64 pages • 2-hour read
Shadow Ticket
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Symbols & Motifs
Dancing and Jazz
Hicks and April are “a recognized couple on assorted dance floors around Milwaukee and further down the Lake” (16). Hicks, in particular, is a notable dancer. Later in the novel, Daphne praises his unique dance moves. Hicks can improvise, perform stunts, and move in unconventional time signatures; when he promises April a future together, the future he imagines is one in which they will “dance like those Castles do, long as you like” (116). Dance is a fundamental part of Hicks’s character, distinguishing him even in a community of dancers. Hicks’s penchant for dancing hints at the novel’s playful understanding of the conventions of detective fiction. Hicks is not a violent man; he is a dancer, someone who would rather dance the lindy hop than get in a fight. That he is a good dancer shows that he has become trapped in a role for which he is ill-suited, forced to conform to social expectations of a detective in a detective story even if he would rather be dancing. Each time Hicks dances, he reveals a more liberated, more authentic part of himself typically hidden behind hard-nosed dialogue and procedures taken from “the Gumshoe’s Manual” (114). As such, dancing is a symbolic reminder of the different version of Hicks that might have been possible. Had he not tumbled into becoming a detective, had he not felt the need to adhere to a strict set of guidelines regarding how detectives should behave, Hicks might have been a dancer. The brief flashes of his talent represent the possibility of another world, one in which he was happier.
The novel is also rife with jazz music. The Klezmopolitans’ European tour and the ever-changing faces in April’s backing band show the popularity of jazz music as an expression of modernity and optimism about the future. People fill the dance floors to hear the latest tunes, performed live on stage. Everyone, from the residents of Milwaukee to the Hitler Youth in Hamburg, is fascinated by the possibilities of jazz music, even when the musicians are pushing the music in experimental directions. The portrayal of jazz music in 1932 mirrors society itself, in which people are determined to lose themselves in a mass cultural movement, but one which is headed in strange, unknowable directions. On the dance floors, the listening public find solidarity and community. They share in the experience of listening to the experimental new forms, creating a sense of a musical world bursting at the seams. Jazz musicians like Hop Wingdale are themselves bound up in the covert world of espionage: As a musician, Wingdale is on the front lines of culture, inventing novel forms of creative expression at the margins of what audiences can understand and appreciate. In his secret life as an anti-fascist spy, Hop performs a similar role, working at the political and social margins to shape the future as a space of freedom, not autocracy.
The songs scattered throughout Shadow Ticket similarly reflect the cultural mood of 1932. The characters often sing directly to one another, such as when Daphne sings of her homesickness or when Hicks whispers a ballad in April’s ear. Through song, the characters express the complicated, uncomfortable emotions they feel unable to express explicitly. That the songs are written out in the novel and performed by the characters symbolizes the extent to which the characters are wedded to a certain understanding of popular culture. They frame their emotions according to musical characteristics, selecting certain musical forms for respective emotions. A quiet ballad or a big dance number, for example, can be used to convey longing or hedonism, respectively. In this society, popular culture is so prevalent and engrossing that the characters can only express themselves through the medium of pop music. They have internalized the significance of dancing and singing, which have become their only authentic means of expressing sincere emotions. Everything else is cynically buried deep down, so singing and dancing symbolize a quiet yearning for emotional authenticity.
The U-Boat
The U-13 U-boat, also known as the Vampire Squid, makes several appearances throughout Shadow Ticket. At first, however, the submarine is a rumor passed around the criminal underworld of Milwaukee. Suitably for the Prohibition era, smuggling and contraband are commonplace in Milwaukee. Many of the substances that people enjoy, most prominently alcohol, are smuggled into the city in one way or another. Characters like Hicks are aware of this illegal trade, but they do not know the exact routes or means by which the whiskey, beer, or gin reaches them. The submarine is a manifestation of these unseen forces, a rumor or a story passed around the criminal underworld which seems to grow more exaggerated with each telling. Skeet and his friends overhear snatches of submarine conversation on their stolen radio antennas, while Stuffy Keegan arranges to be picked up by the mysterious submarine so he can go into hiding. The night that Stuffy leaves Milwaukee is representative of the submarine’s mysterious, gothic-tinged nature. Though Hicks accompanies Stuffy, he does not see Stuffy board the submarine. Instead, Hicks glimpses the “sleek black underwater shape” (56) and the strange blinking lights beneath the ice. There is an impression of a submarine as a leviathan—a deep, elemental, and unknowable force that lurks below the known world. This strange vessel, now with Stuffy onboard, represents a world beyond Hick’s comprehension, obfuscated by the thick ice. Like fascism, the supernatural, and alcohol smuggling, the submarine is part of the invisible world that runs parallel to Hicks’s known reality, a symbol of the unknowable forces that actually run society but remain out of reach for an individual like Hicks.
