55 pages • 1 hour read
Stephen KingMr. Mercedes
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Prejudice and Preconceptions
The theme of prejudice and preconceptions addresses Hodges’s past mistakes. Hodges learns in the course of his belated investigation that he and his partner, Pete, made a critical error in assuming that Olivia Trelawney left her car unlocked—which allowed it to be stolen by Brady Hartsfield. Like everyone else, they wanted to have someone to blame for the murders: Olivia was an easy scapegoat because she seemed to them to be arrogant, and they found her obsessive-compulsive tics irritating.
Hodges’s prejudice is a part of his growing cynicism as a detective. By the time he retires, that cynicism has become so pronounced that he begins to make fatal mistakes. Hodges’s prejudice toward Olivia prevented him from catching the Mercedes killer, but once he begins to investigate on his own, he realizes that he and Pete were wrong. If they hadn’t jumped to conclusions, they would have realized they needed to look for someone with a lot of technological know-how, which would have brought them much closer to catching the Mercedes killer before he had a chance to manipulate Olivia into dying by suicide. Brady also wouldn’t have been able to set the bomb that killed Janey, so Hodges’s prejudice contributed indirectly to both of those deaths.
Hodges and Pete were quick to blame and dismiss Olivia because she was different. She had some quirks that made her appear “unusual,” and Pete and Hodges made the mistake of seeing the quirks rather than the person. When Hodges realizes that the killer was patrolling the neighborhood for months as the ice cream guy, he remembers his neighbor, Mrs. Melbourne, who told him there was something fishy about the ice cream man, but Hodges had dismissed her the same way he had dismissed Olivia and, later, Holly.
Hodges feels deeply troubled about the assumptions he made about Olivia. When he recognizes some of the same quirks in Holly, he initially finds her off-putting, but this time, instead of dismissing her or making negative assumptions about her, he remembers his mistake with Olivia and takes the time to get to know Holly better, feeling it is his opportunity to redeem his former mistake. When he does, he finds that the quirks that make her stand out in the world are only a small part of who she is. Had he not taken the time, he would have missed out on one of the warmest friendships of his life.
Human Corruption and Senseless Evil
The hard-boiled genre rarely addresses themes of cosmic evil. It concentrates almost entirely on human corruption. In the person of Brady Hartsfield, Mr. Mercedes explores the nature of human corruption, whether it is learned, chosen, or inborn.
As an adult, Brady exhibits the characteristics of a psychopath—lack of empathy or conscience, and in cases where criminality is involved, a controlled and calculating criminality. Psychopathy appears to have roots in neurology. People who experience psychopathy show observable differences in brain structure. In that sense, corruption could be argued to be inborn. However, children cannot be diagnosed with either psychopathy or sociopathy, which makes this theory difficult to substantiate.
Brady’s mother has anti-social traits that she may have passed down to Brady through nature or nurture. She has a weak sense of conscience and used Brady to murder Frankie, her younger son with a disability. Her continued abuse further damaged Brady’s ability to experience “normal” emotions of empathy and pleasure. King does not give many details about his mother’s backstory, but he paints a grim enough homelife for young Brady that it is plausible that this atmosphere accentuated or enabled whatever deviant qualities Brady already had.
Whatever his inborn or learned traits, Brady chooses everything he does. He tells Hodges that he has no conscience, but he understands the concept of a conscience well enough to recognize that some actions are considered socially permissible while others are punishable. He gets pleasure from the idea of causing pain, but he is always completely in control of his actions. He desires to cause harm, but he is never compelled beyond his ability to resist. In that sense, he chooses evil.
In the end, Brady’s corruption lies in his choices. At every point in the story, he has full control of his actions and a full understanding of the consequences. Each of his actions is premeditated and thoroughly calculated, and he had the power to stop at any time. He chooses to inflict chaos, disruption, and pain on everyone around him and will not stop unless he is caught.
Closure and Unfinished Business
The theme of closure and unfinished business addresses Hodges’s future. Readers never learn why Hodges retired at the time he did after 40 years on the force. Ideally, retirement is a change of life when an adult who has been working to support themselves and their family has the freedom and pleasure to pursue personal goals that were set aside in favor of other obligations. With a broken, estranged family, Hodges walked away with no plan for what he would do to occupy his time, no dreams or ambitions he wanted to fulfill and no idea even of who he would be without the job. In the process of tracking down the Mercedes killer, Hodges brings closure to his career in the present, which allows him to move on as a new, better person in the future.
Hodges walked away from the force leaving four major cases open. When Brady Hartsfield sends his letter pointing out everything that is wrong with Hodges’s life in the present—no family, friends, goals, or sense of purpose—he unwittingly offers Hodges an opportunity for closure of the most notorious of his open cases. In the course of pursuing Mr. Mercedes, Hodges sees the other three cases closed by Pete and Pete’s new partner. Hodges also finds friends outside his old job, showing him that he does not have to live in the past.
Hodges’s feelings about Olivia Trelawney suggest a reason for his retirement. Even before retirement, Hodges felt a twinge of uneasiness about the way he and Pete treated Olivia, but that uneasiness was smothered by hubris—his and Pete’s view of themselves as the Hounds of Heaven. Hodges wasn’t conscious of it, but he may have felt himself slipping, cutting corners, and making mistakes he would never have made earlier in his career before his cynicism and ego took over.
The gray Mercedes—Olivia Trelawney’s “Gray Lady”—is a tangible symbol of closure and unfinished business. The Gray Lady reappears just as the case is coming full circle; Brady is staging his last attack in the same location as the first. The car, haunted by the ghosts of Brady’s first victims, returns to close her own circle—and Olivia’s—by punishing Brady and saving his final victims. Here, the Gray Lady represents Hodges’s redemption for his injustice to Olivia.
With all his unsolved cases finally closed, Hodges is finally able to bid goodbye to his past and embrace a future. He is still a detective, but now he occupies himself with skip tracing rather than solving major crimes. He also leads a more relaxed and balanced life with friends and interests outside his job. He moves forward into a mentoring role to Holly, acting as the wise old man guiding the next generation. He may be less driven, but he is a happier and more well-rounded person.
Related Titles
By Stephen King
