64 pages • 2-hour read
Shadow Ticket
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Character Analysis
Content Warning: This section of the guide features depictions of addiction, violence, racism, and religious discrimination.
Hicks McTaggart
Hicks McTaggart is the protagonist of Shadow Ticket. Though he is the protagonist, he is notably lacking in any form of agency: He is propelled through the plot by forces beyond his control, often against his will, and he is rarely able to alter the course of events. After being persuaded to leave Milwaukee, he is drugged and kidnapped before being deposited in Europe to take on an increasingly bizarre and dangerous series of assignments. To find Daphne (a case he never wanted to take), he must—at various points—find Hop Wingdale, retrieve a legendarily tasteless lamp, find Ace Lomax, and rendezvous with everyone from international police agents to undercover British spies. This creates an ironic situation for the novel’s protagonist, as he must gradually come to terms with his absolute inability to exert any agency over his life. This irony is further evident in the way the novel approaches literary conventions. As a pastiche and a tribute to detective fiction, Hicks is both a private detective and someone who plays the role of private detective as he has seen it on screen. Influenced by the media, both he and Daphne are aware of what is expected of “runaway fiancées and their duty-bound pursuers” (201). Similarly, Hicks references “the Gumshoe’s Manual” (114), a sarcastic acknowledgement of his understanding of the tropes of detective fiction. Hicks is, in this sense, a self-aware protagonist, commenting on a plot that rapidly spins out of his control.
If Hicks is publicly performing the role of a private detective, his private life hints at a deeper, more authentic version of himself—one less dependent on rote performance of certain tropes. Rarely, for example, does Hicks use violence. Only when people attack him is he willing to fight back. This reluctance can be traced back to his youthful experience as a strikebreaker, a period he now regrets. Whereas many movie detectives are unrelenting in their use of force, Hicks wishes to put his violent past behind him. Rather than fight, Hicks prefers to dance. He is a talented dancer, earning himself a reputation across the dance floors of Milwaukee and Chicago. On the dance floor, Hicks does not feel the need to perform. On the dance floor, he is at his most honest. This penchant for dancing hints at a different version of Hicks who might exist had he not become embroiled in the criminal underworld. For Hicks, a different life was possible.
In the closing chapters, Hicks begins to dissolve into the background. He is not present at the dramatic liberation of Ace Lomax, for example, and Daphne decides to return to the United States for her own reasons, not because Hicks persuades her to do so. He completes his assignment almost incidentally, as the rapidly accelerating forces of political violence build up around him. In contrast to his environment and the seemingly inevitable war, Hicks’s lack of agency or control is even more evident. His helplessness becomes the point, showing how he is trapped by his material conditions, his society, and his own regrets. Having learned that he will never be able to return home, Hicks calls his estranged mother. She refers to Hicks as her “Carload o’ Kisses” (289). Hicks has no memory of this term of endearment. In a moment of pathos, he realizes that his exile extends beyond geography to the terrain of imagination and memory. He is exiled from his home and his past, unable to return to a country he no longer recognizes and which no longer exists. He cannot recognize or remember the love of the mother who abandoned him. Hicks realizes that whatever love he thought he knew—from his mother, from April, from his country—is gone forever. Any sense of his former self has similarly collapsed, leaving him to forge a new life, in a new language, with a new lover. Hicks glimpses redemption through reinvention.
April Randazzo
April Randazzo is Hicks’s sometime girlfriend. While they are recognized as a romantic couple around town with a reputation for talent on the dance floor, April brings conflicts and difficulties into Hicks’s life. She has a penchant for “married men” (19), to the point where she wishes that Hicks would marry another woman just so that she would be more attracted to him. April’s Italian heritage also causes a problem for Hicks. While her heritage grants him insight and a connection to the Italian community in Milwaukee, April is a little too close to the Mafia for his comfort. This becomes a particular issue when April conceives a baby with Mafia boss Don Peppino, placing Hicks in immediate danger as Don Peppino does not want a rival for April’s affections. Thus, the relationship between April and Hicks is seemingly doomed from the start. Like so much in Hicks’s life, his relationship with April is a reminder of how little control he has over his own destiny. As much as he loves April, he feels compelled to leave her behind, as he must leave everything else behind.
After Hicks leaves Milwaukee, April becomes a focal point for his nostalgia. He remembers their dancing together, while the sound of her voice on a record is enough to send him into a romantic daydream even as he hurtles farther and farther from home. April takes on an added significance in Hicks’s mind, since she becomes a symbol of everything that he has left behind. When he thinks back to his life in America, he thinks back to his time on the dance floor with April. He pines not so much for April, but for the life they lived together and the impression of a different life that may have been happier. Notably, Hicks chooses to send April a message via Daphne, urging her to be safe and to grow up. He does not speak to her directly, nor does he urge her to join him. He accepts that she is a part of his past, a person with whom he can no longer interact. April disappears into the ether of Hicks’s past, lingering only as a vestigial nostalgia for a former dancing partner.
Daphne Airmont
Daphne Airmont is the daughter of Bruno Airmont, “the Al Capone of cheese,” whose disappearance leads to the case that changes the life of Hicks McTaggart. Daphne comes from a wealthy but emotionally distant family. Her life in Milwaukee is dominated by a mother who only cares about outside appearances, a man who is determined to profit financially from his status as her fiancé, and the chaos that follows her criminal father and his various dairy enterprises. Her family may be extremely wealthy, but Daphne pursues affection and emotion elsewhere, a search that eventually leads her into the arms of jazz clarinetist Hop Wingdale. Daphne runs away with Hop, with the rumors that she leaves in her wake suggesting that she has fallen in love with him. Her family wants her back, not necessarily because they love her but because they are worried about how her absence might affect their own fortunes. Having run away, Daphne is left to discover that her relationship with Hop is not what she imagined. The love she thought that she felt for him is revealed to be more of a passing affection. When Hop runs away, however, Daphne chases after him. She is determined to be with Hop, rather than to face the possibility that she naively mistook a fleeting romance for love. Daphne chases after Hop and refuses to return home because she does not want to admit to herself that she was mistaken. In this way, she shows that she has inherited her father’s pride and delusion.
