The Black Echo

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1992

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

The Black Echo

Connelly titles the novel after a nickname that Bosch and the tunnel rats gave the tunnels during their time in Vietnam. It was first coined by Meadows upon emerging from a tunnel with grisly war trophies, and it is defined in the novel as “the darkness, the damp emptiness you’d feel when you were down there alone” (318). The black echo describes a feeling of being dead and alive at the same time, of being scared that your own breath will give away your position to the enemy; Connelly elsewhere describes the terror evoked by the dark entrance to a tunnel with a reference to Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream. This horror haunts Bosch’s memories even 20 years later.

In Los Angeles, the darkness of tunnels also symbolizes the underworld’s “ugly story” (59)—a criminal hierarchy where an underclass of people like Sharkey, Arson, and Mojo are trodden on by more powerful evildoers like Rourke and where the veterans who sacrificed their youth in the Vietnam War turn to substance use and violence when they cannot reintegrate into civilian life. The implication is that anyone forced to confront the disorientation and terror of the black echo might be corrupted by its malevolent aftereffects, going on killing sprees like Meadows or being seduced by get-rich-quick schemes like Wish’s brother.

Veterans Cemetery

The veterans cemetery in Century City, a location of overt symbolism, is ever-present in the novel because it is visible from the FBI offices. It is also the site of a replica Vietnam War Memorial—a monument that holds both symbolic and plot relevance. Within the plot, the replica unlocks the truth behind Wish’s story, and the cemetery is the location of Meadows’s funeral.

More figuratively, each time Bosch is forced to confront the image of the cemetery, he is reminded both of the loss of lives and the less visible costs that the Vietnam War levied on him and his fellow veterans. He calls the cemetery’s gravestones “teeth” and “ghosts” (218), images laden with violence and the unresolved voices of the dead. For Wish, the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC, represents an acknowledgement of the sacrifice of soldiers, which is why the absence of her brother’s name on the memorial causes her so much grief. But for Bosch, the memorial is a list of names he does not want to read. He describes it as a “dark gash” and “a huge wound” (218). In other words, for Bosch, it is a reminder of something that has yet to heal.

Nighthawks

When Bosch visits Wish’s apartment, he discovers that she has a framed print of Edward Hopper’s famous painting Nighthawks, an image of several people eating alone in a late-night diner. Bosch is familiar with the painting because he saw the original in Chicago and found it affecting. Bosch identifies with the man sitting alone in the painting: “I am the loner, he thought. I am the nighthawk” (197). He admits to Wish that he has been lonely for a long time, and he even jokes to a government clerk that “Bosch” might be an answer to the crossword clue, “a six-letter word for a man of constant sorrow and loneliness” (229). The reason he bonds so quickly with Wish is that she is also lonely; later, Wish refers to them as “a couple of nighthawks” (209), implying that although they have seemingly established a relationship, they are merely people who happen to be in the same place at the same time—like the painting’s subjects. In the Epilogue, after Wish turns herself in, she sends Bosch a print of Nighthawks, which he hangs up in his home. Connelly ends the novel with a passage about the painting. Bosch sees himself in it every time he walks past it: “The darkness. The stark loneliness” (402). It is a description that resembles the black echo.