Suttree

In these chapters, Harrogate embodies his nickname “the city mouse” by burrowing in the tunnels under Knoxville. Harrogate’s idea to use the underground tunnels to break into a bank is ridiculous, dangerous, and doomed to fail, adding dark comedy to this section of the novel. It would take so much more than one man digging through sludge to break into a bank vault, yet Harrogate’s unflappable enthusiasm and hubris spur him on. When Harrogate’s detonation of the tunnel rocks the city, Suttree again honorably sets out to take care of his ward-through-happenstance. Harrogate’s ineptitude juxtaposed with Suttree’s wisdom indicates that while more experienced individuals might have the wherewithal to suffer the slings and arrows of life, youth need guidance, protection, and nurturing to survive.

Another symbol McCarthy uses in these chapters is locusts. Locusts are not necessarily harmful to humans directly, but they can destroy crops and other habitats, leading to detrimental effects on people and animals. Thus, locusts are a symbol harbinger of bad news. They are a fearful omen of worse things to come. This symbolism parallels the locust plague in the Bible. Locusts are one of the seven plagues in the Book of Exodus. In the Biblical tale, God sends locusts to Egypt to destroy their crops and start a famine as punishment for the enslavement of God’s people. Thus, a swarm of locusts descending onto Knoxville is directly tied, symbolically, to these ideas of punishment, retribution, and dark foreshadowing, illustrating a Crisis of Faith.

Miss Mother, the town mystic, is another portentous element in these chapters. She is both feared and admired because of her supernatural powers. Ab Jones is desperate to see her, likely because he is in a difficult time in his life and wants some guidance or answers. Miss Mother reads palms and has objects that stimulate her ability to see into past, present, and future. Although Suttree accompanies Jones because it is Jones who wants comfort and help, Miss Mother picks up on Suttree’s psyche instead. Though McCarthy doesn’t reveal what Miss Mother says or sees about Suttree, it is disturbing enough for Suttree to start avoiding her, just as he avoids all confrontation with his past, so Suttree himself is undergoing a Crisis of Faith.

Shortly after fleeing from Miss Mother, Suttree isolates himself even further from society by camping out in the forest of the mountains. This again mirrors biblical references to Jesus’s time in the forest, and this sort of tarry into the wilderness is a literary trope, emblematic in Michael Punke’s novel The Revenant, indicating a man’s journey to perfect self-knowledge and self-sufficiency. If a man can survive on nothing but the original Edenic gifts of the land, then he is truly master of himself. Suttree’s sojourn into the mountains is both a grand and traumatic experience. Suttree feels one with nature and notes the cleanliness and natural beauty of the mountain, but he gets lost in the woods and overestimates his wilderness survival skills. He becomes desperately hungry and adrift. This mountain adventure is a metaphor for Suttree’s life. It symbolizes how out of place Suttree is in the life that he’s chosen. It exacerbates his depth of pain, and it proves that he doesn’t have the skills to survive long-term in the unfettered lifestyle he wants, posing the question: Where does Suttree belong?

In literature, the forest is typically presented as a mysterious place in which surprising things can happen. In most stories in which a character ventures into the forest, they get lost. Like the children’s horror stories of “Hansel and Gretel” and “Little Red Riding Hood,” or the classic Shakespearean tale A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the forest holds beauty and danger. It is a setting marked by this juxtaposition because the forest is full of secrets. It is easy to get lost in the forest, both physically and metaphorically. For Suttree’s own foray into the forest in the mountains, McCarthy also borrows from another religious set of ideas: the ancient Celtic tales of fairy lands and forests. In ancient Celtic mythological tradition, forests are magical spaces. In literature, forests are typically a setting for transformation. Suttree doesn’t transform himself—instead, he replicates the patterns of his nomadic lifestyle in Knoxville and his refusal to ask for help when he needs it. The forest makes Suttree feel alive and one with nature, but it also makes him hungrier, colder, lonelier, and more in peril than his life in his houseboat. When Suttree leaves the forest, he is at first an angry man and then he returns to his regular self. Suttree’s lack of growth in such a classical setting for character development implies that Suttree is not yet ready to change his perspective on himself and his life.

