Blog 4-6-10 Interesting chapter.

A bit confusing at the start, but very... interesting... as the chapter progressed and especially at the end.

At the beginning of the chapter, McCarthy writes, "Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves." What I italicized confused me at first. I thought that "harbor" was referring to a place where boats are moored. Reference to the Leonids caught my attention. I wonder if the fact that the main character was born on the night of a meteor shower will have any future importance. Also in that paragraph, The author refers to "The Dipper stove." Does this mean the quadrilateral that makes up the cup of the dipper?

I like how the author doesn't actually say that the boy's mother died during child birth and uses "incubate," a word I associate with incubus; a male demon.

At fourteen the boy runs away from home, wanders for a year and ends up on a boat to New Orleans where he is shot in the back and then just below the heart. At fifteen, I would not have even thought of being shot, not seriously anyway. After two weeks, he boards another boat to Texas where he works odd jobs and sees a man hanged for killing his family by his friends, then finally comes to Nacogdoches, where the chapter is set. It surprised me that the man was killed by his friends and not by some form of appointed law enforcer.

Judge is shown to be a starter of trouble, nearly getting a reverend killed for crimes he apparently never committed in places he has probably never been, then reappears at a bar where he is questioned about his accusations and claims to never have even seen the accused.

Toadvine is another trouble maker that recruits "the boy", after knocking him out the night before, to help him smoke out and attack a man at a hotel and, perhaps not at first intentionally, burn the same hotel down.

After Toadvine's fight with "the boy" McCarthy writes about a man staring at the two of them, walking off, then returning in the direction he came only a few minutes later and again stealing a glance at them. This illustration didn't seem to be very important, so I wonder why the author chose to include it.

After escaping, the boy looks back at Judge and the two shared a moment in which Judge smiled at them and turned his horse so that "the animal watched him too." Another seemingly unimportant detail that I wonder why the author chose to include.