One point was made at the Wesleyan conference that I hadn’t considered: That the necessary change as a result of the event or series of events is not necessarily one that takes place within the protagonist, but in fact, may happen within the reader.
At the end of McCarthy’s novel, Bud Suttree does undergo a change, though we don’t know where he is headed mentally as he leaves Knoxville. He doesn’t either, not really. But he knows that he doesn’t want to spend any more time in the lifestyle he had been living for the three years since he had turned his back on another, comfortably wealthy lifestyle to which he was born. I don’t know if he would have made this move if the neighborhood hadn’t been leveled while he was facing some serious demons brought to his bedside by typhoid fever, but he is once again in control of himself. He has been devastated by the deaths of people he cared about, people who struggled every day to get through every day. He helped where he could. It took its toll on him, and brought back memories of his childhood that we could only guess at. Events are hinted at, and we can only guess at the trauma it induced in a child, the despair and revulsion it grew in a man.
I will miss Bud Suttree. He is a good man. I wish him luck.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Alright Susan. I’m going to hang in here. Can’t comment on this work, but I must say you’re not one to overanalyze themes and motifs.
When Stephen King was once asked about the deeper motivations and contrasts in his novels, the symbiotic nature of the juxtapositions, he said, “I just write what scares me.”
So there it is.
I think Suttree went to El Paso. He lived just down the street from us.
Who the hell would move to El Paso?
who is the maggot-ridden corpse lying in a shrivelled repose in suttree’s bed just before sut takes his leave of knoxville?