Later, Hicks learns more about the submarine itself. As well as having its existence confirmed by the FBI, Hicks is told that the U-13 was an Austro-Hungarian vessel that was “supposed to’ve been scuttled, scrapped, or handed over after the War, in accordance with the treaties of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Articles 136 and 138, and Trianon, Article 122” (72). The submarine was a weapon of war that, like so much else, was intended to be a victim of World War I. As Hicks hears from Stuffy and the submarine’s skipper, however, the submarine rejected its own fate. The U-13 was built as a weapon of war but, after witnessing war crimes, the skipper decided that he could not take part in similar atrocities. The submarine thus rejected its original role as a weapon and became a smugglers’ ship. Likewise, the skipper and the crew refused the order to have the submarine decommissioned. They rejected the fate set in motion by the end of the war, offering up a similar model for those who feel that their fates have been sealed already and that they are powerless to prevent another war. The U-13 is a symbolic assertion of agency, a demonstration that—through morality and community—a machine and its crew can reject the fate set for them by factories, politicians, and bureaucracy. They make their own destiny, embracing a life of “nonbelligerence” (280). A weapon of war and a crew of military men make the decision to reject war.
As such, the ending of the novel reinforces this symbolic assertion of agency via submarine. With Bruno Airmont intercepted and taken onboard, Stuffy Keegan confronts the Al Capone of cheese with a revelation about the state of the world. The United States has fallen into chaos, he says, as a political coup has swept through the White House. The military is running the country, backed by the fascist forces of capital. The submarine now exists in defiance of this political movement, an underwater assertion of agency in a world thrown into turmoil. The submarine has no fixed future, but plans only to head “west, toward a frontier as yet only suspected, as the days sweep over them” (291). The vessel and its crew are symbolically heading into the sunset, striking out for a new frontier different from the one that they left behind. Like history itself, nothing is fixed or fated for them, other than the decisions that they make aboard the Vampire Squid.
Magic
Shadow Ticket begins with an epigraph attributed to the Hungarian American actor Bela Lugosi. In the quote from his film The Black Cat, Lugosi’s character says “supernatural? Perhaps. Baloney… perhaps not” (0). This quote frames the novel’s depiction of magic and the supernatural. In Shadow Ticket, the supernatural is real. Particularly by the time Hicks reaches Europe, he must reckon with the existence of vampires, disappearing objects, and ghosts. For Hicks in particular, the supernatural has always been a presence in his life. His mother is from a town known for its circus performers and seances, but Hicks had largely considered such things to be what his aunt describes as “parlor tricks” (146). Similarly, Thessalie warns Hicks that many of the magic tricks she performs have a background in the supernatural that he casually dismisses. His own experience of a disappearing weapon has haunted him for emotional reasons, rather than any dispute with reality, but Hicks is gradually made aware that the supernatural is a subtle but ever-present force in his life. In Europe, however, the existence of the supernatural is not only undeniable, but commonplace. The appearance of noted apportist Dr. Zoltán von Kiss adds an air of legitimacy to the discussion of apportation and asportation, with Hicks witnessing disappearing lamps firsthand. By this time, Hicks must accept Lugosi’s framing. The supernatural can explain the mysterious events in his life. The supernatural, Hicks realizes, is not baloney at all.
With the existence of the supernatural established, Hicks begins to discern the many ways in which invisible forces shape his existence. Like the bowling alley full of American fascists in Milwaukee or the smuggler-run submarine that tails him across the Atlantic, many aspects of reality are not seen but which are felt. Hicks has a similar relationship to magic as he does to these other invisible forces. He cannot comprehend the magnitude of the fascist movement in the United States, nor can he engage with the violent bureaucracy of the FBI. Instead, he accepts their presence in his life and tries to forge his own niche anyway. Magic affects Hicks in the same way. His hunt for the tasteless lamp, for example, flounders when the lamp disappears. Rather than blame the supernatural for the failure of the recovery mission, however, Hicks is forced to accept that invisible forces are at play in ways that he does not understand. He is beholden to such forces, whether they be rising fascism or mysterious magic. Hicks’s acceptance of the existence of magic symbolizes his evolving relationship to the unseen forces that govern society.
The treatment of magic in Shadow Ticket mirrors that of technology. The emergence of radioactive substances, in particular, has an eerie relationship to the depiction of magic. The luminescent watches worn by Skeet and others, for example, are proudly displayed for their apparent defiance of the rules of reality. Even in the dark, Skeet boasts, he can read the hands of his watch. Yet the use of radium in such devices has a dark, sinister reality: Many of the young women who worked in factories painting those watch faces later became ill or died from radiation poisoning. The widespread use of such magical technological innovations is soon discovered to be “harmful to human health” (84). Similarly, many of the most significant technological advancements in society are military-related. The U-boats and the zeppelins have been turned into weapons of war; technological advancements which—to earlier generations—might seem almost like magic are corrupted by the human desire for blood. The supernatural is a distant, unknowable world, removed from human existence yet close to it. The technological world, almost as magical, is much closer and—through its proximity—better reflections the darkest aspects of humanity. In the way that the novel treats technology and the supernatural as competing forces, the novel casts a cynical eye over the way in which the magical can be turned violent. While vampires and ghosts might scare people, the true horror belongs to the humans.
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