In these chapters, Suttree relearns the cruel reality that life is full of twists of fate. Happiness and hope are brought into his life when he meets Reese’s family. They are friendly and welcoming, and Suttree notes the flirtatious energy of the eldest daughter as well. Suttree is attracted to the whole family because of their hospitality and their openness. Suttree follows them upriver, a notable metaphor that suggests fruitful happiness. Though upriver and downriver are literal directions, “downriver” has long held a negative connotation because enslaved people in the South could be sold “downriver” to states deeper in the antebellum South and therefore, more brutal. Suttree goes upriver with the family, which has the opposite connotation, an implication of hope and freedom.

Upriver, with Reese and his family, Suttree relishes in a new life. He works closely with Reese and his family to fish for mussels. They all pitch in to share resources, and this highlights how important community is. On his own, Suttree’s pursuit of food and physical comfort is a constant and independent struggle. With Reese’s family, this becomes a group activity and concern, which makes life easier. Suttree develops a good friendship with Reese. Reese is not all he seems at first. It becomes clear that he has lied to Suttree about how financially rewarding the pearls in a mussel are, and he is unfaithful to his wife. Even so, Suttree follows Reese’s lead.

Suttree develops a friendship with Willard, Reese’s son. Through Willard’s curiosity, readers finally learn that Suttree went to prison because he had been the getaway driver for his friends who stole drugs from a pharmacy. This crime is not particularly revelatory or antagonizing. Thus, Suttree solidifies that his crimes are often small and in the aid of a friend who is running the crime in the first place. Willard is adept at wildlife survival because he has been raised to live on the river, unlike Suttree, who learns valuable lessons from Willard despite his youth. Yet Willard doesn’t seem as happy as Suttree. Willard doesn’t take notice of the tranquil setting the way Suttree does, and he grows easily frustrated with daily work. Willard feels out of place and wants to know what else life might have in store for him.

Suttree also develops a close romantic and sexual relationship with Reese’s older daughter, Wanda. Their relationship is kept a secret so as not to disturb her father, who might see Suttree as a danger to his daughter. Unlike Wanda, Suttree is concerned about the ramifications of sex, such as getting Wanda pregnant. He vacillates between wanting Wanda and being repulsed by their relationship. This highlights how difficult it is for Suttree to appreciate relationships that could be loving. He’d rather keep relationships simpler; visits to a brothel make sexual intercourse a transaction and help Suttree avoid another disappointed wife and dead child. Wanda’s tragic death in a mudslide is a sad moment, but narratively it frees Suttree from developing a relationship with Wanda that would require more responsibility. To Suttree, Wanda is a body to have had, not to share life with, which calls his compassion for most others in his life into question. Wanda’s tragic death also emphasizes the reality that life is full of twists and turns, emphasizing The Absurdity of Modern Existence. Once Suttree finds simple happiness with Wanda and her family, life hits them with a natural disaster that destroys their happiness. Life is full of ups and downs, and Suttree rarely gets the chance to experience the joys life can offer. Suttree returns to Knoxville, resigned to misery once again. Still, the blip of time he spent with Wanda and Reese proves that Suttree is capable of happiness.

Another twist of fate, though a less unexpected one, is that the old man under the bridge may have died. This man has long lived under the bridge, and his death symbolizes the end of an era. Because Suttree was developing different bonds with the family upriver, he couldn’t say goodbye to this steadfast companion, nor was he able to burn the man’s body like the man had requested him. Suttree unwittingly chose to explore closeness with new friends rather than fulfill his promise to an old one. With the possibility of his death, McCarthy finally names the old man under the bridge, Daddy Watson. The revelation of his name in context with his death indicates that Suttree can only bear to be close with someone when the promise of enduring ties is impossible, as the time left for the person to have agency of their own as an active member of the friendship has passed.

Richard’s blindness is another symbol tied to mythology that McCarthy uses in his novel. In ancient Greek mythology, stories told by narrators with blindness are integral to a nobleman’s home. Their blindness was thought to have given them intimate access to the muses and the stories of the gods. Often, the narrators with blindness are fortune tellers because they can see what only the gods have access to. Richard, as a man with blindness in a novel that is infused with religious allusions, also represents the possibility of blindness as future-seeing. He reads the tiles under the billiards table and finds Callahan’s name; shortly after this, Callahan is murdered and dies a long and painful death. Callahan’s name is on the tile because he used to be a tile setter and must have inscribed his own name, something physical that would outlive him. Richard’s discovery of Callahan’s tile is like a death sentence. Here, Richard embodies a Crisis of Faith and The Absurdity of Modern Existence.