Amazing. McCullers is truly amazing in some of her skills of storytelling.
We know the truth about what happened between Dr. Copeland and Jake Blount, but when next we come upon Jake after some time has passed, he is running blindly through the alleys:
Fighting blind with the dust and sun. The sharp cut of teeth against his knuckles. And laughing. Christ! And the feeling that he had let loose a wild, hard rhythm in him that wouldn’t stop. And then looking close into the dead black face and not knowing. Not even knowing if he had killed or not. (p. 288)
While it is obvious to the reader–and to Jake–that the face is not that of Dr. Copeland that he sees but a young man caught in a fight at the carnival grounds, it holds relevance to his last meeting with Dr. Copeland and the condition the sickly doctor was in when Jake left him. It picks up an underlying thread of the hopelessness of both of these two men’s focused desires.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology