Ray Garrett

Ray Garrett is a failed painter and gallery owner in his late twenties whose story in Patricia Highsmith’s Those Who Walk Away turns a crime plot into an unresolved study of guilt and entanglement. Haunted by the recent suicide of his wife, he follows the man who blames him for her death, and even survival offers no clean escape from their connection.

Identity and Background

Ray is the son-in-law of Ed Coleman. His wife, Ed’s only child, has recently died by suicide; Ed holds Ray responsible. The account gives no independent resolution of that blame, instead placing Ray’s own guilt beside Ed’s accusation. Ray is introduced as a failed painter and gallery owner, a man already shadowed by loss before the confrontation in Rome begins.

Guilt and Pursuit

When Ed tries to murder him in Rome, Ray does not flee. He follows Ed to Venice, where Ed is spending the winter with his girlfriend, Inez. Ray’s pursuit keeps him close to the danger, but it also makes the conflict more than a simple attempt to escape an attacker: guilt over his wife’s death leaves him exposed to Ed’s violent intentions. He accepts a lift from Ed in a motorboat, echoing what the account describes as his death wish.

A False Identity in Venice

In the middle of the lagoon, Ed pushes Ray overboard. Ray pretends to be dead, then assumes a false name and another identity. The change brings both exhilarating freedom and overwhelming emptiness: he is no longer immediately present as the man Ed meant to kill, yet the new identity does not resolve the guilt or give him a settled life. He wanders through the cold streets of wintery Venice as a living dead figure, suspended between apparent escape and continued exposure to the past.

An Unresolved Bond

Ray survives, but the conflict does not conclude in a conventional murder or a decisive reconciliation. The novel’s crime-story structure is marked instead by failed attempts at murder, a lack of clear resolution, and the dragging-on of empty time. Ray and Ed remain linked through the hatred that makes each man part of the other’s continuing story; the ending suggests, without settling their fate in a final confrontation, that both are condemned to haunt one another.