Rumble Fish

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1975

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Rumble Fish

Rumble fish—the nickname for the Siamese fighting fish that give the novel its name—are a key motif in the novel. Hinton intends the fish to be a metaphor for the brothers’ characters.

We first encounter the motif when Rusty-James finds the Motorcycle Boy in a pet store, contemplating fish that are each in a bowl of their own. Already, the image of fish in separate bowls echoes the description of the Motorcycle Boy’s experience “living in a glass bubble and watching the world from it” (64). Like the fish, the Motorcycle Boy feels that he is a detached observer of life rather than an emotionally engaged participant. The idea that the fish have to be kept in separate bowls to prevent them from “try[ing] to kill each other” also evokes the Motorcycle Boy’s capacity for violence when he comes into contact with other people (78).

Like the brothers, the fish are “not regular goldfish” (77), but have an attractive, unusual appearance, being bright red and yellow, and flaunting long fins and tails. The long fins, which are markers of bravado but leave the fish prone to being nipped and injured, are a metaphor for the brothers’ pride and vulnerability. Like the fish, the striking brothers are conspicuous, which makes them both charismatic and susceptible to harm, including at their own hands. The fishes’ instinct to fight is so extreme that “they’d kill themselves fighting their own reflection” if a mirror were leaned up against the bowl (78). This capacity for self-harm mirrors the Motorcycle Boy’s self-destruction, when in deciding to liberate the fish from their lonely existence, he breaks into the pet store and sets himself up as a target for the cop who is stalking him. As his brother dies, Rusty-James observes that “the little rumble fish were flipping and dying around him, still too far from the river [where the Motorcycle Boy originally intended to take them]” (83). Arguably, were the fish to have reached the river, they would have immediately fought each other to the death; a short, lonely life seems to be their destiny, as it was the Motorcycle Boy’s. Hinton thus uses the fish motif to show that the Motorcycle Boy’s way of life is futile and to act as a final warning to the protagonist, who ought to choose a different path.

The River

The river that bisects Rusty-James’s anonymous town and divides it into different territories is a consistent motif in the novel. Its polluted, trash-filled state is symptomatic of an industrial landscape in a period before environmental consciousness. It emphasizes the careless dereliction of the town, which no-one is making an effort to maintain for its inhabitants.

Rusty-James knows that the Motorcycle Boy “really like[s] that old river” and has a consistent habit of watching the water and orienting himself by it (48). When a visit to his mother in California turns out to be disappointing, the Motorcycle Boy tells Rusty-James, “I never got past the river” (22). While Rusty-James does not understand the significance of this statement, it figuratively means that the visit has done nothing to help the Motorcycle Boy understand himself, and that his true concerns are still in the neighborhood. Similarly, when Rusty-James's father suggests that the Motorcycle Boy was “born on the wrong side of the river” (82), it is another metaphor for his inability to fit in and adjust to his given circumstances (82). The image also fits in with the Motorcycle Boy’s habit of looking across the river longingly as if to contemplate how things might be different. His fateful pet store escapade centers on the river, as he plans to deliver the fish there and free them (and, symbolically, himself) from their present constraints.

Since the Motorcycle Boy is a guiding star for Rusty-James, in his brother’s absence, Rusty-James looks towards the river as a way of being close to him. For example, when Rusty-James and Steve find themselves alone in badly lit streets after the Motorcycle Boy has abandoned them at a party, Rusty-James looks for the river to orient himself. While he thinks that he, like his brother, will always be able to find the river and thus guide them to safety, he is mistaken; his poor sense of direction leads them to a dangerous encounter. This symbolizes Rusty-James’s inability to rely upon his brother’s methods for getting ahead. At the end of the novel, he finds that another body of water—the ocean, with its continual fresh waves—is a more hopeful symbol for him, as it represents the possibility of a new start.

Books

Books function as a symbol of Rusty-James’ exclusion from a conventional, academic path to adulthood and self-knowledge. Those closest to Rusty-James—the Motorcycle Boy, Steve, and even his alcoholic father—spend a lot of time reading. While books enable Steve to live the American Dream and leave the neighborhood he despises, books are more a symbol of wasted potential for the Motorcycle Boy and his law school-educated father. These men had the intellectual capacity to excel, but the circumstances of their lives did not permit it.

Rusty-James, who has never been a reader, associates books with maturity, thinking, “when I got older it’d be easy for me to read books too” (26). Importantly, Hinton makes clear that in the past, Rusty-James has tried and failed to be bookish like his brother. However, his failures and the lack of encouragement from teachers caused him to lose confidence and abandon the process. Rusty-James’s resulting unfamiliarity with literary allusions, or with things beyond the neighborhood (e.g. chameleons) feeds into his sense of intellectual inferiority. While those around him can at least figuratively escape the neighborhood and contemplate a life beyond it through reading, Rusty-James, who knows only the streets, seems destined to stay there.

When those around Rusty-James are reading and thus engaged with worlds he cannot understand and see, he finds that it heightens his sense of alienation from them. This is especially the case with his father, who goes on “like he was reading out of a book, using words and sentences nobody ever used when they were just talking” (54). Rusty-James begs him to “talk normal” so that he can filter through the “garbage” metaphors and understand the point being made (82). Through Rusty-James, Hinton makes the case for jettisoning not only speech that sounds like an old book, but writing that is in a similar style. The father’s patterns of speech sound stuffy and impotent compared with Rusty-James’s urgent tone, where even narrative description demonstrates the directness of speech. Thus, both Hinton’s protagonist and her writing style indicate that she wants to create the type of book that appeals to those who do not engage with classic literature.