English language and literature overview

¶ … inner dynamics of the theme of the novel Madison Bell "Ten Indians."

The story Ten Indians is set in the town of Baltimore and is set to relate the story of Mike Devlin who is a psychiatrist and yet, his own personal conflicts are creating turmoil within himself and his practice. Bell, creates Devlin as a man who is isolated even in a crowd and who is unable to reconcile his inner and outer realities. His perceptions of events at times deceive him and the consequences are tragic.

Within our society is seen the presence of drugs, violence, and despair which seem to be so deeply ingrained in the culture that there is no solution to making things better. A lack of jobs and a welfare system that keeps people alive but provides little hope further inhibits social change and so arises the question can anything truly be changed? Or are the problems so intractable that keeping people alive is the best that can be done?

Madison Smartt Bell's, Ten Indians, deals with such questions and does so in a personal and yet objective manner taking the reader into the inner-city area and presenting the responsibility one man feels to improve conditions. Bell's characters cannot arrive at any one simple answer and the costs seem so high that most people are unwilling to pay them.

Analysis

Mike Devlin is a white man who is struggling to make a difference in young people's lives, in the inner city ghettoes. The ghettoes are inhabited by the black youth whose poverty and desperation results in a life of crime and a state of self that is morally debilitating. As a child psychologist, with clients who range from a normal teen to tomorrow's Ted Bundy he is burned out by his practice and vaguely estranged from his family. In his profession he has heard such horrifying stories that it has become hard for him to reconcile his profession with his personal life. It would be hard to see that an eight-year-old child has cigarette burns on his body, but to Devlin it was nothing new and "Devlin realized with a dreary fatigue," the author writes, "that he would be obliged to discover the reason for this detail." He cannot understand how or why the people behave in such unethical ways and this inability to answer this question leads him on a moral and life saving quest.

Not being able to resolve his problems in his practice he attempts to make a difference in another part of his life and this change came about when he is hit by a car and decides not to tell his wife. His silence starts a sort of secret life. Devlin ends up enmeshed in the Tae Kwon Do school he establishes in a rundown area of Baltimore. As a white man opening the school in the ghettoes where the African-Americans are prominent the step seems a folly. So deeply ingrained is the poverty in this area that the black youth are spiraling towards a life of crime at an early age and the interference of whites is not tolerated. Bell does not obviously point out the differences but he does relate in an objective manner the nuances that create and mark the ghettoes and presents what their inner dynamics are. The author has shown the marked contrast between the reality and perception average people have about ghettoes. It is easy to stand on a moral pedestal and claim that small interventions will make a difference but for the inner city ghettoes crime, murder, drugs and prison have become a cultural reality. It is hard for them to recognize intervention when they see it and Devlin's belief that a mere hobby would help change their lives was simplistic to say the least and suggested the fact that he had no real idea of what sort of a life these youth led.

In his ideals Devlin does not realize that his students are deeply enmeshed in their environment and though they act as if they are reforming they are in actuality merely toying with his ideals for they remain crack dealers and involved in other such criminal activities. As one character states "can't hardly tell if the [police] sirens and ***** [are] coming out from the TV or in through the window." It's a place where young men see jail as a promise they'll all keep. It's a place where most of the males are dead by thirty, and a number of the females, too, are caught in the cross fire. No matter how much Devlin tries the ultimate result is tragedy.

Conclusion