As Hicks chases Daphne across Europe, she gradually realizes that she does not love Hop. She is recognizes her mistake when she realizes how far Hicks has come to rescue her and how much she has affected his life. An idea repeated throughout the novel, attributed to the Ojibwe people whose homelands are in and around Hicks’s native Minnesota, is that a person who saves the life of another is then responsible for that person’s life. Daphne reminds Hicks of this idea when they reunite, noting that he intervened in her life and helped her to escape from a mental health facility, thus making her life his responsibility. While others have cynically cited the Ojibwe belief to make Hicks do what they want, Daphne cites it to release herself from his duty of care. She recognizes that she does not love Hop. After a brief fling with Hicks, she recognizes that she does not love him either, nor does she feel indebted to him. She confronts her father and realizes that he cannot be trusted. Bruno never loved his daughter; he simply viewed her as a tool in his fight against InChSyn. Daphne makes her own decision: She elects to return to the United States for her own reasons, not because either Hicks or her father wants her to. In this way, she exercises a degree of agency over her life that Hicks cannot exercise over his own. Daphne’s decision, fueled by a newfound understanding of herself, is the novel’s most significant demonstration of agency over events.
Hop Wingdale
Hop Wingdale is the jazz clarinetist who runs away with Daphne Airmont, taking her to Europe to join his band, the Klezmopolitans, on their European tour. For the first part of the novel, Hop does not appear on the page, though he is often spoken of. Since few people know him personally, he exists only as a name and a profession. Hicks comes to know Hop solely as the person who has taken Daphne away; Daphne’s family imply that Hop should be paid, intimidated, or whatever it takes to be convinced to leave Daphne alone. In this way, Hop functions as a plot device. From Hicks’s perspective, Hop is an obstacle that must be navigated in order to complete the assignment. When Hop does arrive in the narrative, however, a very different character emerges: a young musician who is focused more on his music than the romantic chaos in which he has been unexpectedly caught. Hop does not truly love Daphne, at least not as much as she believes that she loves him. Daphne admits to catching him many times “in the sweaty clutches of some Swing Girl barely into her teens” (205). Hop is caught in a dangerous situation, in which he has misjudged the degree of Daphne’s affections for him, unaware that her father is a powerful and unscrupulous man.
Having broken off from Daphne, Hop’s character begins to change again. In the meeting with his agent, a different side of Hop is revealed. He and his agent plot to use the Klezmopolitans tour as a cover story, allowing them to scout out “possible escape routes from Central Europe should a sudden exodus become necessary” (209) for Jewish people. Hop—one of the few Jewish characters in the novel—begins a new career as a liberator, helping to combat rising antisemitism in Europe. He frees Ace Lomax, demonstrating his heroic credentials, then invites Ace to join the operation. As such, the mysterious Hop emerges from the narrative with a clear and benevolent purpose. The character who began the book as a plot device ends as one of the characters who is actively working to fight fascism in Europe. With so many others feeling cowed by the weight of history and the inevitability of war, Hop emerges as a commendable active character who is actually fighting for what he believes is right.
Floyd ‘Skeet’ Wheeler
Floyd Wheeler, nicknamed Skeet, is “one of the modern young breed of dip” (6). Without much in the way of domestic support from family or parents, Skeet is forced to fight for himself at a young age. He runs schemes and steals to get by, but he has a dream for the future. When he grows up, he wants to be a detective, just like Hicks McTaggart. Hicks and Skeet share an unlikely relationship, in which Hicks serves as a father figure to Skeet. He helps Skeet when he can and, in turn, Skeet brings Hicks information from the street. Hicks is one of the most significant figures in Skeet’s life. The relationship between Skeet and Hicks is even more significant given the absence of Hicks’s own father. Hicks grew up without a father, since he was raised by his Uncle Lefty. He sympathizes with Skeet, who looks up to Hicks in turn. The significance and the sincerity of this relationship adds an element of tragedy to Hicks being forced to flee Milwaukee. He is leaving behind more than just his own life: He is taking away the only stable male role model from Skeet.
Skeet stays in touch with Hicks, so much so that his letter to his friend functions as the closing statement in the novel. In the letter, Skeet speaks honestly about his hopes for the future. He may have lost Hicks, but he has found a girlfriend and they plan to build a life together out west. It may not be the life Skeet wanted and he may not grow up to follow in Hicks’s footsteps, but it is a demonstration of optimism by one of the most marginalized characters at a time when many of the characters in the novel are resigned to a coming war. That Skeet receives help from Lew Basnight is also significant. Lew was a character in Pynchon’s Against the Day, with his own experiences of heading out west in search of a future. He is willing to help Skeet make a similar journey of his own. In Pynchon’s Vineland, Zoyd Wheeler is a California resident in the 1970s. The recurring surname suggests that Floyd ‘Skeet’ Wheeler made his way out west and started a family. As such, Skeet functions as the connective tissue between Pynchon’s works set across different eras. Skeet, through his closing comments and his relationships, offers an optimistic view of the future in spite of the rising levels of violence.
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