JiYi Yang
June 21, 2004
Professor White
English 420
In the novels The Pawnbroker and Third and Indiana the setting and the environment has a direct impact on the emotional mood and emphasize the central theme of the novels. Both novels are set in ghetto urban areas. Steve Lopez’s novel Third and Indiana is set in South Philadelphia’s area called Kensington or better known as the “Badlands”. The Badlands was an industrial area which was prosperous in the past because of factory jobs, but as the factories closed down and many lost their jobs and Kensington transformed into a place of drugs, violence, and debauchery. Similarly in Edward Lewis Wallant’s The Pawnbroker the novel is set in the unsafe urban area in New York City’s Harlem. After the period of the Harlem Renaissance, Harlem suffered from poverty and people relied on the drug trade and crime to get by in their lives.
In Third and Indiana the setting foreshadows violence and darkness of the novel. An example of how Lopez foreshadows the darkness of the novel when Lopez describes, “It (Kensington Avenue) sat in eternal darkness and gloom under the El,…a symbol of the city industrial death.”(9) The quote explains how the reader will expect death and darkness on Kensington Avenue. Lopez throughout the beginning of the novel offers the reader subtle hints of what to expect in the novel death and violence. He reiterates the effects of the negative environment towards the end of the book. “Because it’s not a person (Diablo), it’s the fucking neighborhood. You can’t kill the fucking neighborhood.”(279) The quote explains the constant negative vibe of Kensington no matter if Gabriel kills Diablo.
In addition, The Pawnbroker’s Harlem setting also tells the reader the constant threat of violence and evil in the novel. “Stand absolutely still and lick on that gun barrel for a while. That old Joe would pull the trigger if I just winked at him.”(163) Wallant explains the constant threat of violence Sol has to endure living and working in Harlem. To Sol the city is like hell or purgatory. Sol thinks this is his on going punishment continued from the death of his family in the Holocaust to living and owning a pawnshop in Harlem. Wallant gives a tactile imagery of Harlem as an urban wasteland. An example of how Sol thinks of Harlem, “He seemed to hear the millions of voices like the shrilling of countless animals, to smell the dirt and age and sin of the teeming city.”(212) The quote occurs when Sol returns from his cruise with Marilyn, he had a great time with Marilyn during the cruise but when he returns to Harlem he feels the anger and the doom of the city. Sol feels that he can not escape Harlem, similar to the way he can not escape the memory of the Holocaust. Sol neither feels comfortable in either his home or work. At home he experiences terrible nightmares of death, in which every dream gets worse. For example one of Sol’s dreams describes his dead son hanging on a meat hook and his customers’ faces replaced the boy. His dream was a way his self conscience could tell Sol something, because he would listen to nobody around him.
