For this “discussion” please continue the character mapping we began in class. Your task is to name a character (both central and marginal) from The Scene and explain some basic biographical information about that character. 
Next, for a deeper analysis, make a comment about how the representation of this character relates to American national identity, a theme from the 1960s, or masculinity. Finally, note a page or passage that you want to discuss in class that relates to this character in some way. Important: try not to repeat characters that other students are discussing. We want to compose a complete list of different characters.
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Frankie is a seventeen-year-old, newly turned heroine addict. I find Frankie’s character to be very interesting because he so desperately wants to fit-in and be cool, however in Cooper’s writing the reader can see Frankie’s hesitation and anxiety. He tries to become a connector between The Man and Coke, however because he is just a boy and because he is white, he is not taken seriously. However, I do wonder whether or not he wants to be taken seriously. He seems to be extremely naive and nervous. For example, when him and his friend were going to The Man’s house, they immediately backed down when Sylvia told them she had a gun. However, most would believe that she wouldn’t kill them right in front of The Man’s house when the Rollers (Patterson and Davis) were in the neighborhood. I think Frankie’s character is a clear representation of the youth rebellion and counterculture in the 1960s. He talks about how is attendance at school was steadily declining and he is getting more involved in the drug culture at the time. However, he still does not exactly fit in to the drug society in this urban landscape, mostly due to his race. This fact also plays at the racial tensions of the time and the “us” and “them” mentality. I think that many of the other African-American characters in the book have an even more difficult time trying to trust Frankie because of his race.
Nina is a short, young, overweight prostitute whose pimp is Rudy Black; she lives at Lou’s with him (Rudy). She is very obedient to Rudy when in his presence, as she is truly frightened that he will hurt her is she doesn’t relinquish all her power (and money) to him. Nina’s representation relates to both the theme of urban chaos from the 1960s AND masculinity. Nina is a prostitute, and this makes me think of urban chaos, which in my mind is basically the hustle and bustle of city life, where almost anything goes; and, prostitution is a pretty good example of this type of anything goes, no-holds-barred kind of lawlessness. Nina can also very easily be compared to other very masculine characters, such as Rudy, in that Nina can easily be seen as staunchly non-masculine; but she is also not very feminine. She IS, however, masculine in the sense that there is nothing she won’t do for money, if that us a masculine quality, doing WHATEVER it takes; this is how she could possibly also be seen as masculine. Two pages that I want to discuss in class involving Nina are 279 and (through) 281.
Bertha is a big, black woman of the scene who sells heroin to junkies on the Scene. She is the mother of two daughteres, ages 14 and 9 from her past husband named Howie and now has a boyfriend in jail named Dell. Even though her boyfriend uses heroin, she does not on account of she wants to be a good role model for her daughters. Her representation relates to the theme of counterculture in that she goes against the stereotype of the mother being just a housewife in the 1960’s. She is actually out on the streets selling drugs to support her family so that they can have a good life, which is the role that is usually typical of the male figure. She is also very mothering and passionate, however, in that she cares a lot about her daughters and their well-being. For example, when Bertha thinks her older daughter, Edna, was smoking pot in the room, she flips out and slaps her daughter across the face on account of all she can think about is Edna’s future. Once she realizes that the weed smell is coming from someone else’s apartment, all Bertha can think of is how she could take the hurt away from Edna’s eyes. This is on pages 112-113.
Since no one has talked about Rudy I guess I will post on him. Rudy, as we said in class is a pimp, a pusher, a middleman, and also a hit man. Rudy plays a lot of roles in the scene and really is involved on many levels. His character is very interesting and complex and he shows different faces to different characters. In the beginning of the book we learn a lot about Rudy’s complex emotional state. To begin, Rudy is a young black man. I think he is about 21 years old. He tries desperately to show his toughness and his masculinity even though he has several soft spots. We see when he interacts with one of his prostitutes that he shows an excess of masculine aggression. Rudy yells at the hooker for not working and talking and makes the hooker call him daddy. So we can see that Rudy portrays his masculine identity to the women he has working for him. This masculine aggressiveness is contrasted by the next few pages early on when Rudy goes to kill flip and has tons of internal conflict and struggle within him and has to keep himself together after he kills flip. The pages where flip is killed are very grotesque and Rudy has to leave and run back to the scene where the text describes the lights as trying to save him from his darkness. I think this is a really touching moment in the book because this young character is caught up in the urban chaos and it has spilled over into his life. He is clearly unhappy, he clearly needs to take out his aggression on others, and the only comfort he has is his masculine persona that he puts on in front of others. The urban chaos that is the drug culture has spilled over into Rudy’s life and made an inner chaos.
