toward less idealized, more realistic portrayals of the lives of teenagers. Certainly, she has struck a nerve among young readers, who respond to her depictions of their peers and their emotional pain.

In 1988, Hinton was honored with the Margaret A. Edwards Award for career achievement. Over ten million copies of her books are in print, and films have been made of four of her novels.

Plot Summary

Chapter One

The novel opens five or six years after the main action, as Rusty-James runs into his old friend Steve, whom he hasn't seen in all that time. They are on the beach, far from the original action. Rusty-James has been "bumming around," not working since getting out of the reformatory after serving five years, and Steve is on vacation from college, where he's studying to become a high school teacher. Steve invites Rusty-James to dinner, an invitation he has no intention of accepting. Steve is too much of a reminder of some bad times.

Chapter Two

This chapter begins six years earlier, when the boys were around thirteen and fourteen. Rusty-James is in Benny's, a local hangout, when a kid named Midget informs him that Biff Wilcox is out to kill him because of something Rusty-James said to Biff's girlfriend. Rusty-James arranges to meet Biff in the vacant lot behind a pet store, and both plan to bring friends. Although gang wars are supposedly a thing of the past—a ban enforced by Rusty-James's older brother, the Motorcycle Boy—the Motorcycle Boy has disappeared and Rusty-James says he's going to fight if he has to and he's not going to get caught without any backup.

Chapter Three

Rusty-James goes to see his girlfriend, Patty. She's mad at him because she heard that he went up to the lake with Smokey and his cousin and some girls, but he tells her nothing happened, and they settle down to make out. She's nervous about his upcoming fight with Biff Wilcox and reminds him that he promised to quit fighting. However, she can't say much because she once went after another girl with a broken bottle because the girl was flirting with Rusty-James.

He leaves her and goes back to Benny's, where a lot of kids are waiting for him. Steve is not there. He goes to the empty lot with Smokey and another friend, B. J. Biff and five other guys are there, and Biff is high on something, making him look and act crazy. Biff also has a knife, and Rusty-James is armed only with a bike chain. They fight, and Rusty-James wins. In the middle of the fight, the Motorcycle Boy shows up, saying, "I thought we'd stopped this cowboys and Indians crap." Rusty-James is distracted by this, and Biff grabs the knife off the ground and slices Rusty-James down his side. Steve shows up and tells Rusty-James he should go to the hospital, but Rusty-James refuses.

The Motorcycle Boy says he's been in California but says little about the trip. They go home, and Motorcycle Boy pours wine over the knife cut to sterilize it.

Chapter Four

The next day, Rusty-James goes to school despite his wound. He misses math, plays poker during lunch, and stands out of gym, where the coach offers him five dollars to beat up another kid who's been giving the coach trouble. After school, Rusty-James goes to Benny's, where all the kids are impressed with his knife cut. Steve comes in and says his mother is sick in the hospital. Rusty-James leaves and steals some hubcaps, and when the owner and some friends chase him, he jumps from one roof to the next, urging Steve to do the same. Steve does, almost falling two stories down, and it turns out that the pursuers have given up and the leap wasn't necessary. Rusty-James passes out from his wound, the running, and lack of food, frightening Steve, who begins crying.

Chapter Five

They both go home. Rusty-James runs into Cassandra, who has a crush on the Motorcycle Boy. She is college educated and from a wealthy family, but she has moved to their part of town and has become a drug addict. Rusty-James finds the Motorcycle Boy at home, takes care of his wound, and their father comes home, less drunk than usual. He is a mild man, who reads a lot when he isn't drinking, but he's completely detached from his sons' lives. Rusty-James doesn't hate him but doesn't like him either. Smokey comes by around midnight with his cousin, and they go to the lake and hang out with some girls and drink. When he gets home, his father mentions that a policeman is out to get him, the Motorcycle Boy, or both of them. The next day, Rusty-James skips school and sleeps until noon.

Chapter Six

That afternoon, Rusty-James gets expelled from school for skipping class, fighting, swearing, arguing with teachers, and so forth. The guidance counselor, Mr. Harrigan, tells Rusty-James that he will be transferred to Cleveland High, where all the "bad" kids are sent. Rusty-James doesn't want to go there because Biff Wilcox and his group run that school. The alternative is the Youth Detention Center. Rusty-James knows that a lot of paperwork must be done before anyone can come after him, so he decides to take his chances in the meantime. He goes to Patty's, but she's mad at him because she's heard that he was up at the lake with some girls, and she dumps him. He's upset but can't cry. He finds the Motorcycle Boy, and they arrange to go to the other side of the river that night. The Motorcycle Boy shows Rusty-James a magazine that has the Motorcycle Boy's picture in it, taken when he was in California.

Media Adaptations

• Rumble Fish was made into a film in 1983 by Francis Ford Coppola, with Matt Dillon as Rusty-James and Micky Rourke as the Motorcycle Boy; the film also starred Dennis Hopper, Tom Waits, and Nicolas Cage. Hinton also makes a brief appearance. She and Coppola collaborated to write the screenplay.
• The novel was adapted as a record and cassette by Viking in 1977.
• Another recording was produced by Recorded Books LLC in 1985.

Chapter Seven

They go across the bridge that night, to a honky-tonk area. Steve comes along and, surpris-ingly, takes a drink when Rusty-James offers it. They go to a porn movie but leave when a pervert in the men's bathroom accosts Steve. The Motorcycle Boy tells Rusty-James that he saw their mother when he was out in California and also tells Rusty-James that when Rusty-James was two, he was left alone in the house for three days when his mother left and his father went on a drinking binge. Rusty-James is nonplussed by this, not really grasping its connection to his present fear of being alone. Rusty-James and Steve wander around, making a little trouble, and end up at a party where they drink some more.

Chapter Eight

Later they end up in a bar, where they drink some more. When they leave, two guys mug them, but the Motorcycle Boy shows up just in time. Rusty-James has a head injury, and Steve is scared to death.

Chapter Nine

The next day, Rusty-James's head hurts so much that he decides to visit a free clinic, but when the doctor says he has to be admitted to the hospital, he flees to Steve's house, where Steve has been beaten up by his father for staying out drinking all night. Rusty-James tells Steve they should both follow the Motorcycle Boy around for a while, but they can't think of a good reason. Clearly, Rusty-James is afraid of being abandoned if the Motorcycle Boy disappears again. Steve refuses, angering Rusty-James, who grabs him. Rusty-James is startled to realize that now, like the Motorcycle Boy's, his hearing is gone. Steve says, "I've tried to help you, but I've got to think about myself some." He also says, "You better let go of Motorcycle Boy. If you're around him very long you won't believe in anything." This is the last time Rusty-James sees Steve for many years.

Chapter Ten

Rusty-James spends the rest of the day in Benny's, waiting for the Motorcycle Boy to show up. Patty comes in, ignores him, and sits with Smokey. Rusty-James and Smokey go outside, and Smokey confesses that he set things up so that Patty would think Rusty-James was cheating on her with the girls up at the lake. Smokey also says, "If there were gangs around here, I'd be president, not you." Surprisingly, Rusty-James doesn't bother to fight back against either of these insults. He quietly agrees to let Smokey have Patty and the leadership of the group. If he wants to "keep his rep," he would have to fight Smokey, and he's in no shape to do that now, either physically or emotionally.

B. J. tells Rusty-James that the Motorcycle Boy is in the pet store looking at fish. Rusty-James finds him there. The fish are Siamese fighting fish, brilliantly colored; they are "rumble fish" that would kill each other if they were put in the same tank. "If you leaned a mirror against the bowl they'd kill themselves fighting their own reflection," the Motorcycle Boy says. They leave, and the store owner closes up.

Chapter Eleven

That night, the Motorcycle Boy and Rusty-James go back to the pet store and steal the fish, which the Motorcycle Boy wants to release in the river. The Motorcycle Boy lets out all the animals in the store and heads to the river with the fish. The cop who's been trying to get him and Rusty-James, Officer Patterson, shoots the Motorcycle Boy without warning, and he dies, as do the fish, who are too far from the river when the Motorcycle Boy falls and drops their bowl. Rusty-James is arrested and notices that, like the Motorcycle Boy, he is now also color-blind. The red flashing light on top of the police car is gray. He slams his fists through the window of the police car and slashes his wrists on the shards.

