Ray, you Copy Cat!
So, seeing as both Ray and Danny are injured within the span of 30 pages, I think there’s a clear connection being made here. Earlier on, Ray insisted that he was none of the characters in his story, and implied that he heard the tale from someone else. If this is really the case, and Ray is writing about the imaginary world it seems strange that the two protagonists would become seriously injured at the same time. I though it was exceptionally odd that Danny falls out of the window first chronologically, followed by Ray’s surprising shanking by Tom-Tom. It almost seemed to me (in the creepy PoMo gothic horror sort of way) that Danny’s injury caused Ray’s. (Secret Window moment, anyone?)
I also noticed that Danny pays an awful lot of attention to the stolen hunting knife he has put very close to his heart (171), just as Ray spends a lot of time remarking on the shank used by Tom-Tom: “It was one of those nasty shanks, she says, which I know means a Christmas tree. Christmas trees have prongs angled along the sides so when you pull one out it brings a good chunk of your guts out with it” (181). The focus on weapons and their proximity to the body seems to be a recurring theme with both Danny and Ray. Is one inspiration for the other? By that, I mean, does Ray focus more upon his own wounding after writing about Danny’s fascination with a knife, or does Ray write about Danny’s fascination with the blade because of his injury?
Another cross-textual connection was Danny’s fear of being trapped in the small town in the middle of who knows where with only one way out in the form of a once daily train (Parole/release). Then, on 179, Mick explains: “Howard’s doing me the favor…If I violate my parole, he has to deal with bringing me back and notifying the board” (179), echoing Danny’s realization that “Except it had always been–he was trapped here. He was Howard’s prisoner.” The use of prison imagery and prisoner/parolee relationships must stem directly from Ray’s prison experience. For a further doppelganger-type connection, check this out:
Mick turned to him. You looked in a mirror lately?
Not if I can help it. (174)
Mirrors, being the classic symbols of doubling that they are, might imply that Ray is looking at himself through Danny in this section. So the final question is, is the process of writing reflective of one’s self, or is it just a way of reimagining oneself?
