A Look At The Main Characters In Walter Mosley’s 'RL’s Dream'

Table of contents

0.  Introduction  4

1.  Walter Mosley - the author  4

2.  A short synopsis of RL’s Dream  5

3.  The narration and the blues  5

4.  Characters in RL’s Dream  6

4.1.  Kiki Waters  7

4.2.  Atwater 'Soupspoon Wise  9

4.3.  Mavis Spivey  11

4.4.  Randy  12

4.5.  Chevette  12

5.  Conclusion  13

3

0. Introduction

The aim of this paper is to encourage reflection on Walter Mosley’s RL’s Dream. In the first part, I will briefly present the author of the novel because I believe that it is crucial to know the background of an author to fully understand his work. Walter Mosley, himself, is a person of mixed parentage - just as the character of Randy. In his early childhood Mosley might have struggled to find his identity - a topic, which is also very present in RL’s Dream. I will then give a short synopsis of the novel in the second section before outlining the particular style of narration Mosley uses and its relation to the blues. The main part of this paper deals with characterization. I will take a closer look at Kiki Waters, Atwater ‘Soupspoon’ Wise, Mavis Spivey, Randy and Chevette. All of the major characters suffer from some kind of problem that has mainly to do with their experiences of the past. I will shed light on the characters and point out their particular problems. I will analyze the causes and attempt to interpret the character’s behavior.

1. Walter Mosley - the author

Walter Mosley was born on January 12, 1952, in Los Angeles, California. His father LeRoy, a school custodian, was an African-American from the deep South, and his mother Ella, a school personnel clerk, was a white woman of Jewish descent whose family emigrated from Eastern Europe. This unique African-American/ Jewish heritage made prejudice a major topic in the household. An only child, Mosley grew up hearing about the woes of life for African-Americans in the South, as well as the horrors of anti-Semitism across the Atlantic. After earning a bachelor's degree at Johnson State College in 1977, Mosley drifted for a number of years in various jobs, even working as a potter and caterer. He and his white Jewish girlfriend Joy Kellman, a dancer and choreographer, moved to New York City in 1982 and were married in 1987. Mosley settled down into a career as a computer programmer in the 1980s, but his work left him unfulfilled. He became a full- time writer in 1986. Mosley is the author of fourteen books and several other publications and his work has been translated into twenty-one languages. (The German title of Mosley’s novel RL’s Dream is “Mississippi Blues“ - a rather good translation since the German-speaking audience might not be familiar with the abbreviation RL and Robert Johnson’s music). Walter Mosley is best known for the “Easy Rawlins” mystery series, beginning with Devil in a Blue Dress in 1990.

4

However, Mosley considers himself not so much a mystery writer but a novelist whose work includes mysteries. In 1995, W.W. Norton published Mosley’s blues novel RL’s Dream to critical acclaim. It was a finalist for the NAACP Award in Fiction and won the 1996 Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s Literary Award.

2. A short synopsis of RL’s Dream

Mosley's 1995 novel, RL's Dream, marked a departure from the “Easy Rawlins” mystery series. This novel tells the story of Atwater "Soupspoon" Wise, an aged and dying blues guitar player who is facing eviction from his New York apartment and his emerging friendship to Kiki Waters. Kiki, a volatile young white woman with a strong taste for alcohol, finds Soupspoon, sick in fouled clothing, sitting in his armchair on the street in front of his Greenwich Village apartment building. She takes him in, nursing him back to health and forging the necessary health insurance information to get him treated for cancer. The two form a strange friendship; both are from the South, and both have left behind pasts that demand to be dealt with. Soupspoon longs to relive his glory days, and recalls to Kiki about his struggles with racism and the time he played with a legendary Delta blues singer named Robert Leroy (RL) Johnson. As their friendship develops, the two share their individual stories, relive the pain of the past, and learn to heal their emotional wounds. They cling together, these two outcasts from hard times, Soupspoon with a gentleness born of deep resignation, Kiki with a protective desperation fueled by booze and rage. Gradually, Soupspoon's life begins to mend: someone he knew as a kid in the South offers him a gig at his after-hours drinking place and a pretty young girl is drawn to his sweetness. But for Kiki, the only way out is through violence and flight.

3. The narration and the blues

Walter Mosley narrates RL's Dream with compassion and empathy whilst always avoiding easy sentimentality. He delivers the narrative with a strong, hypnotic rhythm that carries the story along in a fluid motion. Mosley's use of time and place moves the action from present day New York to the rural poverty of the Mississippi Delta of the 1920s. He integrates Soupspoon's and Kiki's past harsh lives and memories with the keenly observed contemporary New York slum scene as the bittersweet blues constantly sound somber chords

5