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91MDh9-D6mL IN A LONELY PLACE DOROTHY B. HUGHES (Characters (Dix…

- - - - The fog acts as the grey area between the light and dark binary. Like a veil upon the town of L.A; it's not how Dix remembered it, his memories are foggy. Dix himself is a gray-area character, he is a serial killer but Hughes initially introduces him as someone we can empathize with, someone unjustly damaged psychologically by war.
      - Ties in with the theme of loneliness and barriers. The fog is a barrier preventing Dix from fully integrating into society. Hughes doesn't give explicit detail about Dix's crimes and obscures them much like fog obscures the surroundings.
        
        “[I]n the fog he was no more than a moving blur” (p. 12)
        ”He walked on, quiet as the fog” (p. 13)
    - - From the first page, Hughes incorporates the light and dark binary while Dix overlooks the sea at night. Dix associates the dark with restlessness and the light as something to avoid.
        
        “[D]ark restless waters beyond” (p.1)
        
        “[S]wooped his hand again through the restless fog” (p.1)
        
        “He boarded it. He didn’t care where it was going; it would carry him away from the fog light.” (P. 3)
    - - Dix once enjoyed the “loneliness in the sky” (p.1) when he was a fighter pilot; it gave him freedom and power. However, post-war, the isolation he experiences in L.A restricts his freedom and makes him feel like he has lost his purpose.
  - - - “But you didn’t know what was beneath beach-tanned faces and simple expensive clothes. You didn’t ever know about thoughts. They were easily hidden. You didn’t have to give away what you were thinking” (p. 30).
- - - - “That life was so real that there wasn’t any other life. Even when the war was over there was no realisation of another life. Not until he stood again in the small, dark living room of his uncle’s home. It came as a shock, the return to Uncle Fergus; he hadn’t really known it wasn’t to be always the way it had been in the war years. He had mistaken interlude for life span (p. 96).
      - “And now? Not back to the unutterable loneliness of the apartment. There was always a movie” (p. 158).
    - - “Although honestly I don’t think he ever does escape. He has to live with himself. He’s caught there in that lonely place. And when he sees he can’t get away,” Brub shrugged. “Maybe suicide, or the nut house - I don’t know. But I don’t think there’s any escape (p.68).
      - “She was real, not a begging dream in his loneness, she was a woman” (p. 56).
      - “No one cared, no one had ever cared. Only Brucie. Brucie who had gone away leaving him alone, alone forever, for all of his life” (p. 160).
      - “The lone wolf. There was a savage delight in being a lone wolf” (p. 17)
    - - “[T]he lonely spot in Beverly Glen Canyon where her body (Mildred’s) was found” (p.35).
      - “And the mist grew cold on the misty corner” (p.36).
      - “It would be lonely up here at night; there were deep culverts, heavy brush, on the side of the road. It was lonely up here now and they passed no cars. It was as if they had entered into a forbidden valley” (p. 74).
      - “He was there for a long time. Lost in a world of swirling fog and crashing wave, a world empty of all but these things and his grief and the keening of the fog horn far at sea. Lost in a lonely place (p. 143).
    - - “They refused to think about death being death. Even in the heart’s inmost core where each dwelled alone, they did not admit death.”
        /
        “He had to get out, to be alone in his lonely place. To remember and forget” (p. 104).
      - “It wasn’t often he could capture any part of that feeling of power and exhilaration and freedom that came with loneness in the sky” (p.1).
      - Freedom vs Grounded. Dix believes he has full autonomy but has not realised in this new post-war America he may be free of war but is not a free man. He is trapped in L.A and by domesticity.
- - - - “They were good shoes; he’d bought them in England. When he had money and position”
        /
        “It hurt him to see the navy-blue flannel jacket, the good-looking, high-styled jacket dumped there. He rubbed his lip again. He’d wear it yet, he’d wear it to the best places in town, the places where that kind of jacket ought to be worn. He was through living in a hole; he was going places and doing things. Big places and big things” (p. 138).
  - - - At first the reader might be confused as to why Dix is obsessed with checking the newspaper, notably the front page. Then it becomes clear he is checking for reports about his crimes, his name; basically to see if he’s been found out.
        
        Newspapers, magazines, movies, walks, cafe trips are what fill up Dix’s time in between the killings. He needs constant distractions to keep his anxiety at bay, to ignore his overwhelming idleness that causes him to feel so trapped.
        
        “He didn’t care what the picture was; it was a place to pass time”
        /
        “He gathered a handful of magazines from the stand, the only kind of magazines there, movie stuff, crime stuff. Anything to keep his mind serviced until he was forced to sleep” (p. 158).
        
        “Relief bathed him, relief flowed gently, excitingly, over him and through him. There was nothing on the front page of the paper, nothing” (p. 146).
    - - Dix revisits his friendship with Brub since he is one of the main detectives on the strangler case. He uses the ploy of his novel to get him into the crime scenes and to get information out of Brub, to see what he knows, if he is hot or cold on Dix’s trail. Sylvia despises all talk about the case, feeling more at ease when the topic is disregarded all together. She would rather pretend the issue didn’t exist than admit she lives in an area with a killer on the loose, that ignoring it makes the problem go away.
      - “Sylvia didn’t like mention of the case” (p. 87).
      - “[N]o more talk about crime tonight” (p. 44).
      - “Sylvia said firmly, ‘We’re not going to talk about it tonight’” (p. 42).
      - “Brub, you’re not talking the case again. I can’t take it” (p. 39).