Harlem Shuffle

Freddie is the tragic counterpart to his cousin’s success. Freddie and Ray grew up together in the same community and often in the same household. As such, they come from very similar backgrounds in a material sense. Both have known poverty for most of their lives, though Freddie’s mother and father are still alive—though his father is perpetually absent from his life. The similarities between the two cousins’ childhoods emphasize Ray’s success. Freddie, rather than Ray, is considered to be the typical product of his community, suggesting that few people manage to escape the financial conditions into which they were born. Freddie’s story becomes a tragic indictment of the society which fails the African American community, as he functions as just another victim of a world which discriminates against and ignores him for most of his life.

As someone perpetually on the fringes of society, Freddie craves validation. For most of his life, society has told Freddie that he is useless and worthless. He needs to be told that he has worth, so he also sets out to impress or charm people, including his father, Ray, and the crooks like Miami Joe and Biz Dixon. Freddie’s desperate attempts to impress people and to make a name for himself are undermined by his lack of instincts and common sense. While Ray is a meticulous planner, Freddie acts entirely on instinct. As a result, he often runs afoul of the people he is trying to impress. Freddie’s search for meaning defines him, as he desperately craves validation from any source. However, his search for validation leads him into constant trouble and ensures that he will never truly be able to succeed.

In Linus, Freddie finds a sympathetic friend. Like Linus, he exists in the shadow of his family. He also shares Linus’s seeming inability to fit into the world into which he was born. The friendship between Linus and Freddie is built on mutual understanding of persecution: Linus is abused by his father for being gay, while Freddie is abused by society because of his race. As a result of the friendship, Freddie once again gets caught up in a scheme he does not really understand, dying because of the plan he hatches with Linus. Freddie dies exactly as he lives: searching for a big score which will validate him in the eyes of others. The tragedy of Freddie’s death is that he never really achieves this validation.

Elizabeth Carney is a respectable housewife and a successful professional in her own right. As the daughter of rich parents, she was raised with a certain set of expectations. Her parents disapproved of her marriage to Ray, but she recognized in him a determination to succeed that was not present in her other suitors or many of her parents’ friends. In many respects, she is the symbolic representation of Ray’s legitimate life. Her background and her belief in her husband confer on him a degree of authority and legitimacy that he would struggle to find elsewhere.

Elizabeth is a powerful figure in her own right. She is an instrumental part of a travel agency which helps African American people travel without facing prejudice, and she also helps orchestrate civil rights demonstrations to affect real change in the world. Elizabeth is horrified by many things she witnesses as part of her job, but she never gives up as she believes that the cause is important. As such, she is a more commendable figure than her husband. While Ray is happy to wage personal vendettas and focus on success on the individual level, Elizabeth is part of a much larger and more important battle. While Ray is striving to help his family, Elizabeth works tirelessly to improve her society.

Linus possess more material wealth than almost any other character, but he lives a tortured life which ends in tragedy. As the scion of the incredibly wealthy Van Wyck family, Linus grows up wanting for nothing. The comparison between his childhood and the childhoods of Freddie and Ray show the huge gulf in wealth which exists even within the same city. Despite being the heir to a huge fortune, Linus is never accepted by his family. A gay man, he has been sent to many mental health facilities by the family due to his sexual orientation, where torturous methods are used to try and cure him of his perceived deviancy. None of these methods work; instead, they drive Linus further away from his family and into drug addiction. Wealth does not save Linus from his father’s abuse, and his descent into addiction is a reflection on the terror inflicted on him by his father. Linus would rather live among the drug addicts and the criminals than the high society of New York. Unlike other characters, however, Linus has something close to a choice in the matter. For everyone else, drugs and crime are the only options available.

Linus’s plan to rob his parents is not about acquiring more money. Linus has already learned that money is not enough to make him happy. Instead, he wants to reset his relationship with his father. By stealing the documents which grant his father power of attorney over him, Linus gestures that he wants to take control of his life. The robbery is a symbolic rebuke of Ambrose Van Wyck. However, the plan ends tragically for Linus. After dedicating so much time to stealing the documents, he is not able to enjoy his success for long. He overdoses a short time later and leaves the world with nothing. For Linus, dying in a cheap hotel room from a drug overdose is a tragic but welcome end. Even with the documents, he had little hope of changing anything in his life when his father was so willing to use violence against him. By committing one last symbolic rejection, Linus can at least take some satisfaction that the tragedy of his death is buoyed by a final, damning rebuke of his father’s abuse.

Though a hardened criminal and a violent man, Pepper is one of the least deluded characters in Harlem Shuffle. Whereas men like Ray constantly try to convince themselves that they are respectable or acting on behalf of a higher purpose, Pepper is completely secure in the reality of his existence. He knows that he is a criminal and he knows that he is a violent man; he does not pretend be anything else. This lack of pretension or delusion make Pepper make a refreshingly honest character. He can see the truth about himself whereas others must feed themselves comforting lies. However, Pepper’s lack of self-delusion cannot last forever. Near the end of the novel, he sits in a bar and examines the other customers with scorn. He views them as old crooks past their prime, who have allowed themselves to be outpaced by the younger generation. Pepper scowls at these people, without realizing that he has become exactly the thing he hates. Pepper may be the least deluded character, but even he shows signs that this kind of honesty cannot last forever in a harsh, dishonest world.

Pepper’s sense of loyalty toward Ray also hints at a sense of responsibility which is generally hidden. According to his reputation, Pepper has no dependents, no family, and no loved ones. However, he possesses a fierce sense of loyalty to his friends. While he may not have any friends left, he meets Mike Carney’s son and notices his dead friend’s traits shining through in Mike. He recognizes Mike’s meticulousness, his ruthlessness, and his desire for revenge. These negative traits spur a feeling of warmth in Pepper, as Ray becomes the closest thing to a family member that he has. While he would never admit it, Ray is something of a surrogate son to Pepper, who helps guide him through the violent criminal underworld of Harlem. Pepper’s burgeoning relationship with his dead friend’s son suggests an emotive side of Pepper which few thought existed.