Constance is a young black woman and a junkie. She is in some kind of relationship with Ace that involves her giving her body to him in exchange for a steady supply of heroin. Constance has come from a better past, in which she had a promising career, a caring mother and a respectable, loving boyfriend. She describes her initial encounter with heroin, introduced to her by a man, a musician, from a different world then the one in which she had previously been sheltered. And thus she became addicted to heroin, and gave birth to a still born baby. The man who got her hooked, Newton, eventually left her in his pursuit of music. Constance does not want to prostitute herself for heroin, and describes her relationship with Ace as somehow avoiding this. Yet she is repelled by him, and only allows him access to her body because she knows without him she will not get her fix. She has only one client instead of many.
The character of Constance represents the fracturing of a national image and drug culture in the way that she has completely broken off communication with anyone from her old life because of her addiction to heroin. She looks back to her past with longing, she wants that reality for herself again, and yet she is caught in the cycle of drug addiction.
She also represents the feminine in terms of her strong ties to sexuality, and how that relates to the men around her. Her body is offered up as a commodity to men in exchange for the drugs she is addicted to. Heroin becomes the equivalent of romance and sexuality. One specific passage makes this point well:
A long time ago she had been a very fast girl, quick to catch on, popular in the girls’ club at school, sought after, kissed and petted and loved. Right now it seemed almost silly that she should be hooked, with scars on her arms, with nothing but a housedress on because she felt too lazy and sluggish to dress in the mornings, with an ugly little black man who held the bag containing all the riches and loves and romances she had ever dreamed of, held them in condensed version, powdered form…pp95.
Mance Davis is one of the black detectives who is the senior of the pair. He can be characterized as a hardboiled, traditional, hypermasculine character. He tries to belittle his partner Patterson because of his youth, inexperience, and college education. He seems to feel that his experience gives him more knowledge than academia has for Patterson. We see this when he demeans Patterson’s educatin on page 32. He says, “What about that Georgie Barris, college boy?†Instead of using Patterson’s education as a compliment to Davis’s lack of college education he mocks it. Davis is pretty defensive and worried about his position of authority. We also see this on page 32 when he says, “All you bastards think I’m too old, that’s what you think, isn’t it? All you young guys! You think you know so much ‘cause you been to college- but brother I had to rough my way!†Davis sees his “street smarts†as more valuable than a college education. Davis may be upset about the younger guys coming in, but is still pretty confident that he’ll prevail in the end because of his knowledge of those around him. He’s been working in “the scene†for a long time, and knows when to pick his battles. Davis is trying to combat the drug culture of the 1960’s in relation to the important themes.
Carlisle was the director of the neighborhood youth center. Andy thought of him as a “Big, fathead chump…He never did anything for anybody, didn’t everybody know that? All he was doing was pushing people around, building up the muscles and all that crap. Carlisle didn’t know that everybody just came around to the Center evenings in order to dance and run tummies with the broads.†(p 122-123). It then mentions how Andy still liked Carlisle a little bit, the “strength and sureness†along with the “thing in his eyes that showed he wasn’t afraid of anyone.†Carlisle talked to Andy when he was 16 about using drugs. Carlisle attempted to counsel Andy and tell him to stay away from drugs. This seems as though Andy may be a bit jealous of Carlisle and resent his confidant attitude.
Andy Hodden, nicknamed “Flip,” is a young addict, about nineteen, who seems never to have wanted to be part of the Scene, but also seems to have no will to leave it behind. He resents his now-dead alcoholic father, and lives with his sister, who is determined to stick with him despite Andy’s urging to marry her boyfriend and leave him to his habit. He is an informer for the police and so is avoided by most on the Scene who have been around long enough to know better. He informs on a pusher named Popeye, and before he can testify, dies from a hot shot given to him by Rudy under orders of The Man. He had just gone clean a few days before his death, after meeting and falling in love with Taylor Mayo. Andy’s character is a tragic one, who garners some sympathy for the urban youth trapped in the drug culture he grew up in. He resents his upbringing, and his hatred for his alcoholic father is mentioned frequently, often in the context of Andy’s own addiction. Andy finds himself echoing his father in word as well as action, repeating over and over, “What right?” He is rebellious against any sort of authority, railing against his sister, his father, and even Carlisle from the Youth Center, and yet he is too apathetic to take any charge of his own life. I found his conversation with his sister on pages 118-121 especially interesting, for she is the person closest to him and his interactions with her provide some insight that we do not glean from Andy’s actions or from the narrator. He becomes something of a sympathetic character when his care for his sister shines through in this conversation, but in the same conversation we see the anger in him that he holds toward his upbringing and toward authority, and some evidence of how far down his anger and apathy have dragged him.
