Suttree

Suttree begins with a descriptive portrayal of the dirtied and rundown areas of Knoxville, Tennessee in the year 1951. The setting is defined by bleakness. McCarthy uses imagery to depict a place that is remarkably dirty with an overtone of darkness. People who live in this setting are destitute. Still, there are small signs of beauty and life even in the bleakest settings. Through his protagonist Suttree, a man recently released from prison, McCarthy grasps at moments of positivity and hope. Suttree notices signs of life, such as the sound of bugs and the movement of rushing water. For Suttree, who understands seclusion from nature due to his imprisonment, even a dark and poor setting can hold beauty because of his direct access to life and radical freedom. Suttree only answers to himself, which makes his autonomy and freedom of movement more precious after his stint in prison and his separation from his family. A metaphorical depiction of how Suttree can find life in wretchedness is his new, self-driven job as a fisherman. The water he fishes in is muddy and dirtied by pollution. Even so, Suttree catches fish, and though these fish aren’t of good quality, they are still elements of life, hope, and sustenance.

Suttree feels hopeless because of his conditions, but he is resilient. A death by suicide occurs early in the novel, a symbolic introduction to the overall despair of Knoxville. Suttree contemplates this death and comes to terms with his survival mechanisms. Although he acknowledges desiring death, he wouldn’t, he is begrudgingly certain, die by suicide. Here, Suttree confirms that all life, however meager, is meaningful.

Suttree is living in the moment, not yet thinking about his future because he is trying to avoid the ghosts of his past. He constantly thinks of his grandfather, who, it is implied, played an influential role in his life. The memories of his grandfather are intertwined with his complex emotions about his family. He thinks of his dead brothers, one of whom died stillbirth while Suttree was born alive. This dead twin, never spoken of in his family, is a foreboding dark image that foreshadows the bleak life Suttree will lead. He thinks of this brother that never was to be because he is a nameless soul who was spared the conflicts Suttree has experienced as a survivor. The symbolism of the dead twin represents something that has been taken away from Suttree. It’s not just that he lost a brother, but importantly, the moment of his birth is traumatized by the death of his twin. Suttree never possessed joy without the mirror image of pain, birth with death, and this duality will recur throughout the novel emphasizing the theme of The Absurdity of Modern Existence.

Suttree is a mysterious protagonist. He is out of touch with his family, which is revealed when his uncle tracks him down. He and his uncle immediately enter a tense conversation about what Suttree is running away from. His uncle is his mother’s brother, and Suttree’s father is of a different and higher social status than his mother’s side of the family. In Suttree’s estimation, Suttree’s father looks down on his own family. Suttree therefore feels like the product of fallacy; he is unloved and unappreciated. Even though his father wrote him letters in prison, and even though his mother visited him in prison, it is Suttree who can’t confront the pain of his family. He is touchy about his identity as well, and this, combined with his disavowal of a family that seems to want him back in their lives, implies that Suttree feels oppressed by his identity as a son, brother, and nephew. Without any ties to a family, Suttree can be wholly himself, whatever that may be. In these chapters, McCarthy doesn’t reveal what Suttree did that landed him in prison. The implication of this narrative absence is that Suttree has done something that he is still ashamed of, and therefore he can’t face his family. Nor can Suttree return to the structured, well-educated, presumably well-off life he had before prison.

Suttree’s narrative is paralleled with the focus of a secondary character, Harrogate. The narrative flashes back to Suttree’s time in jail when he first meets Harrogate. Suttree notes that Harrogate will live a life in and out of prison because there is a darkness in him. Even so, Harrogate is extremely friendly and tries to get along with everyone. Harrogate’s amiability is challenged by his cowardice. When Callahan and Slusser are placed in solitary confinement for getting in a fight that Harrogate started, Harrogate believes that Callahan will sacrifice himself for Harrogate. This implies that Harrogate is fine to have other men fight his battles for him, which sets him apart from stronger men like Suttree, who fights his own battles while maintaining Compassion for others. Harrogate immediately shows himself to lack the moral compass of other characters in the novel, and the conflict he displays between his superficial kindness to others and his lack of respect for them mirrors the tension between other dyads later in the novel.