Chapter Twelve

With this chapter, the action moves forward five or six years to the time when the book started. Steve tells Rusty-James that he made up his mind to get out of their bad neighborhood, and he did, never looking back. He tells Rusty-James, "If you want to go somewhere in life you just have to work till you make it." Rusty-James replies, "Yeah. It'll be nice when I can think of someplace to go." They are on totally different wavelengths, and even though Steve invites Rusty-James for dinner, Rusty-James knows he won't go, because Steve is too much of a reminder of the past. "I figured if I didn't see him, I'd start forgetting again. But it's been taking me a lot longer than I thought it would," he says.

Characters

Smokey Bennet

Smokey, named for the unusual color of his eyes, is one of Rusty-James's friends and a member of the group, but he is nervous about gang violence. When Rusty-James says of the "old days" when he was eleven, "A gang really meant some-thin' back then," Smokey says, "Meant gettin' sent to the hospital once a week." Smokey is not a loyal friend; he sets things up to make it look like Rusty-James is cheating on his girlfriend Patty so she'll dump Rusty-James and Smokey can go out with her. He also tells Rusty-James that if the gangs were still around, he would be president, not Rusty-James.

B. J.

B. J. is a friend of Rusty-James's, one of the group. He is fat but tough. As Rusty-James says, "Tough fat guys ain't as rare as you think."

Cassandra

Cassandra was a student teacher at the high school the year before, and the Motorcycle Boy was in one of her classes. She fell in love with him, and although she has a college education and comes from a good family, she moved into an apartment in Rusty-James's part of town and now follows the Motorcycle Boy around. She doesn't wear makeup, often goes barefoot, and has a lot of cats. Rusty-James views her as phony because she tries to talk like the Motorcycle Boy, saying "meaningful" things. She is a drug addict, whose habit the Motorcycle Boy detests.

Mr. Harrigan

Mr. Harrigan is the guidance counselor at Rusty-James's school. Rusty-James says, "There was something about Mr. Harrigan that made my mind go kind of blank, even when he was swatting me with a board."

Weston McCauley

McCauley is a former friend of the Motorcycle Boy and used to be second lieutenant in the Packers, the local gang. He's a heroin addict now.

Midget

Midget is a tall, skinny kid who notifies Rusty-James that Biff Wilcox is out to get him.

Motorcycle Boy

The Motorcycle Boy, whose real name the reader never learns, is Rusty-James's older brother and hero. He got his name because he loves motorcycles and steals them and rides them. He is not interested in owning one, though. He is color-blind and sometimes deaf as a result of motorcycle accidents, and although he is a charismatic, natural leader, he's also odd—not quite connected to the rest of humanity. Rusty-James says, "He had strange eyes—they made me think of a two-way mirror. Like you could feel somebody on the other side watching you, but the only reflection you saw was your own." He has been expelled from school for scoring "perfect tests"; it's clear that the authorities assumed he was cheating but not clear whether he actually was. It seems that he might be much smarter than the school gives him credit for because he reads a great deal. He has always seemed older than his real age, and he tells Rusty-James, "I stopped bein' a little kid when I was five." When he was fourteen, storekeepers stopped asking for his ID, so he could buy liquor. At the same age, he was the leader of the gang, the Packers, and older kids asked for his advice. Later, he decided that gang violence was stupid and boring and put a stop to it. He detests drug addicts, and rumor has it that he once killed a junkie. He tells Rusty-James that if he ever uses drugs, he'll break Rusty-James's arm, and Rusty-James believes him.

Roy Patterson

Roy Patterson is a police officer who has a grudge against Rusty-James and the Motorcycle Boy and is constantly on the lookout for a way to "get" them. In the end, he kills the Motorcycle Boy without warning when the Motorcycle Boy is stealing fish from a pet store.

Patty

Patty is Rusty-James's girlfriend. Her mother is a nurse who works nights, and Patty has to stay home and take care of her little brothers. She has bleached blond hair and is tough. She once went after another girl with a broken bottle because the girl was flirting with Rusty-James.

Don Price

Price is a smart-alecky kid who's been giving Coach Ryan trouble. Ryan offers Rusty-James five dollars to beat him up.

Rusty-James

Rusty-James, whose legal name is Russel-James, is fourteen during the main action of the book but talks and acts like someone much older and tougher. He confesses that he's not very bright and that he has a temper. He steals, curses, smokes, drinks, and gets into fights about once a week, although he hasn't lost one in two years. He idolizes his older brother, Motorcycle Boy, and wants to be just like him because Motorcycle Boy is "the coolest person in the whole world." He doesn't think much about the future, or the past, preferring to live in the present. His friend Steve is important to him because Steve is perhaps the only stable person he has ever known. Rusty-James was left alone in his parents' house for three days when he was two years old because his mother left the family, taking the Motorcycle Boy, and his father disappeared on a three-day drinking binge. Perhaps because of this, Rusty-James hates to be alone and dreads the day the Motorcycle Boy will leave home for good.

Rusty-James's Father

Rusty-James's father, whom his sons call "the old man," is an alcoholic. He has been to law school and has a large vocabulary and an educated way of speaking. He is "a middle-sized, middle-aged guy, kind of blond and balding on top, and has light-blue eyes. He was the kind of person nobody ever noticed. He had a lot of friends, though, mostly bartenders." He is completely detached from his sons and views them the way an anthropologist would view an unfamiliar tribe. "What strange lives you two lead," he says mildly when he learns that Rusty-James has been cut in a knife fight.

He began drinking when Rusty-James's mother left: he went on a three-day binge, and it was, according to him, the first time he was ever drunk. He says of his marriage and his downfall from lawyer to skid-row drunk, "Our marriage was a classic example of a preacher marrying an atheist, thinking to make a convert, and instead ending up doubting his own faith." This implies that his wife was some sort of criminal. He says, "She married me for fun, and when it stopped being fun she left."

Rusty-James's Mother

Rusty-James's mother left the family when Rusty-James was two and the Motorcycle Boy was six. At first, she took the Motorcycle Boy with her, but then she abandoned him, and eventually he was taken back to his father and Rusty-James. She now lives out in California and apparently is still unstable, moving from relationship to relationship. When the Motorcycle Boy finds her, she's living with a movie producer but is thinking of "moving in with an artist who lived in a tree house up in the mountains."

Coach Ryan

Ryan is the gym teacher at Rusty-James's school. Rusty-James dislikes him because he thinks the coach is a phony. The coach uses teen slang and tries too hard to be friends with Rusty-James, which makes Rusty-James suspicious. Rusty-James says, "I hoped to hell when I was grown I'd have better things to do than hang around some tough punk, hoping his rep would rub off on me."

Steve

Steve is Rusty-James's best friend and, like Rusty-James, is fourteen. He looks like he's twelve and acts forty. According to Rusty-James, "he could say stuff that I wouldn't let anybody else get away with." He comes from a good family and is scared of violence. He is shy with girls, doesn't smoke, and doesn't drink until later in the novel. He has "dark-blond hair and dark-brown eyes and a face like a real sincere rabbit." He is, according to Rusty-James, smarter than Rusty-James. Rusty-James protects him from other people who want to beat him up and listens to his many worries. In exchange, Steve does Rusty-James's math homework and lets Rusty-James copy his history homework so Rusty-James won't flunk. However, this is not the only reason Rusty-James is close to him. Rusty-James says, "Maybe it was because I had known him longer than I'd known anybody I wasn't related to." Steve's parents, on the other hand, don't even know that he knows Rusty-James.

Biff Wilcox

Biff is a member of another group, formerly allies of Rusty-James's group, now enemies. Rusty-James notes that if the old gang wars were still going on, Biff would be leader of his gang, the Devilhawks. He is tougher and more dangerous than most kids.

Themes

Poverty

Although Steve and Rusty-James agree that their neighborhood is not "the slums," they note that it's "crummy." They live in a poor area. Steve's family is better off because his father apparently has a job, but Rusty-James and the Motorcycle Boy have to scavenge, steal, and hope their father won't drink up all of his welfare check before they get a piece of it. When Rusty-James is hungry, he finds some sardines, crackers, and milk in the kitchen, remarking, "I ain't picky. I like about anything." The reader gets the sense that there was not much else in the house, other than his father's bottles of "sneaky pete."

Alienation and Abandonment

"For a tough kid I had a bad habit of getting attached to people," Rusty-James says in the beginning of the book, and as the story progresses, the reader finds out why. Abandoned by his mother as a toddler, left alone by his father for three days while his father went on a drunken binge, he learned early to fear solitude and at the same time to be wary of other people. His biggest fear, throughout the book, is that the Motorcycle Boy will leave for good.

