Blog Post #1 Mystic River
Question #1
There are two characters who I feel could claim their innocence and be forgiven but the one I have the strongest opinions for are Dave. Dave's childhood innocence was taken away from him at a very young age. He didn't get to experience the same happiness as other people his age because it was stolen from him. Those memories of being molested and traumatized would always come back to haunt poor Dave. Having to deal with things that happened in the past is hard to deal with if you haven't found ways to express your feelings of what happened. His friends barely knew what happened to him while he was kidnapped; they only know what they saw and read. Dave's own wife didn't find out about what happened to him as a child until she accuses him of killing Katie. Living in the same small town of where he was abducted doesn't help Dave either. Walking around the same streets as he did as a kid only brings back the past and causes him to be paranoid.
In a way Dave sort of finds his innocence again through his own son. He learned from his past and never wants that to happen to any children. He shows his innocence by taking pride in his little boy and playing wiffle ball all the time with his son. This shows the viewers that Dave hasn't lost all the fun out of his life, he makes himself seem happy around his family to keep them happy.
Dave is deserving of genuine forgiveness because he only did what he felt was right in his eyes. Dave was only trying to protect someone else who was in danger as he was as a young child. Maybe he didn't have to kill the person but his state of mind wasn't right and hadn't been right since before he was kidnapped. Dave saw every child molester as wolves in the forest he ran through trying to escape , so in his mind he was just defending himself. Dave was scared to admit the truth because he was afraid of the consequences. He wanted to forget what he did and never hear about it ever again; even if it meant looking like the killer of his childhood friend's daughter.
Dave could have been saved if he had gotten help and his family was aware of his problems. He would have never killed a terrible man or tried to hide it if he had learned to cope with what happened in his life before. The reason he deserves forgiveness is because he didn't mean or want any of what happened to happen. Dave was always kind and considerate of others and only seemed socially awkward because of what happened. He looked at Katie when he saw her alive for the last time and admired her innocence just as he admired his son's.
I love how you went about defending Dave in this post. We forget Dave is just a victim and now his son is the same. He will have to live the rest of his life without a father. Bringing this rather small character into this analysis really strengthened the overall argument for Daves innocence.
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