Rumble Fish

“My memory’s screwed up some. If somebody says something to remind me, I can remember things. But if I’m left alone I don’t seem to be able to.”

Rusty-James shows signs of repressing traumatic memories. He claims to have no consistent narrative of his past, instead stating that he only remembers through the verbal prompts of others. On the one hand, his memory troubles set him up as the typical unreliable narrator. However, the frankness of his tone and his colloquial diction give the impression that he speaks directly from his experience, and this makes the reader trust him. 

“I could tell he was trying not to look for the other scars. They’re not real noticeable, but they’re not that hard to see either, if you know where to look.”

Rusty-James notices that his long-lost friend Steve cannot help but fixate on his facial scars. The scars, which are neither distinctive nor invisible, are a metaphor for Rusty-James’s violent past, which is distant and obvious simultaneously. Steve, who wants to reminisce, looks at the scars to confirm that he has in fact found his old friend, despite the fact that they are not in the neighborhood where they grew up. The scars indicate that Rusty-James cannot outrun his past despite his wish to forget it. 

“There hadn’t been a real honest-to-goodness gang fight around here in years. As far as I knew, Steve had never been in one. I could never understand people being scared of things they didn’t know nothing about.”

At the beginning of his reminiscence, Rusty-James remembers that he was eager to see the type of gang fight that had made the Motorcycle Boy’s reputation.