The only time in the book when Rusty-James says he feels truly alive is when he, Steve, and the Motorcycle Boy cross the river and find themselves among crowds of people, cruising cars and listening to music. Rusty-James says, "I couldn't explain how I feel. Jivey, juiced up, just alive. The lights, I mean, and all the people." In contrast, nothing else in the book causes him to vary from his heavy emotional tone. Going to the lake with friends or making out with his girlfriend don't provide the pleasure that it seems they should; these are all just things to do to fill in time.

One of the most interesting aspects of Rusty-James's alienation and emotional homelessness is that no one in their apartment has his own room or even his own bed. The apartment has a cot and a mattress, and Rusty-James, the Motorcycle Boy, and his father sleep on either of them. "It didn't matter which," Rusty-James says. The reader is given the sense that they don't need three places to sleep because it's very rare that all three of them are home at the same time. There's no comfort in their house, very little food, and no stable routine. Their father is not interested in their lives, except for feeling mild curiosity about their exploits, and is completely emotionally detached from them, never providing meals, guidance, or a stable presence. As a parent, he's a total failure, so that, although he's physically present, he has emotionally abandoned both his sons.

Although Rusty-James's father has done this, Rusty-James still loves him, "sort of." He decides that he loves Patty, the Motorcycle Boy, and Steve, "sort of." In the end, his father proves worthless, Patty leaves him, the Motorcycle Boy is killed, and Steve decides that he's had enough of the rough and dangerous life and chooses to turn away from Rusty-James. Rusty-James is left utterly alone, just as he was as a young boy.

Death in Life

Everyone in the book, with the exception of Steve, is dead on the inside—trapped, stagnant, going nowhere. The Motorcycle Boy is doomed, "born in the wrong era, on the wrong side of the river, with the ability to do anything and finding nothing he wants to do," according to his father. In addition, he's now partially deaf and color-blind as a result of all his fighting and motorcycle crashes, disabilities that further cut him off from others and limit his potential. He is not interested in overcoming these problems. He almost seems to enjoy the splendid isolation they give him.

Topics for Further Study

• Some critics of the novel have said that Hinton's portrayal of teenagers is not realistic because the young people in her book are tougher than any real people would be. Do you agree? Why or why not?
• Recent statistics show that gang violence is a problem throughout the United States. Do some research to find out what makes young people more likely to join gangs. What does research tell us that young people are looking for when they join gangs?
• The Motorcycle Boy is color-blind and sometimes deaf because of all his motorcycle accidents. Find out about color blindness. What is it, who has it, and how do they get it? Is it common for people to have color blindness as a result of accidents?
• Hinton has admitted that her portrayal of girls in the book is somewhat out of date. Do you agree with this? Provide specific examples to support your answer.

Rusty-James is trapped by his blind admiration for the Motorcycle Boy and never gives a thought to his future or to his past, and his awareness of the present is like an animal's, not involving any reflection or thought. He comments that he has never been good at school, and, indeed, his consciousness seems, at times, almost like that of a zombie. When the Motorcycle Boy tells him that he is afraid to be alone because he was frightened by being abandoned as a little child, Rusty-James looks at him stupidly. He says, "What he was saying didn't make any sense to me. Trying to understand it was like trying to see through fog." He seems to spend most of his time in this fog, just getting through the days, never really thinking too deeply about anything.

Their father is also emotionally detached and dead, interested in his next drink, but not particularly in his children. He occasionally shows flashes of understanding, as when he describes the Motorcycle Boy's character, but usually regards his sons with utter detachment; for example, when Rusty-James is wounded in the knife fight, he only remarks mildly, "What strange lives you two lead." Instead of remarking on the wound or encouraging Rusty-James to seek medical care for it, he gives Rusty-James ten dollars and then asks the Motorcycle Boy if he had a nice trip to California. This makes it clear that no matter what happens, the boys are basically on their own. Their father is unable, or unwilling, to help them or provide any guidance.

Usually a symbol of life and movement, the river in Rumble Fish is the opposite, as stagnant and doomed as the characters. Early in the book, Rusty-James throws his cigarette butt into the water, remarking that it's so full of trash that it will make no difference. Later, he comments on the horrible smell that emanates from the river, a result of pollution. The fact that the Motorcycle Boy decides to release the fighting fish into this river is ironic—they will likely die as soon as they hit the filthy water. It's a grand gesture but a senseless one, and like the fish, these boys will never escape the evils of their environment.

Style

First-Person Narrative

The book is written in first person from Rusty-James's point of view, which allows the reader to see events only as Rusty-James sees them, leading to some interesting questions about Rusty-James's perception and how much of it is accurate. In particular, it's not clear whether his suspicions of some adults are correct or not. For example, he is cynical about Cassandra and her motives and doesn't trust her because she gave up her rich family to come and live in his bad neighborhood and follow his brother around. He is also suspicious of Coach Ryan because Ryan is friendly with him. Although it's clear that both Coach Ryan and Cassandra have problems and motives of their own, readers may wonder whether they're as bad, or as selfish or phony, as Rusty-James thinks they are.

In addition, the one-sided presentation of events from Rusty-James's perspective is poignant because readers may see the gaps and flaws in his reasoning when he does not. He wants more than anything to be like his brother, but from the reader's point of view, this ambition is questionable: his brother has accomplished nothing, is going nowhere, and has lost both his color vision and his hearing through his own lack of good judgment. And although the Motorcycle Boy is apparently a natural leader, it's clear that he will never really use this gift for anything constructive because he is so emotionally damaged. This sad fact is lost on Rusty-James. Although in many other ways he seems much older than his fourteen years, in his unswerving admiration of his brother, he seems much younger.

Use of Slang

The book is written in a tough, breezy style, as Rusty-James would speak but without any curse words. It seems unbelievable that the characters in the book would not curse, but obviously Hinton could not depict their talk realistically and have the book published for a young-adult audience. Instead, she implies cursing, as when Rusty-James says, "I said something to her I wouldn't normally say to a chick, but she really got on my nerves. She didn't flinch."

In addition, with rare exceptions, Hinton avoids using any slang that would make the book unnecessarily dated. Although it was written in 1975, most of the dialogue could appear in a book now and pass unnoticed. The few exceptions are largely street names for drugs—bennies, sneaky pete, horse—which typically undergo rapid evolution.

Historical Context

Rumble Fish was published in 1975, but Hinton wrote it during the early 1970s. At the time, the Vietnam War was still raging, and the war polarized the American population between those who supported it and those who vehemently protested against it. The U.S. government finally withdrew its last troops from combat in 1973, but the war left lasting scars on the psyches of everyone, from the soldiers involved to those who had never left home. In all, 3 million soldiers participated in the war; 58,000 were killed, 1,000 were missing and never found, and 304,000 were wounded.

The growing use of drugs by young people, which became popular in the 1960s, continued in the 1970s, affecting people of every social class. In 1975, First Lady Betty Ford commented in an interview that she thought her own children had smoked marijuana.

The Civil Rights and feminist movements were still fighting for equal rights for minorities and women. Although many women supported the feminist movement, its effects were slow to trickle throughout American culture so that, like the girls in Rumble Fish, many women still felt that their status was derived from that of the man they were with. And although great strides had been made toward ensuring equal rights to people of all races, racial tensions still divided society, as shown by Rusty-James's unease at realizing that he and Steve are the only white boys in a black bar.

In world politics, the United States and the Soviet Union were superpower nations, each with influence or control over a large portion of the world. The two nations regarded each other with unease, suspicion, and a constant wariness, a situation known as the "Cold War." Conflict between communism and American democracy weighed on people's minds, along with the constant awareness that any open war between the two powers might end in nuclear annihilation. This tension was eased slightly in 1975 by the symbolic linking of the Soviet Soyuz and the American Apollo spacecraft while in orbit.

Economically, the United States experienced a serious recession from about 1973 to 1975, largely caused by rising oil prices. This recession was the most serious contraction of industrial production since the Great Depression and had widespread effects on employment and attitudes throughout the country.

Compare & Contrast

• 1970s: Most members of gangs are between the ages of twelve and twenty-one, and it's rare for females to be involved in gang violence.
  
  Today: Gang members may be as young as nine or as old as thirty, and although males still outnumber females by fifteen to one, the number of young women in gangs is increasing.
• 1970s: Weapons used in gang violence are relatively simple, such as knives and chains, and opposing gang members meet face-to-face to fight.
  
