Nicholson's Bar

Nicholson's Bar stands on Market Street in the town of Harper, a narrow, worn drinking establishment that becomes an unlikely focal point in the struggle between Sam Bowden and Max Cady. It is the place where Cady, recently released from prison, conducts much of his social life, and where the novel's central act of surveillance unfolds. The bar is more than a setting; it is a stage on which the menace of Cady is observed, measured, and ultimately confronted, and it marks the point where Sam Bowden, a respectable lawyer, must descend into the underworld to fight his enemy on the latter's own ground.

The Setting and Its Character

Nicholson's Bar is described in precise, unflattering detail when Sam Bowden first visits it. The bar part is a narrow room with striated plywood walls painted dark green, with bar stools and the edge of the bar upholstered in green imitation leather. There are mirrors and chrome and tricky lighting on the back bar, but the place has a scuffed, worn look; the plastics and paint are not holding up well, the mirrors and chrome are peeling. A television over the bar is on, and there is an out-of-order sign on the jukebox. Beyond the bar part is a wider room, a cocktail lounge, into which the daylight does not reach. The establishment is a place of faded pretension and visible decay, a fitting habitat for the marginal characters who frequent it.

The Surveillance of Cady

Nicholson's Bar is the anchor of Sievers' surveillance operation. The private investigator reports to Sam that he picked up Cady at six o'clock coming out of the rooming house, and that Cady walked to Nicholson's bar three blocks down Market Street. He came out alone at seven-thirty and walked back and got his car and drove to Nicholson's and double-parked and blew the horn, and a woman came out and got in the car with him. This woman is Bessie McGowan, a fat blonde with a loud laugh, one of those Market Street characters. Sievers learns that Cady goes to Nicholson's a lot, and that they know him there only as Max. The bar is thus established as Cady's habitual haunt, the place where he picks up women and where his movements can be tracked. It is also the scene of Sievers' most humiliating failure: after losing Cady, the investigator finds the man has lit his damn cigar right next to him, and Cady grins and says, "Nice night for it," before walking back to Nicholson's. The bar is the pivot of the cat-and-mouse game between the hunter and the hunted.

Sam Bowden's Descent

Sam Bowden's decision to visit Nicholson's Bar marks a significant moral descent. On Thursday afternoon he decides that he has had enough of waiting and wondering, and that it is time the white mouse ventured out of the hole and found where the cat was. He arrives at Nicholson's at six o'clock, entering the very territory of his enemy. The bartender, Nick, tells him that Cady has been in, that he had some trouble, slugged a cop and was put in city jail for thirty days. Sam's presence in the bar is a departure from his respectable world, a deliberate step into the underworld that Cady inhabits. It is here that he encounters Bessie McGowan, who provides him with a detailed and damning portrait of Cady's character, describing him as all man but mean as a snake, a man who doesn't give a damn for anybody in the world but himself. The bar is the place where Sam gathers the intelligence he needs, but it is also the place where he compromises his own standing.

The Bar as a Stage for Character Revelation

Nicholson's Bar serves as a stage for revealing the novel's central themes of psychopathy and social class. It is in the context of the bar that Sievers delivers his assessment of Cady as a psychopathic personality, a classification for people they don't know what else to call, people they can't treat, people who don't respond to any appeal. The bar is also where Bessie McGowan, in her grotesque outfit of white pumps with four inch heels, skintight black bullfighter pants, and a red-and-white horizontal candy stripe sweater blouse, carries on her own gallant war against time. She is grotesque, ludicrous and incredible, yet there is nothing pathetic about her; she is in the great bawdy tradition. The bar is a place where the novel's outsiders gather, and where the respectable Sam Bowden must confront the reality of the world he is fighting against. It is a space that reveals the social gulf between the Bowdens and the world of Cady, Bessie, and the other denizens of Market Street.