Forgiveness

    Throughout the duration of Mystic River, only one person maintains some sense of innocence and sympathy from the audience, this character being Dave. With the exception of the children in the movie, every other main character possesses a fraudulent feature rendering them untrustworthy and undeserving of any type of forgiveness. Dave suffers a severely critical mental state throughout the movie, and although he rarely ever expresses his emotional and mental state, half the characters knew his past experience and its lasting effects, and nobody offers to help him. Although he is to blame for the death of the pedophile and murder is never really an excusable act, the lack of attention he and his loved ones put forth toward his conflicting thoughts and emotions is also at blame. It is reasonable that he deserves genuine forgiveness, especially from Jimmy who erratically and incorrectly steals his life and Celeste who views him as Katie’s murderer, because he had never done a single thing to hurt those he loved. Dave is constantly at fault for his instability, yet nobody else experiences the same traumatic flashbacks and present mental issues to relate to his actions. It is only appropriate that the audience sympathizes with Dave’s actions and decisions because of his lack of medical attention and care, yet remain aware that he is still very much a murderer and that is not always justifiable just because its causation is triggering. The only reason Dave is seen retaining a sense of forgiveness is because he did technically kill a criminal, although he is not a victim of this particular criminal act, his own memories override his current actions and he loses control of any sense of reality to become of this decision.