  Today: Gang members may use AK-47s or Uzis, and drive-by shootings have replaced vacant-lot rumbles.
• 1970s: Fifteen percent of whites and twenty-six percent of African Americans drop out of high school.
  
  Today: Four percent of whites and seven percent of African Americans drop out of high school. Reasons given include "didn't like it," failing, job-related problems, and pregnancy.
• 1970s: Fewer than half the states in the United States and about one hundred counties in those states report gang violence.
  
  Today: Every state, as well as the District of Columbia, and twelve hundred counties report gang violence.

Culturally, the options for entertainment and connection to other people were much less diverse than they are today. Most cities had only a handful of television stations, unlike the dozens or hundreds of cable channels available to many people today. Videogames, video players, personal computers, e-mail, and the Internet were unknown; even handheld calculators were an expensive novelty.

Critical Overview

In School Library Journal, Jane Abramson commented that the book was "stylistically superb" and that it "packs a punch that will leave readers of any age reeling." A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote, "Ms. Hinton is a brilliant novelist," and Margery Fisher, in Growing Point, noted, "Once more in the American urban scene is a book as uncompromising in its view of life as it is disciplined." She also wrote, "Of the three striking books by this young author, Rumble Fish seems the most carefully structured and the most probing." Jay Daly wrote in Presenting S. E. Hinton, "In the end we respond to Rumble Fish in a much deeper way than we do to [her previous book] That Was Then, This Is Now. It's an emotional, almost a physical response, as opposed to the more rational, intellectual reaction that the other book prompted." He also commented that the book "works as a novel…. And there is a name usually given to this kind of success. It is called art."

However, not all critics agreed that the book was superb. In the Nation, Michael Malone remarked that he found it difficult to believe that Hinton's novels, including Rumble Fish, are realistic portraits of average American teenagers. He commented that the books' popularity is largely due to their action-packed narratives, simplistic plot structures, intense emotional tone, and well-defined principles. He noted that adults are rarely present and that girls also play only vague cameo roles: "In this world the stories, like the streets, belong almost exclusively to tribes of adolescent males."

In her defense, Hinton commented in an interview in Seventeen:

I started writing before the women's movement was in full swing, and at the time, people wouldn't have believed that girls would do the things that I was writing about. I also felt more comfortable with the male point of view—I had grown up around boys.

Malone commented that he was mystified by others' claims that Rumble Fish and Hinton's other books are realistic and that, in his opinion, because of their lack of reality, "despite their modern, colloquial tone, [Hinton's books] are fairy tale adventures" and the gang fights in them are "as exotic as jousts in Ivanhoe or pirate wars in Treasure Island."

To bolster his case that the novels are mythic, he noted that the settings are vague; the action could take place anywhere. In addition, the novels' setting in time is also hard to pin down.

Malone also described Hinton's prose style as being at times "fervid, mawkish and ornate" and said that the morals in her fictional universe are "as black-and-white as an old cowboy film."

In the Times Literary Supplement, Jane Powell commented that the book is disappointing because of Rusty-James's victimization and his evidently doomed fate. As she notes, by the end of the book, "There can't even be a glimmer of hope for the future."

Hinton revealed in the production notes to the film version of the book that the book was difficult to write because of the contrast between Rusty-James, who is a simple character, and the Motorcycle Boy, who "is the most complex character I've ever created…. It's about over-identifying with something which you can never understand, which is what Rusty-James is doing. The Motorcycle Boy can't identify with anything."

Criticism

Kelly Winters

Winters is a freelance writer. In this essay, Winters considers Hinton's depiction of girls, boys, young adults, and adults in her novel.

Hinton has often been criticized for the emphasis on male toughness and machismo in her books. In Rumble Fish, the portrayal of Patty and other girls is simplistic; the reader never really gets a sense of Patty as a living, breathing person, and she seems mainly interested in her appearance and in going out with the toughest boy. Hinton once explained that she grew up before the feminist movement, that the girls she knew in high school were more concerned with their hair and makeup than anything else, and that girls derived their status not from who they were but from who their boyfriends were. This is borne out by the action in the book. When the balance of power shifts so that Smokey is top dog in the group, Patty coolly shifts her affections to him without a backward glance.

This makes her seem shallow, which she is, but so is Rusty-James's affection for her; at one point, kissing the top of her head, he notes that she has dark roots in her hair. He comments, "I like blond girls. I don't care how they got that way." The reader senses that it's not so much her personality—of which she doesn't have much—that attracts him but simply that she's female, blond, and likes him. At one point, he includes her in a list of people he loves, but he's unmoved by her defection to Smokey at the end of the book, even though this was prompted by Smokey's deception.

Other than Patty, girls are rarely mentioned in the book. Although he's incredulous that Steve, at fourteen, would be shy about girls, for Rusty-James, they're still barely a blip on his mental radar screen. Girls are just there, like furniture. When he goes to the lake, he names the boys he goes with but says, "There were some girls and we built a fire and went swimming." The text implies that he kissed or made out with the girls but that it didn't mean anything to him; whatever happened, he's already forgotten it; it was just something he did, and the girls didn't even have names or personalities.

In addition, the degree of male toughness or machismo in the book seems exaggerated, leading to unrealistic behavior. Rusty-James is just fourteen, and he's been deeply wounded emotionally throughout his life, but he's as tough as a hardened Marine when it comes to physical suffering. After sustaining a knife slash deep enough to expose his ribs, he just grits his teeth when his brother pours alcohol over the wound and goes to school the next day. He doesn't even bandage it, even though the wound is obviously deep enough to require stitches and the pain would inhibit most people from moving around at all. All he says is, "I wasn't feeling too hot and I was bleeding off and on, but I usually go to school if I can." It seems unbelievable that he wouldn't simply stay home, especially since his father doesn't care and he is not close to any of his teachers. After school, he goes out and shoots a game of pool, seemingly oblivious to his wound, and runs for blocks and leaps from one roof to another after stealing some hubcaps. During the chase he becomes aware of the pain: "My side was killing me." And later, after the rooftop leap, he finally passes out. What's surprising is that he didn't pass out sooner and that he didn't remark on the pain while bending over to shoot pool.

The next day he washes out the wound again, noting, "It hurt real steady, not bad, but steady like a toothache." That night he goes swimming up at the lake and only later wonders if the lake water might have infected the wound. It seems unlikely that the wound wouldn't have hurt when the water touched it or when he swam, possibly reopening it. Throughout the book, his awareness of the wound comes and goes, but it never affects him the way one would assume it would affect any normal person.

The main characters in the book are all teenagers—the Motorcycle Boy is nineteen, Biff Wilcox is sixteen, and Rusty-James and Steve are fourteen. However, they are as burned-out and jaded as any war-ravaged adults. Rusty-James says casually, "I get annoyed when people want to kill me for some stupid little reason. Something big, and I don't mind it so much." This implies that others have wanted to kill him, and for various reasons; death threats mean nothing to him now. When threatened, he reacts without thinking about much other than how many supporters his enemy has brought with him.

Similarly, Rusty-James is jaded about sex and women. He treats Patty like an object, and when he goes to an X-rated movie with the Motorcycle Boy and Steve, he spends much of his time watching the other people in the theater, the Motorcycle Boy, and Steve, who is amazed at what's on the screen. He's seen so much of it before that the film seems unremarkable to him; he tells Steve, "I seen better."

Because his father is a drunk, Rusty-James is familiar with the effects of alcohol, and he has friends who use hard drugs like heroin; he stops over at a friend's house but leaves when he finds the friend is shooting up. "He was there, with some other people, but they were all spacey and nervous and dopey, doing horse." This is apparently a normal occurrence in his neighborhood; he reports it in the same tone anyone else would use to say, "They were home, but they were busy cleaning, so I left."

At times, Rusty-James gives the reader the sense that he wishes he could be a kid and that he resents the adults who have left him to grow up so fast. He claims to love his father although he doesn't like him, but in a telling incident, he shoves an old drunk man off the sidewalk because the old man is in his way. Although the old man is not his father, he could easily be; the reader senses that the anger he feels at the old man for blocking his way is really aimed at his father, for blocking his growth in life. As he points out, his father has never "done" anything to him, like beat him or abuse him; his father has simply done nothing: he drinks and reads and ignores his sons. What Rusty-James doesn't really understand, however, is that "doing nothing" is as harmful to children as physical abuse, and he has every right to be angry at his father.

