Foil

Character Role Analysis

Mathu and Fix Boutan

Even when you're talking about a novel like A Gathering of Old Men, where the author is really nice to us and just straight-up gives us so much crucial info, Gaines makes it so crystal clear that Fix and Mathu are meant to contrast one another that it's almost eye-poppingly unbelievable. We mean, they even duked it out once in the past—a fight which Mathu won, by the way. Both of these guys have been around for a while, have some serious reputations, and aren't afraid to back down from a fight. But, for Gaines, what's even more important are all of the ways that they're different.

For starters, Fix has a reputation that is entirely built around fear. It's the evil things he might do, and the evil things he's done, that give Fix his reputation. Mathu, on the other hand, has the rep he has because he's managed to stand up for himself. In other words, for Mathu, it's not about keeping people down. It's about his refusal to let anybody put him down.

Not only that, but then there's that whole issue of violence. The kind of violent stuff that Fix does is a direct result of the racist outlook that says white people are hands-down better than people of color. For Mathu, violence is a form of self-defense, a response to the kind of racist hate that Fix and his actions embody. Whether or not violence is ever justified can be a tricky question, but Gaines invites us to compare Mathu and Fix because he's trying to show us that the use of force can mean different things in different contexts.