This short story is told in first person and features the narrator, Sadie, and Dirty Joe. Drunk at the carnival, Dirty Joe is unconscious. However, the narrator notes that "Dirty Joe was no warrior in the old sense" (54). He describes him as someone who drinks all the beer at the tavern.
Sadie, too, exhibits qualities of an affected person when described by the narrator. When he mentions that it would be funny to put Dirty Joe on the roller coaster, the narrator notes: "[Sadie] smiled for the first time in four or five hundred years" (55). While the idea of putting Dirty Joe on the roller coaster may have seemed funny to the two, all I could think of was betrayal. Also, they both escape before the guards can get them; this is another cowardly act. What do you guys think? Am I reading into a harmless joke too much, or is it actually mean-spirited?
That's the question, Jack. How is turning on Dirty Joe and making him the sacrificial lamb actually self-loathing?
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