Coach Ryan, who is friendly to Rusty-James, turns out to be unethical when he offers Rusty-James five dollars to beat up another boy. Rusty-James has never trusted him, because he thinks Ryan is impressed by Rusty-James's toughness and wants to gain from his reputation; he thinks Ryan wants to be friends with him in the same way that some one might like to own a mean and vicious dog because it will enhance his own status.

Mr. Harrigan, the guidance counselor, does not offer guidance at all but seems more like a warden. He doesn't make any effort to find out why Rusty-James acts the way he does but punishes him and eventually gives him an ultimatum: Rusty-James is going to be transferred to a school where they know how to deal with "his kind." Rusty-James says of Harrigan, "My mind went kind of blank. There was something about Mr. Harrigan that made my mind go kind of blank, even when he was swatting me with a board, like he had two or three times before."

Harrigan asks a typically adult question: "Don't you think it's time you gave some serious thought to your life?" Rusty-James thinks, "Well, I had to worry about money, and whether or not the old man would drink up his check before I got part of it, and whether or not the Motorcycle Boy would pick up and leave for good, and I had a cop itching to blow my brains out." These are all serious worries, and, ironically, Rusty-James's focus on them is what prevents him from thinking about his life the way society would want him to; he can't care about school or the normal youthful things because he's had these problems thrust upon him by irresponsible adults. Obviously, Harrigan is just spouting the adult authority figure "party line" instead of really trying to get to the bottom of the problem.

Cassandra is closer in age to Rusty-James than any other adults, but, like them, she's abdicated any real adult responsibility by following the Motorcycle Boy around and becoming a drug addict. She's a substitute teacher, but her behavior suggests that if and when she becomes a full-time teacher, she'll be just like Harrigan and Ryan, so steeped in her own problems that she's unable to help her young students toward learning, emotional health, and true maturity.

Source: Kelly Winters, Critical Essay on Rumble Fish, in Novels for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.

Jay Daly

In the following excerpt, Daly explores the structure and themes Hinton employs to develop the characters and their relationships to each other in Rumble Fish.

Structure and Technique

As she did in The Outsiders, Hinton employs a frame to the story, the main body of which is a series of events that occurred five years earlier. The story is framed by the first and last chapters, which describe the surprise meeting of Rusty-James, the book's narrator, and Steve Hays, who had been his best friend during the time the story describes. The story is, in effect, a piece of Rusty-James's memory, and memory, the ability to remember things (or, conversely, to forget them) is a concern that appears throughout the narrative.

There is not much cause and effect in this story. In The Outsiders there is a random element to the act of violence that triggers the story—the stabbing in the park—but once that has occurred the rest of the story proceeds with absolute fidelity to the motivations of its characters. Once Johnny stabs Bob, everyone behaves exactly as they would be expected to behave, and the story gathers momentum toward its proper conclusion. In Rumble Fish there is no such turning point, no crucial act or omission (unless it is the simple returning to town of the Motorcycle Boy) after which the action of the story becomes inevitable. Instead it is all random, and it is all inevitable. Like a Greek tragedy dressed in modern black leather and denim, Rumble Fish is the story of human subservience to fate, to a destiny over which, finally, there can be no control.

We receive all our information in the story through the consciousness of Rusty-James. As with Ponyboy in The Outsiders and Bryon in That Was Then, This Is Now, this is the narrator's story, filtered through the narrator's point of view. Once again, this technique of first-person narrative permits an immediate involvement on the part of the reader. With Rusty-James we are struck from the beginning by his basic honesty and ingenuousness. "I ain't never been a particularly smart person," he tells us. "But I get along all right." Despite his submission to the macho world in which he lives ("I get mad quick, and I get over it quick"), his voice is a voice whose candor we trust. If we know at times that he is fooling himself we never feel that he is trying to fool us; this adds poignancy to some of his comments about himself, where the war between his outer toughness and his inner sensitivity seems to be proceeding without his notice. "For a tough kid," he says, "I had a bad habit of getting attached to people." In the early stages of the book, in fact, his teenage braggadocio is both entertaining and revealing:

I get annoyed when people want to kill me for some stupid little reason. Something big, and I don't mind it so much.

I'm always in dumb classes. In grade school they start separating dumb people from smart people and it only takes you a couple of years to figure out which one you are.

We can't help but feel that, with an attitude like this, he is not quite so dumb and uncomplicated as he makes himself out to be. As a result we warm up to him further.

In addition to this quality of immediacy, there are two other attributes of the first-person narrative that are of particular importance in Rumble Fish. The first is that it must often operate by suggestion. It must somehow transfer to the reader an awareness that is not yet present in the mind of the narrator. Rusty-James's relationship with his girlfriend Patty is a useful example of this. She treats him like a yo-yo, leading him on and then suddenly breaking up with him. Despite this treatment, he continues to believe that they share what he has been told is love. "I wondered if I loved anybody," he asks himself, and answers, "Patty, for sure." But in the very same paragraph we read: "Then I thought of people I could really count on, and couldn't come up with anybody."

In similar fashion, his preoccupation with appearance, with his looking like the Motorcycle Boy, or like his mother, and with sight, vision, builds up throughout the book until it pays catastrophic dividends at the end. We can feel it coming, because of the accumulation of evidence that has made us sensitive to it, but Rusty-James, whose "loyalty is his only vice," doesn't see it coming until it runs him down.

It is interesting to note that, since this story is so obviously a memory, recalled in its entirety in later times, there should be in the voice of the narrator some indication that he is speaking from an older, wiser vantage. It is common to stick phrases like "if I knew then what I know now," or "I couldn't have been more wrong," at strategic spots, usually near the end of chapters, to push the story along. Hinton in fact uses this device in The Outsiders; at the end of chapter 3 Ponyboy thinks: "Things gotta get better, I figured. They couldn't get worse. I was wrong."

In Rumble Fish there is a curious absence of this older-but-wiser voice. The reader accepts this inconsistency without complaint, in part because of the natural complicity of the reader and the author on behalf of the story, but there is more to it. There is a clear sense from the beginning chapter that Rusty-James is still not in complete possession of "the truth" of his story, that he has instead been running away from it. We get the sense that he is confronting this story for the first time, that it is as new to him as it is to us. The immediacy of the first-person narrative allows us to share along with him the pain and perplexity of his discovery.

The third quality of first-person narration that is important here is its ability to capture in the emotion of the narrator the mood of the times. The sense of confusion, of helplessness in the narrator renders the novel's theme of blind fate and destiny far more effectively than description ever could. As Rusty-James proceeds through the book his voice changes subtly. His apparent arrogance at the beginning ("Pain don't scare me much"…) becomes eroded, and the uncertainty of the murky world he sees around him begins to break through his rather fragile self-confidence. "All my life, all I had to worry about was real things, things you could touch, or punch, or run away from. I had been scared before, but it was always something real to be scared of—not having any money, or some big kid looking to beat you up, or wondering if the Motorcycle Boy was gone for good. I didn't like this being scared of something and not knowing exactly what it was. I couldn't fight it if I didn't know what it was."

At last he discovers that "nothing was like I thought it was … everything was changed," but in this he is not entirely correct. In fact nothing has changed, everything is exactly as it was; the only change is his awareness of it, an awareness that had crept into the reader's imagination much earlier, as the tone of the novel shifted ever so gradually from teenage braggadocio to human helplessness.

Because Rumble Fish is such an elusive, dreamy book, progress in the story is made by an accretion of awarenesses, a repetition of imagery. It is not so much a question of events turning uncontrollable as it is a growing awareness that events have always been out of the characters' control. The references to time and memory (as instigators of the characters' present lives), to the fleeting color and dreary monotone of life, to insanity and vision, to Greek tragedy and the idea of destiny, all of these gather strength as the novel progresses until the resolution of the story is quite beyond the ability of the characters to change it.

Like the colorful Siamese fighting fish, the Motorcycle Boy, and, to an extent we don't at first realize, his brother, Rusty-James, are trapped by a kind of biological necessity. Victims of their own destiny, of circumstances over which they had no say, their options for the future are very much the classical hero's options. They can, like the Motorcycle Boy, make the Promethean choice—to steal the fire, set free the fish—and suffer the inevitable Promethean punishment of the gods. Or, like Rusty-James, they can try to endure, but this latter choice—to live on in a world stripped of meaning, a world uncolored by hope—is in many ways the more difficult of the two. "I figured if I didn't see [Steve], I'd start forgetting again," Rusty-James says. "But it's been taking me longer than I thought it would."

It may take him the rest of his life.

