Suttree

McCarthy develops further nuance to his impoverished characters. He sets up a parallel between people hunting for any scrap of food and birds doing the same. People like Suttree and Harrogate scour the world for food. Hunting, fishing, and stealing are all for survival. This positions humans as kin of animals. By creating a parallel between people and the wilderness of their environment, McCarthy emphasizes that people are, despite their progresses in civilization, merely part of the natural cycles of life.

Despite their harsh conditions, Suttree and Harrogate make their way in the world. Suttree’s fishing in muddy waters and Harrogate’s capturing pigeons for meager scrapings of food offers them freedom. Harrogate and Suttree, like the other characters in the poorer neighborhoods of Knoxville, suffer, but they answer to no one and live off the Earth through their own ingenuity. Those living in poverty have more compassion than Suttree’s well-off family has for each other. While Suttree’s family-in-law literally try to tear each other apart, the community in Suttree’s area band together. For example, when Harrogate steals a man’s pig, the man doesn’t call the police. Another example is how Suttree checks in on all his friends in the beginning freezes of winter and how the strangers offer him some drink to stay warm. All miserable people in this novel recognize misery in others and come together through that misery, creating a community that is bereft of security but rich in free empathy, which emphasizes the theme of Compassion in the Face of Indignity.

Harrogate is a character who is in conflict with his own lack of power. Harrogate is not only impoverished and a convicted felon, but he is also odd and out of terms with what society accepts. Even so, Harrogate doesn’t extend Compassion in the Face of Indignity to others through a mutual understanding of suffering and social ostracization. Although he believes he is a person who gets along with everyone, he is a racist. who projects his society’s disapproval of his own self onto Black people. Harrogate doesn’t acknowledge that his Black neighbors have what he does not: community, livestock, jobs, family, and shelter. Harrogate could make a community with his neighbors, but he chooses not to because the racism he has learned from his society keeps him isolated from a possible support system.

In these chapters, McCarthy repeats the symbol of fire to explore the toxicity of human behavior in conflict with the natural order of the world. It is revealed that Harrogate murdered a woman by burning down her house. Because Harrogate brings this up in a conversation about race, it is implied that the woman was Black and that Harrogate didn’t—and still doesn’t—care about the human life he wasted. Harrogate’s sociopathy is on full display. Paradoxically, when the old man who lives under the bridge despairs over his future, he asks Suttree to burn his body if Suttree finds him dead. The old man under the bridge has resigned himself to living out of the social comforts of traditional burials and mourning. He also doesn’t want the indignity of evaporating under the bridge. In this case, fire is a new beginning. It will return a sad man to his beginnings—to dust, emphasizing The Absurdity of Modern Existence.

A major plot and character development occurs when it is revealed that Suttree has left behind a wife and a son—and moreover, that his son is dead. Despite not being involved in his son’s life, Suttree is oppressed by the sorrow of his son’s passing. It emphasizes how much of life Suttree has missed out on. Suttree’s absence in his son’s life, as well as his in-laws’ reactions to him, implies that Suttree has done something terrible that has separated him from family. McCarthy withholds this information to develop tension and exacerbate conflict in his narrative. This conflict adds nuance and mystery to Suttree’s characterization. Furthermore, the death of his son adds nuance to Suttree. He has had responsibilities that he has shirked, even though he is a character who demonstrates so much Compassion in the Face of Indignity to other people. Why not his son?

This question is one of many that reveals that Suttree has good intentions despite the outward appearance of his life. He wants to be good. He looks after other people, like Harrogate, who serve him no purpose in return. He tries—and often fails—to stay away from alcohol. He recognizes the deep sadness inside himself and strives not to project that onto other people. Given Suttree’s capacity for compassion and understanding, it is notable that other people do not give Suttree empathy. This again elicits the question of what Suttree has done to alienate himself from his own community.

Throughout this novel, McCarthy uses juxtaposition to highlight the coexistence of beauty and ugliness. There exists outward beauty, such as the hints of good weather, a nice breeze, the romantic falling of leaves, and the chirping of birds. This outward beauty lives with the inner wretchedness of characters like Suttree. Only when winter falls on Knoxville does the setting of the novel parallel the internal conflicts of the characters. In playing with setting as parallel and juxtaposition, McCarthy emphasizes the constant interplay between human and environment.