The Man In The Black Suit

“In those days before the Great War, most of Motton was woods and bog, dark long places full of moose and mosquitoes, snakes and secrets. In those days there were ghosts everywhere.”

Ghosts represent memory. Often, they symbolize events from the past that remain unreconciled. No ghosts appear in “The Man in the Black Suit,” but the ghost of Dan’s death hangs over the narrative, catalyzing events as the plot unfolds.

“I called him but he wouldn’t come. He yapped a time or two, as if telling me to come back, but that was all.”

Another subtle warning for Gary not to go on his fishing trip is Candy Bill’s refusal to go with him. Gary notes that Candy Bill always went fishing with him, and King even italicizes the world “always” to emphasize the strangeness of Candy Bill’s actions. The reader may not take this warning very seriously, but it is another instance of King setting up an ominous tone in the story.

1.      “[A] tug on my line so strong it almost pulled the bamboo pole out of my hand was what brought me back into the afternoon.”

King uses the rule of threes in his set-up to Gary’s meeting with the Devil. Gary catches two fish, but when a third does not bite, he falls asleep. A third fish on Gary’s line wakes him up, but before he can reel it in, the bee lands on his nose, changing the direction of the plot.

“A man was standing above me, at the edge of the trees. His face was very long and pale. His black hair was combed tight against his skull and parted with rigorous care on the left side of his narrow head. He was very tall. He was wearing a black three-piece suit, and I knew right away that he was not a human being, because his eyes were the orangey-red of flames in a woodstove.”

King’s description of the Devil is effective because it contains the element of surprise. The man’s face, hair, and suit are strange and out of place, but only in the end, when King describes the burning eyes, does Gary realize the man is supernatural. King’s description is also effective because it is economical. Right away, Gary identifies the man as non-human so that the plot can move forward. Importantly, King retains another element of surprise; Gary does not yet realize that the man is the Devil. The man must exhibit more strange characteristics to make Gary’s realization believable.

“I thought of her making bread, of the curl lying across her forehead and just touching her eyebrow, standing there in the strong morning sunlight.”

Loretta’s curl is similar to the wife’s pink ribbon in “Young Goodman Brown.” The curl and the ribbon represent idealized images of the wives’ purity. For Loretta, the curl is one of only a few details of her character, which magnifies its importance.

“On some level I believed him completely, as we always believe, on some level, the worst thing our hearts can imagine.”

This statement suggests that the Devil may be a manifestation of Gary’s fears. Rather than blaming Loretta for Dan’s death, Gary fears losing her in the same way he lost Dan. Thus, his encounter with the Devil could be a psychodrama that allows him to face his mother’s death. The passage is doubly significant because it applies to older Gary’s fear that the Devil will return.

“He slid the fish in like a man in a travelling show swallowing a sword. He didn’t chew, and his blazing eyes bulged out, as if in effort. The fish went in and went in, his throat bulged as it slid down his gullet, and now he began to cry tears of his own…except his tears were blood, scarlet and thick.”

King has already presented a terrifying image of the Devil, but the grotesque description of him swallowing the fish and crying bloody tears increases the reader’s disgust even further. The description sets the stage for the climactic chase because now the reader has seen what happens when the Devil eats something and fears even more for Gary’s safety.

“I was convinced I would see him standing right there behind me in his natty black suit, the watch-chain a glittering loop across his vest and not a hair out of place. But he was gone. The road stretching back toward Castle Stream between the darkly massed pines and spruces was empty. And yet I sensed him somewhere near in those woods, watching me with his grassfire eyes, smelling of burnt matches and roasted fish.”

Even when the Devil disappears, Gary fears that he is still lurking. Creating this feeling is an effective method that King uses to relieve the narrative tension of Gary’s chase (Gary beings walking) after this, while maintaining a sense of unease in the reader.

 “In his other hand he had his creel, the one with the ribbon my mother had woven through the handle back when Dan was still alive. DEDICATED TO JESUS, that ribbon said.”

The ribbon on Albion’s creel is another image that parallel’s the wife’s pink ribbon in “Young Goodman Brown.” It represents Christian goodness that has the power to conquer evil. Note that King makes the ribbon predate rather than postdate Dan’s death. It may be a subtle commentary that Dan’s death was inevitable and arbitrary, not subject to the forces of good and evil.

“I promised myself I would never go back down that road again, not ever, no matter what, and I suppose now God’s greatest blessing to His creatures below is that they can’t see the future.”

This is a rare moment when older Gary’s perspective interrupts the narrative. The thought is ironic because when Gary returns to the hill where the Devil chased him, the Devil has not returned. In this passage, King asks readers to contemplate whether any knowledge of future events, whether fortunate or unfortunate, is dangerous.

“I had had a lot of bad dreams about Dan last winter, dreams where I would open the door to our closet or to the dark, fruity interior of the cider shed and see him standing there and looking at me out of his purple strangulated face; from many of these dreams I had awakened screaming, and awakened my parents, as well.”

The emotion that Gary associates most with Dan is fear. It is reasonable that Gary would have nightmares after seeing his brother’s body, but Gary never seems to feel sorrow that Dan is gone. He doesn’t miss Dan. Though the narrative does not specify Dan’s age when he died, from clues in the story, he was probably not much older than Gary. Perhaps Gary is in emotional denial; he pictures the brother who is dead but not the brother who was alive.

“My father took my creel, looked into it, then went to the railing and threw it over. […] ‘It smelled bad,’ my father said, but he didn’t look at me when he said it, and his voice sounded oddly defensive. It was the only time I ever heard him speak just that way.”

Though the creel could have smelled like sulfur, Albion only looks at the creel, rather than smelling it, before throwing it into the stream. The defensiveness of Albion’s answer could imply that he is superstitious. Even though Gary did not tell Albion that the man was the Devil, Albion seems to have misgivings. This action, which is out of character for Albion, is a clue to the reader that some mystery about the experience remains.

“My infirmities have crept up like waves which will soon take a child’s abandoned sand castle, and my memories have also crept up, making me think of some old rhyme that went, in part, ‘Just leave them alone/And they’ll come home/Wagging their tails behind them.’”

The children’s rhyme Gary references is Little Bo Peep. She is a young shepherdess who loses her sheep because she falls asleep in the field. Most children only learn the first verse of the nursery rhyme, if they learn it at all, but the rest of the verses are quite dark. When Bo Peep finds the sheep, she is horrified because their tails are gone. She finds the tails later, hung on a tree to dry. She tries to tack the tails to the sheep, but in vain. The nursery rhyme is a warning to children about the danger of carelessness.