Born as Ruby Hanks, Daphne attempts to put her troubled childhood behind her by becoming the white Daphne Monet. To Mouse, Albright, and perhaps Frank, identity is something to be experienced, not questioned, shaped, or resisted.ĭaphne presents an alternate view of identity as a social construct, subject to manipulation and even willful distortion. Here, low-key black detective Easy Rawlins, fired from his job at a defense plant, agrees to locate femme fatale Daphne Monet for white gangster DeWitt Albrightand of course Finds more than he bargained for. American literature features some killer first lines, and here’s why Walter Mosley belongs right up there with the best spinners. Walter Mosley’s debut novel presented Easy Rawlins as a guide to the complexities of life as a Black man in post-WWII Los Angeles. Albright subscribes to a similar philosophy: Not only does he remind Easy of Mouse, he revealingly asks Easy whether Frank Green hesitated “for even a second” before killing a man (61). Raymond Chandler meets Richard Wright in this not-quite-successful first novel set in 1948 L.A. The Enduring Appeal of ‘Devil in a Blue Dress’. Mouse, by contrast, lives in the moment: He translates his received identity, including physical impulses, into action with little or no forethought or reflection. Mouse, for instance, advises Easy to “accept what he is” (209), implying that Easy has forgotten or willfully ignored certain aspects of his identity, presumably referring to his birth into a poor Black family. Some characters embody and accept a view of identity as something that is inherited and accepted rather than selected or deliberately sculpted.
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