Detective Virgil Patterson is partners with Mance Davis, and is portrayed as the younger new officer. Davis feels threatened by the presence of Virgil, because Patterson is young, and fresh out of college. Patterson thinks he should get respect right away, but Davis does not feel that Patterson’s college credentials are deserving of any respect, because Davis says \you think you know so much because you went to college, but brother, i had to rough my way.\ Virgil Patterson can be seen as representing the rise of the educated youth, while Davis can be seen as someone who has become a little sour trying to hold on to the old ways. At first Patterson wants to prove Davis wrong and rub it in his face, then he realizes how much he actually needs him and his somewhat dated methods, and almost feels bad for pushing the mans buttons. While Patterson can be seen as a headstrong youth with a lot of ego, he also realizes how much he can learn from the hardboiled character of Mance davis.
Thomas “Ace” Carson — A lonely needy guy who found a junkie for a girlfriend (Connie aka Constance). He has aspirations of makin enough off of Puck, his supplier, to provide Connie with the amount neccesary to step down her addiction and eventually they would both get off the dependence on drugs and on Puck. Start a new life.
This couple is not in a health relationship. Connie just got with him because he had a roof over his head and the drugs she wanted. They do not really know eacother. I feel that this is a prime example of “drug culture” in the US at the time. Many families were supported by drug money in some way and when either the money dried up, or the family tried to go clean, the absence of the drug would expose just how shallow/physical the relationship really was. Also, the constant struggle to get clean and live a “normal” life without debt to your pusher is another aspect of the culture.
p98 at the bottom — “I’m thinkin about hangin it up,” Ace said, “and just coppin enough from Puck to keep Connie straight until she can kick.”
sonny tubbs was a crippled pusher that Rudy had busted and gave him a bad reptation. people began to talk badly about Rudy because sonny and him were in the same buisness and they now thougth that Rudy was a snitch. The thing that relates Sonny to American masculinity is that first off he is a man, but he is a crippled criminal. His masculinity is supposed to be a hard and rough criminal but at the same time he is a cripple which is a strange juxtaposition and reminds me of Homers character in that movie we viewed previously. I think that its weird to picture homer as a drug pusher. The only scene that I have read up to that has Sonny tubbs in it is on page 22 and it just talks about him and Rudy and blames Sonny for losing him customers.
I chose to profile Andy, he is one of the first characters we meet other than Rudy. We find out quickly that Andy cannot bear the weight of prison and resorts to informing the police about other drug dealers to sneak away unscathed from his own legal troubles, namely Popeye. Andy’s stories are shaky and his personality is fitting to the shady lifestyle he lives. As a reader it is hard to trust Andy as we meet him and he claims to have, “kicked the habit.” Shortly thereafter he is depicted getting high with Rudy who then proceeds to do away with Andy for being a narc.
Ella is a heroine addict that owns Lou’s Hotel with her husband, Lou. Lou’s hotel is a place where all the heroine addicts on the scene hang out. Ella doesn’t really love her husband, he just picked her up on the side of the streets one day when she was still a whore and attempted to make her into something. Ella refuses to be poor, she wants to have money and will do anything to get money. Without the help of Lou she was constantly selling capsules out of the hotel which Lou hated. Ella represents this time period because she was sharing the same dream as many other Americans, to become rich. She never wanted to give up her dream of making an increasing amount of money even if she could get in trouble for it. She was into taking drugs like many other people from this time period.
Sylvia is ‘the Man’s wife and main buisness partner. She runs a lot of his job and is heavily involved in the drug trade. She is a lesbian who stays with Floyd or ‘the Man’ out of respect not love. While she implicitly trusts Floyds instincts in this business, in the one scene she reminices over a girl she used to be with in college, showing that not only is she not attracted to men but ahe also has a college education. She is not really pretty so she makes up for it by being effecient and smart. Everyone has to go through her to get to the man.