Imagery and Metaphor

The most striking and persistent image of the book is certainly that of color and monotone, and of vision in general (with all that the word implies). Part of the reason that the movie version offended those of more delicate sensibility was that it took this central metaphor of the book and turned it into a much more visual presence in the film. The film is shot in black-and-white, mimicking the colorblind world of the Motorcycle Boy, with only the fish, bright red and blue, colored individually onto the screen. The result was either blatant exhibitionism (for those who hated the film) or movie magic (for those who loved it).

The contrast between color and monotone is much more subtly handled in the book. The Motorcycle Boy, that model of perfection in the world of Rumble Fish, is color-blind. His color blindness is not just a problem with red and green; it is total. The world to him looks like "Black-and-white TV, I guess … That's it." Hinton's decision to bestow upon this larger-than-life figure the curious imperfection of color blindness is, I think, inspired, and it reflects the enchantment of this particular book, as well as the levels of meaning with which it operates in the reader.

Our first reaction to the color blindness is that it sets the Motorcycle Boy apart from the ordinary. It is, after all, a relatively uncommon condition. Furthermore, it is a condition with hereditary connotations, the kind of malady, like hemophilia, that besets royal houses, a condition of imperfection that at the same time suggests a privileged blood line. And of course the question of heredity, of propinquity, is a recurring obsession with this family, and with Rusty-James in particular. He is forever wondering who looks like whom in the family, and who has inherited what from each of his parents. It is of extreme importance to him that he find a permanent spot in the hopelessly dispersed and unresponsive family lineage represented by his absent mother and his functionally absent father.

Rusty-James yearns most of all for a merging with his brother, but the color blindness is a clear and constant reminder of how dissimilar they are. Rusty-James loves color. He loves the colored lights of the city because for him they represent life in all its vibrant potential. He's proud of the uncommon color of his hair, "an odd shade of dark red, like black-cherry pop." In one of his better lines, early in the book, he says, "I like blond girls. I don't care how they get that way."

Color is an important symbol of life for Rusty-James but he would give it up in a minute (just as he would kill to have someone finally say that he resembles his brother) for the more profound message of color blindness. The color blindness of the Motorcycle Boy is a sign that he is one of the Elect, the special ones, and Rusty-James mistakes this sign of exceptionality for the designation he truly seeks, that of belonging. Rusty-James will grasp at straws, and it is only at the end of the book, when in an earth-shattering moment he is allowed to participate in his brother's tragic imperfection, that the bleak reality of the Motorcycle Boy's vision becomes apparent to him.

All of this would have justified Hinton's use of the motif of color blindness and assured it a central place in the novel. The weight of the metaphor goes deeper, though, and it finally defines the world of Rumble Fish as surely as it marks the character of the Motorcycle Boy.

"Sometimes," the Motorcycle Boy says, "it seems to me that I can remember colors, 'way back when I was a little kid. That was a long time ago." This wistful comment suggests that the Motorcycle Boy's color blindness is not a congenital condition at all. It suggests instead that this vision of his is something he's attained, a product of his life. Whether his attainment of this vision is to be considered a gift or a deprivation is not clear. What is clear is that, in Rumble Fish at least, the world of light and color that Rusty-James so admires is exposed as an illusion, a child's vision, and the monotone world of the Motorcycle Boy is the reality.

The Motorcycle Boy is the classical hero turned upside down. He's the "perfect knight," the "pagan prince," who sees into the heart of things, "the laughter shining dark out of his eyes." "[The Motorcycle Boy] saw things other people couldn't see, and laughed when nothing was funny. He had strange eyes—they made me think of a two way mirror. Like you could feel somebody on the other side watching you, but the only reflection you saw was your own."

Like Mr. Kurtz in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the Motorcycle Boy has seen too deeply into the secrets of things, into a reality that is gray and desperate. He has seen too much to be able to live a normal life in the world of colored lights and party sounds. In fact, like the tragic hero of that earlier book, he has seen too much to be able to live at all.

The book itself gradually takes on his vision. Things become murky, and motivations blurred. It culminates in Rusty-James's finally getting what he has so devoutly wished for, a merging of his identity with that of his idolized brother, in the penultimate scene by the river. This scene is rendered in such a way that one can only see it as a case of the curtain being suddenly torn open, revealing the brutal reality behind it. "The next thing I knew I was thrown up against a police car and frisked. I stared straight ahead at the flashing light. There was something really wrong with it. I was scared to think about what was wrong with it, but I knew, anyway. It was gray…. Everything was black and white and gray. It was as quiet as a graveyard … I was in a glass bubble and everyone else was outside it and I'd be alone like that for the rest of my life."

What Do I Read Next?

• Hinton's The Outsiders (1967) tells the story of the rivalry between two gangs.
• In That Was Then, This Is Now (1971), Hinton depicts two foster brothers who drift apart as one becomes involved with drugs and crime and the other focuses on school.
• Hinton's Tex (1979) describes two boys who can't rely on their unstable father and turn to each other for support.
• Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War (1974) is a story of a boy who resists both a gang and the authority figures at his school.
• Paul Zindel's The Pigman (1975) depicts two young people, alienated from their families, who turn to an old man for support and become involved in a tragedy.

Hinton's deft handling of imagery and symbol does not confine itself to color and vision. The river, which divides the main part of the city from the boys' neighborhood, becomes a powerful symbol of their life, their world. The Motorcycle Boy stares into the river, as if looking for messages. Rusty-James thinks that the river stinks; he'd just as soon get away from it. The contrast to the river is, of course, the ocean, which the Motorcycle Boy had the chance to see (and didn't) in California and which entrances Rusty-James. "No kidding," he says of the Motorcycle Boy's trip to California. "The ocean and everything" "Kid," the Motorcycle Boy responds, cryptically, "I never got past the river." It is significant that when the Motorcycle Boy decides to liberate the rumble fish from their glass bowls (recalling the glass bubble in which he lives) he wants to see "if they'd act that way (destroy one another) in the river." His dramatic attempt to release the Siamese fighting fish is an effort not to save them, or even to free them, really; it is merely the preparation for the real test, the trial by combat. The Motorcycle Boy is not much interested in their salvation; he is more interested in measuring how their colorful belligerence, their legendary powers of self-destruction perform in the real world, in his monotone world of the river. Ironically, neither he nor the fish are permitted to complete this test. Rusty-James is there to watch. "I was at a dead run at the first shot, and almost to the river by the second. So I was there when they turned him over, and he was smiling, and the little rumble fish were flipping and dying around him, still too far from the river." This is an impressive image, reminiscent of the Viking funeral in Beau Geste (the name in French means beautiful, but empty, act), the larger-than-life hero and his totem dying together on the banks of that dark river.

The totemic relationship between the Motorcycle Boy and the rumble fish brings us to one last observation on the sustained imagery of the novel. There is in Rumble Fish a continued effort to imply animal surrogates for nearly all the main characters. Hinton had done this in other novels (Mark the lion, notably, in That Was Then, This Is Now), but there is in no other Hinton book the relentless identification of people with specific animals. Early on, Rusty-James notes that "the animals reminded me of people. Steve looked like a rabbit. He had … a face like a real sincere rabbit." This is a descriptive image, used once, but Hinton does not seem to want us to forget this identification. On the roof after the hubcap escapade Steve looks like a rabbit again, and, later, after his mother has gone into the hospital, he "looked like a sincere rabbit about to take on a pack of wolves."

The other characters have their own animal descriptors. The Motorcycle Boy "looked like a panther or something." When Steve shows his displeasure at something the Motorcycle Boy says, he looks like "a rabbit scowling at a panther." The picture of the Motorcycle Boy in the magazine "made him look like a wild animal out of the woods."

The Motorcycle Boy is, fittingly, associated with the panther, exotic and sleek, while Rusty-James is compared most often with a more familiar and domestic creature: a dog. He feels "the hairs of my neck starting to bristle, like a dog's." After he's nearly killed by muggers he makes "a grunt that sounded like a kicked dog." This identification is part of his self-image, and it is revealing to note that, among all the animals he could have chosen, he chooses the common, loyal, unremarkable dog. Even sadder is the animal the Motorcycle Boy assigns to him, the chameleon, which changes its very appearance to suit its environment and thus belongs everywhere, and nowhere.

Besides being graphic and descriptive (who can help picturing Steve as the sincere rabbit or the Motorcycle Boy as the sleek panther?), the association with animals reemphasizes the primacy of fate and destiny in the lives of the characters. What choice does an animal have in being what it is? Hinton's continued introduction of animal references also prefigures the final scene, where the Motorcycle Boy frees all the animals and casts his lot with the rumble fish.