Harrogate’s entrance into the prison system allows the reader to see the man Suttree was before he found a destitute form of freedom in Knoxville. Suttree is generous; he takes Harrogate under his wing even though it places Suttree at odds with others. In prison, Suttree tries to keep his head down and follow the rules. He is resigned to his present moment. He isn’t bothered when the other prisoners make fun of him for being well-educated, and he accepts the dynamics of prison life. Suttree finds dignity in suffering. When his mother visits him in prison, however, he can’t handle facing her. Her mere presence brings him to tears, which shows a layer of sensitivity and pain in Suttree’s characterization. The flashback to Harrogate’s imprisonment thus introduces Harrogate’s character, but it also builds more nuance in Suttree’s character and sets them as foils to each other, accentuating the theme of Compassion in the Face of Indignity.

The scenes of prison also help McCarthy explore the deplorable conditions of prison in the 20th century. Although McCarthy doesn’t reveal the year of the setting of his novel until Chapter 4, readers can glean from his depictions of prison life that the novel is not in their contemporary world. This is implied through the separation between Black and white prisoners and the flagrant use of racist language to dehumanize Black people. When Harrogate first enters prison, he comes from such poverty that he doesn’t even know how to work a running shower. A Black prisoner tries to help him, but cautiously, due to established social mores in the prison in which Black and white prisoners are not meant to mingle or collaborate in any way. Abuse between prisoners and guards is rampant, and the prison’s methods of solitary confinement are inhumane. The prisoners are not treated with dignity, but they form a community within their own groupings. The emphasis on their dynamics foreshadows that, after prison, they will reunite. This foreshadowing is confirmed when, in Knoxville, Callahan and Suttree run into one another, and again when, in Chapter 6, Harrogate is released and instantly searches for Suttree. Harrogate exaggerates his prison relationship with Suttree. Suttree had his own annoyances with Harrogate, which Harrogate doesn’t recognize. However, Harrogate has no one else to go to. While Suttree denounces a return to family, Harrogate has no choice because he has no family unit on which to rely.

Harrogate lacks common sense and self-sufficiency. When he is released from prison, he keeps a human eye he finds in a totaled car and steals from a man with blindness. Harrogate’s aberrant behavior fits into the bleak and desolate Knoxville McCarthy has created, but Harrogate’s crimes are also born of necessity. Because Harrogate is perceived by society as unworthy of care and Compassion in the Face of Indignity, there are no structures in place to help him understand how to be part of society. In contemporary terms, Harrogate could benefit greatly from therapy, welfare, and basic education, but because he is young, poor, uneducated, and already a criminal, his future is bleak. McCarthy questions his reader: Is this Harrogate’s fault? Or is it a flaw in society that boys like Harrogate fall into the penal system? Many prisoners who served time with Suttree are men who are in and out of the prison system, revealing a lack of social support for people who are released from prison. Harrogate, like Suttree, has little hope of stable employment or even a place to stay. This propels the cycle of re-incarceration.

McCarthy is known for his distinctive literary style. Even when McCarthy describes ugliness, he uses sophisticated vocabulary and long sentence structures that imbue the ugliness with importance and even, paradoxically, beauty. McCarthy also often refers to a character as “he” and doesn’t reveal if the “he” in question is Harrogate or Suttree. This keeps characters in a universal narrative plane; the “he” having sex with watermelons could be Suttree because of the structure of the sub-plot, even though the reader can pick up on clues that Suttree wouldn’t do certain out-of-character things. By melding his characters as a third-person singular pronoun, he implies that all characters, and therefore all people, are of equal importance of equal culpability.