John attacks Pope with a knife

John attacks Pope with a knife after finding him asleep beside Linda, in a scene where jealousy and anger are shaped by the language John has borrowed from Shakespeare. The assault is interrupted almost immediately: Pope catches John’s wrist, and the encounter ends not in revenge but in John’s tears and flight.

Discovery and provocation

John comes in from playing and sees the door to the inner room open. Linda and Pope are asleep together on the bed; Pope’s arm is beneath Linda’s shoulders and his other hand rests on her breast. A plait of his hair lies across Linda’s throat. On the floor nearby are Pope’s gourd and a cup. The sight makes John’s hatred of Pope newly immediate: the words he has been learning no longer merely describe an imagined villain but attach themselves to a person and a moment before him.

Shakespeare’s language as a warrant

John’s reaction is physical and disorienting. He feels emptied, cold, sick, and dizzy; then the words he associates with Pope repeat in his mind until his anger surges. He says he will kill Pope, and Shakespeare’s lines about a man asleep or in the “incestuous pleasure of his bed” follow. John does not fully command the meaning of the language, but he experiences it as a kind of magic that explains the scene and gives him instructions. The borrowed words therefore serve both as a vocabulary for hatred and as an apparent warrant for acting on it.

The attack and its interruption

John finds the meat knife on the floor near the fireplace. Repeating the lines to himself, he returns to the inner room and stabs Pope. Pope wakes and struggles; John tries to strike again, but Pope catches his wrist and twists it, stopping him. The attack leaves two cuts on Pope’s left shoulder. Linda cries out at the sight of blood, which she cannot bear. John expects Pope to hit him, but Pope instead lifts his chin and turns his face toward him, making John look at him.

Failed revenge and aftermath

The confrontation does not deliver the revenge John has imagined. Held in Pope’s gaze, John begins to cry; Pope laughs and tells him to go, calling him “my brave Ahaiyuta” in the Indian language. John runs into the other room to hide his tears. The ending reverses the attack’s apparent roles: John entered as an armed aggressor, but the failed blow leaves him exposed and weeping, while Pope controls the encounter and dismisses him. The scene shows Shakespeare’s language intensifying John’s hatred without giving him mastery over the violence it seems to authorize.