At first glance the rumble fish seem to come out of nowhere. Their existence isn't even mentioned until the very end of the book. How is it that they are suddenly thrust into a position of such crucial importance, prominent enough to give the book its title?

The answer is that their role has been suggested all along, their existence predicted as surely as if Cassandra, the Motorcycle Boy's girlfriend (who is associated with cats, the animal symbol of prophecy), had gone into a white-eyed trance and begun raving about them. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, if she had. In Greek mythology Cassandra is given the gift of prophecy and then punished by Apollo, who ensures that nothing she says, no disaster she correctly predicts, will be believed by anyone who hears her. In Rumble Fish, where destiny is forever unalterable, the mythical punishment remains in effect.

Destiny and Biological Necessity

There are characters in all the Hinton novels who appear to be victims of a destiny they are not able to escape. This destiny may be the product of an accident of birth or a quirk of society (or a combination of both) but whatever the cause, it is usually final, and often fatal. Dallas Winston in The Outsiders is doomed from the first time we meet him; he can't escape his fate because it is a part of himself. Neither, apparently, can Mark in That Was Then, This Is Now, although his case is a little less satisfactory. In her fourth book, Tex, the entire cast of characters lines up behind placards reading "Those Who Go and Those Who Stay"; once it's decided which they are (a gypsy fortune-teller may make the decision) their fate is sealed. "Will and fate," Travis asks himself in Taming the Star Runner, "Which one had the biggest say in your life?"

A similar situation exists in Rumble Fish. Rusty-James, whom Steve compares to "a ball in a pinball machine," has given up on his ability to make decisions about his life before the story even begins. Biff Wilcox wants to kill him; Patty wants to break up with him; nothing he can do about it. That's just the way things are. It is instructive to remember just how trivial the so-called causes of these two major rifts are. In the first case he is almost killed as a result of "something [he] said to Anita at school." Who's Anita, anyway? In the second case he loses Patty, someone he professes to love, over an incident at the lake that is of such importance that it occupies one full sentence in the book. Why doesn't he fight back? Why doesn't he even try to make his case with Patty?

He doesn't try because he has come to believe that it won't do any good. Things are what they are, and nothing he can do will change that.

Rusty-James does have aspirations, of course, but they involve magical transformations rather than effort on his part. It is his hope that he will someday be like the Motorcycle Boy, and he bases this hope on heredity. Biology is destiny for Rusty-James, or at least he hopes it is.

"We look just like each other," I said.

"Who?"

"Me an' the Motorcycle Boy."

"Naw."

"Yeah, we do."

The Motorcycle Boy was the coolest person in the whole world. Even if he hadn't been my brother he would have been the coolest person in the whole world.

And I was going to be just like him.

The irony, unfortunately, is that he succeeds. Biology becomes destiny, although it is necessarily an imperfect copy. Steve makes the connection in the two frame chapters at the beginning and end of the book:

"Rusty-James … you gave me a real scare when I first saw you. I thought I'd flipped out. You know who I thought you were for a second? … You know who you look just like?

"I never thought you would, but you do. You don't sound like him, though. Your voice is completely different. It's a good thing you never went back. You'd probably give half the people in the neighborhood a heart attack."

Belonging and Being Alone

Rusty-James, the tough kid with the bad habit of getting attached to people, is one of Hinton's most ingenuous, most likable creations. He is indeed as loyal as a pet dog, and equally incapable of guile. He can't even play poker because (though he doesn't agree) his friends can read his every emotion in his face. It is therefore all the more tragic when he is transfigured (in an operation only partly successful, like a botched job done by a mad scientist in a horror movie) into the cold, featureless persona of the Motorcycle Boy. All he ever wanted was to belong. Somewhere. Anywhere.

His need for other people, his yearning to belong somewhere, permeates the consciousness of the book. Hinton's characters have always had a bad start at belonging—most of them have dead, absent, or ineffectual parents—but for none of them is the need for a place in life, amongst other people, as strong as it is for Rusty-James. For Rusty-James it is almost a matter of life and death.

I can't stand being by myself. That is the only thing I am honest-to-God scared of.

"I don't like bein' by myself. I mean, man, I can't stand it. Makes me feel tight, like I'm being choked all over."

There is an ostensible explanation for this fear. It is given by the Motorcycle Boy, in his sometimes exasperating, emotionless monotone. "When you were two years old, and I was six, Mother decided to leave. She took me with her. The old man went on a three-day drunk when he found out. He's told me that was the first time he ever got drunk. I imagined he liked it. Anyway, he left you alone in the house for those three days. We didn't live where we do now. It was a very large house…. I suppose you developed your fear of being alone then."

A two-year-old left in the house alone for three days could develop a great many things, including death. The Motorcycle Boy's explanation is a little too pat, a little too convenient. It was a mistake on Hinton's part to imagine that we needed this kind of traumatic antecedent for the pervasive yearning to belong that exists in Rusty-James's character. The fact of his mother's abandonment of them would have been quite enough; Rusty-James succeeds on his own, in the strength and pure longing of his voice, to convince us of the impact this abandonment has had on him.

The reverse of belonging is, naturally, being alone, and there is no one more alone than the Motorcycle Boy, living in a glass bubble which Rusty-James inherits at the end of the book. At the risk of being redundant, we must once again mention the irony: Rusty-James, whose very nature is built around the need for people (he makes lists of people he likes, when he's alone, because "it makes me feel good to think of people I like—not so alone") is led by his reverence for the Motorcycle Boy to the precise condition that terrifies him. He is truly and finally alone.

The Perfect Knight and the Misfit

Which brings us to the Motorcycle Boy. The firstborn son of a morganatic marriage between a mysterious, absent, movie-actress mother and a cerebral, formal, lawyer-turned-drunkard father, the Motorcycle Boy comes stocked with all manner of mythic associations. His name, "like a title or something," his ability to crack Biff Wilcox's wrist "like a matchstick," his inherited imperfec-tion, his profound and eerie effect on everyone he encounters, everything about the Motorcycle Boy is of unearthly stature. When the Motorcycle Boy is expelled from school, Rusty-James wants to know why.

"How come you got expelled?" I asked.

"Perfect tests."

You could always feel the laughter around him, just under the surface, but this time it came to the top and he grinned. It was a flash, like lightning, far off.

"I handed in perfect semester tests."

Everything about the Motorcycle Boy is preternatural, even his laughter, especially his laughter. "As far as I could tell," Rusty-James says, "he never paid any attention to anything except to laugh at it."

"That cat is a prince, man," says the black pool player during his match with the Motorcycle Boy. "He is royalty in exile." This summation is echoed by the boys' father, in his "perfect knight" speech, recalling the archetypal perfect knight, Sir Galahad, from the Holy Grail legend. Galahad is also gifted with uncommon vision, with the ability to see into the secrets of things, "those things that the heart of mortal man cannot conceive nor tongue relate." Like the Motorcycle Boy, the character of Sir Galahad is often perceived to be "a cardboard saint, [whose] austere virtue excludes humanity." Galahad succeeds in his quest for the Holy Grail—only a perfect knight can accomplish this—but the Motorcycle Boy's quest is directionless, his goal unidentified, and whether his smile at the end is an indication of the success or the failure of his private quest is open to debate.

The implications, for both the Motorcycle Boy and Rusty-James, of their father's "perfect knight" speech are worth considering. "Russell-James," the father says, "every now and then a person comes along who has a different view of the world than does the usual person…. [The Motorcycle Boy] is merely miscast in a play. He would have made a perfect knight, in a different century, or a very good pagan prince in a time of heroes. He was born in the wrong era, on the wrong side of the river, with the ability to do anything and finding nothing he wants to do."

After this speech Rusty-James says, in his wide-eyed, great-hearted innocence, once again, "I think I'm gonna look just like him when I get older. Whaddya think?" His father is shocked by this pronouncement, and looks at him as if seeing him for the first time. What he sees startles him, and then reduces him to pity. "You poor child," he says. "You poor baby."

The flip side of the perfect knight is the misfit. The father's "perfect knight" speech could just as easily be called his "misfit" speech, and it applies to Rusty-James as well. He, too, is miscast in the play, born in the wrong era. He, too, is out of touch with the times, though his options are fewer and his "time of heroes" is more recent. With typical misunderstanding, Rusty-James locates this heroic time with the era of the gangs, just recently passed, which he imagines would have provided him with meaning, belonging. He even romanticizes that time out of its own chronology; for him the heroic era was "a long time ago, when there were gangs."