Sylvia Dutton is The Man’s secretary and right-hand woman. One of our first introductions to her is when Davis is telling Patterson about The Man and his operations. Davis says, “He’s got a woman by the name of Sylvia Dutton who handles all that for him” (41). It is clear from the get-go that she is a main part of The Man’s operation, and that she does a lot of the hands-on work in his drug-dealing business. At the beginning of December chapter 6, we are shown more about Sylvia. She is an exceedingly ugly woman whose level of attractiveness is not salvaged by the money she spends on clothes and beauty treatments. She is also very meticulous and organized, going through a mental checklist of everything she has to think about in the coming days. Before she worked for The Man, she was apparently in the WAC, but an ambiguous incident involving another woman led to a bad conduct discharge. Sylvia is also responsible for the arrest of Telluccini that we hear about earlier in the book, as she apparently had him arrested. As The Man’s main right hand woman and main confidant, she essentially knows everything about his business except for the identity of the man above The Man: Big Boy. Her position of great power in The Man’s drug ring is important to Cooper’s representation of American masculinity, in that The Man, one of the most powerful players in the book, trusts a woman to handle a lot of the work that he does. If this woman is a lesbian, as her discharge suggests, this would do even more to empower a group that is not the normative masculine group. Her thought process on p.107 is interesting, and shows her meticulous nature and thought process.
Alice is another young girl who works for Rudy. She lives with Nina, the prostitute, and spends her days doing what she can to gather money for heroin. Originally from Washington, Alice has moved away from home and is now a slave to drugs just like all the other girls Rudy pimps and pushes. Alice goes to an expensive boutique clothing store on a Sunday and ends up stealing over $800 worth of clothes along with Leslie. They sell the clothes for a fraction of what they are worth, but just enough money to get their fix. They immediately meet up with Rudy and go off to get heroin. In chapter 2, Rudy is angry with Alice for sleeping with him and then telling all the other girls who get jealous because they want the money and connections. Rudy gets her back in a big way by giving her bad heroin. She becomes incredibly sick and can barely walk, but she still craves the sensation of getting high. She forces her body to hobble over to Rudy to get one more fix on page 66. When her heroin cooks up all bubbly and dough-like, she flips out, screaming, crying, and beating her fists on the table. Alice is a typical victim of the seedy underground drug counterculture of the sixties. She moved to the big city when she was just old enough, looking for opportunity, and quickly fell prey to the pimps and lowlifes like Rudy. Once she started doing heroin, she became immediately hooked and now will do anything, whether its stealing or having sex for money, in order to shoot up.
Mr. Flaubert is the district manager of the city that contains the Scene. He is completely out of touch with the actual goings on of the city and represents the ineffectualness of government. He comes into the police station and starts demanding that the cops clean dope out of the city immediately. He is quite bullheaded and when informed that such things take time he argues with the police. He insists that for some reason the idea of drug usage in the city has gone completely under the police’s radar and now they actually have to start trying to eradicate it, as if they have not been working on the issue constantly. On page 39 when Davis points out to Flaubert that the majority of the scene takes up most of his political section, Flaubert’s response shows the absolute disregard that he feels for such people. He states “there’re fifty thousand voters in that area”. His drive for pushing out dope does not seem to be to make the city a better place but rather to gain voters. Again he is shown to be out of touch when Davis points out that about 1 out of every 20 voters is a drug user. There is a clear disconnect between Flaubert and the majority of the characters of the Scene. Flaubert is up on a pedestal completely free of the grimy world the others are forced to inhabit, and free to cast aspersions as he pleases.
Virgil Patterson is clearly one of the more dynamic, influential characters in The Scene. He is conflicted about his role in the Scene, about his effectiveness in the Scene as a cop and role model. There is even a point where drug users are discussing how rehab only establishes new connections and avenues to get drugs. He devotes his entire life to stopping heroin and getting it off the streets, but despite his diploma and learned methods, he quickly learns that such a task is not nearly as simple as it sounds. He is clearly representative of nihilism, because for all his attempts, his existence and purpose is meaningless. One is given to wonder, based on what we read about Virgil’s struggle throughout the novel, what role law enforcement has in real life, in this \war on drugs\. Virgil Patterson obviously has the right idea and the best of intentions, but the Road to Hell is paved with such things.
Virgirl Patterson is a rookie detective who is partners with Mance Davis. VIrgil just graduated from college and feels that his academic merits will help him with his job. His partner, Davis, feels threatened by Virgil’s presence and demands respect from the younger detective. Mance Davis feels that he has had it rough out on the street and his experience as a detective should earn him a level of respect. He disregards the fact that Virgil attended college and feels that it doesn’t make him any smarter or beter for the job. I agree with Ian in that Virgil symbolizes an educated youth, while Davis represents someone who is stuck in the past. Davis feels that he has paid his dues and deserves respect from his younger more educated partner.