The Confessional Narrative in Billy Bathgate

Abstract

Abstract: E.L. Doctorow's Billy Bathgate is his “attempt to elevate crime-thriller subliterature into art.” The novel focuses on Billy's yearlong involvement, as a teenager, with the Schultz gangsters based on his retrospective narrtive as an adult. Billy's account of himself is, in effect, a kind of confession common in crime narrative, full of gang violence and criminal activities, but his inaction is at least a conscious act of criminal accomplice. Billy's confession might be motivated by self-scrutiny and self-reflection upon his self-identity, but it is by no means intended as his repentance for guilt or his plea for redemption. So, it seems that his confession has clearly suspended his ethical judgment and shows off his image as “a modern-day Young Goodman Brown,” who is willing to collude with evil voluntarily. The confession by Schultz, the hidden narrative within Billy's account, discloses the violence, money, and power play inside American gangs. Both confessions guide the readers through the secrets of the gang culture and reveal the complicity from not only Billy as a “reader”, but also the readers of the novel as they read through the crime narrative.

Key words: E. L. Doctorow, Billy Bathgate, confession, complicity, crime narrative

Zhu Yun. The Confessional Narrative in Billy Bathgate[J]. Foreign Literature Studies, 2020, 42(3): 110-120.

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