His misapprehension of the reality of the gang era doesn't make him any less the misfit in the present time. The lot of the misfit is never a pleasant one. In Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" there is a chilling, murderous character known only as The Misfit. There is nothing particularly heroic about The Misfit; the only startling thing about him is the utter amorality and the cold expressionlessness with which he goes about the business of murdering, one by one, the members of a family whose car has broken down. At the end of the story The Misfit engages the grandmother of the family in an extended, almost overrational explanation of why he lives as he does in a world where the possibility of redemption, of meaning, is so uncertain. The grandmother, who is doddering in and out of reality, mistakes him in a visionary moment for one of her children and she reaches out to touch him. He recoils in horror and kills her. The last words of the story, spoken in a final attempt at self-justification, by The Misfit, are "It's no real pleasure in life."

The Motorcycle Boy couldn't have said it any better.

The Problem of the Motorcycle Boy

Steve says of the Motorcycle Boy, "[H]e is the only person I have ever met who is like somebody out of a book. To look like that, and be good at everything, and all that." Thus does one of the book's characters state the main problem about the Motorcycle Boy: People in books should not themselves appear to come out of books; that's too much of a jump for any character to make, and the Motorcycle Boy, who doesn't make the river at the book's end, doesn't make the jump into fully realized existence either. He's just too distant, too ide-alized, too detached, and finally, too inhuman to be taken seriously as a character. Robert Berkvist, in his otherwise not very probing review of Rumble Fish in the New York Times Book Review, makes the entirely accurate observation that the Motorcycle Boy "clanks through the story like a symbol never quite made flesh."

If Hinton thought to introduce some humanity into the character by means of the color blindness (and it is not my belief that she did), the result is quite the opposite. His color blindness, along with his occasional deafness and his general other-worldliness, only serve to set him off further from the rest of humanity. His detachment is so total that he ignores the person closest to him, the person who truly cares about him, his brother, Rusty-James.

Numerous times in the novel Rusty-James makes statements like "one of the few times he ever paid any attention to me," "he never paid much attention to me," "in case the Motorcycle Boy forgot I was with him," and "the Motorcycle Boy was watching me, amused but not interested." The key is that given the depth of feeling the reader has built up around the character of Rusty-James, we should hate this Motorcycle Boy character for the way he treats his hero-struck younger brother. In fact, though, we don't feel much about the Motorcycle Boy, pro or con. We don't feel much because he's not real; it would be like trying to raise an emotion about a lounge chair or a suitcase.

There is the matter of his speech, for one thing. How are we to deal with a character who talks like this? "It's a bit of a burden to be Robin Hood, Jesse James and the Pied Piper. I'd just as soon stay a neighborhood novelty, if it's all the same to you. It's not that I couldn't handle a larger scale, I just plain don't want to."

Hinton tries to have Rusty-James explain this away by saying, "Sometimes, usually on the streets, he talked normal. Then sometimes he'd go on like he was reading out of a book, using words and sentences nobody ever used when they were just talking." This just doesn't wash; it's too unreal. The only useful purpose to this kind of speech is that it makes the heredity case once again; it links the Motorcycle Boy with his father, who talks the same way. Compare the father's quizzical "What strange lives you two lead" with the Motorcycle Boy's "What a funny situation … I wonder what I'm doing here," after Rusty-James is injured in the mugging scene. (A few pages earlier, when Rusty-James thought he was dying, he thinks, "I pictured my father at my funeral saying, 'What a strange way to die.'" Rusty-James has a talent for capturing the essence of character.)

In Hinton's defense, the problem she bit off when she chose to create the Motorcycle Boy is a problem that not many authors have solved well. The problem of the Motorcycle Boy is the problem of trying to create a larger-than-life character—the saint, the seer, the mystic—and at the same time animating that character with the common spark of humanity we all recognize. (She makes a better choice in Taming the Star Runner by placing the symbolic weight on the horse, a character she doesn't have to worry about making human.) Not many writers are able to pull this off. In recent American writing an example of one who tried mightily (and ultimately failed) is J. D. Salinger, with his character Seymour Glass (another idolized older brother). Seymour Glass, who appears in a number of Salinger's books, finally becomes such a prisoner of his spiritual detachment and doomed purity that the reader can't wait for him to do himself in and get it over with. Like Sir Galahad (or David Bowie's Major Tom), Seymour ascends so far into the stratosphere that it becomes clear that he is never coming back down.

Ordinarily this should prove fatal to a novel, a major character who fails to break through two dimensions into at least the suggestion of a rounded existence, but not so in Rumble Fish. Rumble Fish succeeds in spite of the Motorcycle Boy because Rumble Fish is not the Motorcycle Boy's story at all (despite Hinton's comment that "the Motorcycle Boy haunted me" and that he was the reason she forced herself to come back to the book, after it had been put aside for so long). It's Rusty-James's story, actually, and from the point of view of the reader's allegiance it is the Motorcycle Boy who plays squire to Rusty-James's knight, and not the other way around.

We can forgive the clanking of the Motorcycle Boy because our attention is focused on Rusty-James. The spark of humanity that is missing in the Motorcycle Boy is a roaring fire in Rusty-James, and it is our concern with this conflagration that gives the book its impact. We imagine that the main thrust of the story is about the Motorcycle Boy, but in this we are fooled (intellectually, not emotionally) by a sleight of hand. As we have seen, upon closer inspection, all the themes of the book, even those having to do with perfection and perfect knighthood, are concerns of the character of Rusty-James as well as the Motorcycle Boy. If we sometimes cringe at the behavior of the Motorcycle Boy, we never look away, because in fact it is never the Motorcycle Boy we are truly looking at. What we are looking at is a distorted mirror, "a distorted glass" reflection of Rusty-James.

In the end we respond to Rumble Fish in a much deeper way than we do to That Was Then, This Is Now. It's an emotional, almost a physical response, as opposed to the more rational, intellectual reaction that the other book prompted. Whatever its defects, whatever its ambitions only partly achieved, Rumble Fish works as a novel. In its appeal to the mythic element in life, in its living, breathing creation of the pilgrim character of Rusty-James, the book works. And there is a name usually given to this kind of success: It is called art.

Source: Jay Daly, "Rumble Fish," in Presenting S. E. Hinton, Twayne, 1987, pp. 68-84.

Sources

Abramson, Jane, Review of Rumble Fish, in School Library Journal, October 1975, p. 106.

Chaston, Joel D., "Hinton, S(usan) E(loise)," in St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers, 2d ed., edited by Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast, St. James Press, 1999, pp. 376-78.

Daly, Jay, Presenting S. E. Hinton, Twayne, 1987.

Fisher, Margery, Review of Rumble Fish, in Growing Point, May 1976, p. 289.

Hinton, S. E., Rumble Fish Production Notes, No Weather Films, 1993.

Hinton, S. E., and Lisa Ehrlich, "Advice from a Penwoman," in Seventeen, November 1981, p. 32.

Malone, Michael, "Tough Puppies," in Nation, March 8, 1986, pp. 276-80.

Powell, Jane, "Urban Guerrillas," in Times Literary Supplement, October 30, 1970, p. 125.

Review of Rumble Fish, in Publishers Weekly, July 28, 1975, p. 122.

Further Reading

Corliss, Richard, "Rumble Fish," Film review, in Time, October 24, 1983, p. 90.

Corliss reviews the Francis Ford Coppola film version of the novel.

de Montreville, Doris, and Elizabeth J. Crawford, eds., Fourth Book of Junior Authors, H. W. Wilson, 1978.

This reference work examines Hinton's life and early work.

Lyons, Gene, "On Tulsa's Mean Streets," in Newsweek, October 11, 1982, p. 105.

Lyons takes a look at the city where Hinton grew up and how it appears in her fiction.

Silvey, Anita, Review of Rumble Fish, in Horn Book, November-December 1975, p. 601.

Silvey provides a review and discussion of Hinton's book.

Stanek, Lou Willett, A Teacher's Guide to the Paperback Editions of the Novels of S. E. Hinton, Dell, 1980.

This guide examines Hinton's novels from a teacher's perspective.

Sutherland, Zena, "The Teen-Speaks," in Saturday Review, January 27, 1968, p. 34.

Sutherland examines Hinton's depiction of teenagers in this article.