John–Pope antagonism

John–Pope antagonism is a long-running conflict rooted in John’s childhood in Malpais, where Pope’s visits to Linda sharpen John’s resentment and sense of exclusion. It culminates when John sees Pope beside Linda, takes a knife, and attacks him; Pope survives and, after stopping the assault, sends John away with a gesture and words that complicate the hostility rather than erase it.

Origins in John’s Childhood

Pope enters John’s life through his frequent visits to Linda. John sees Linda drink from Pope’s gourd, become loud and unwell, and then go with Pope into another room; later, John finds her asleep and cannot wake her. The pattern makes Pope’s presence inseparable from John’s distress at losing access to his mother. John’s hatred extends beyond Pope to the men who visit Linda, but Pope becomes its particular focus.

The surrounding hostility in Malpais makes John’s attachment to Linda more protective and the conflict more fraught. When local women attack Linda, John tries to intervene and is struck as well. The episode does not involve Pope, but it establishes the vulnerability John sees in Linda and the violence surrounding her life there. His later attack on Pope belongs to this accumulated history, not to a sudden quarrel between equals.

Hatred Given Words

John’s feelings become more sharply articulated after he reads Shakespeare. The language he finds gives form and force to a hatred that had previously been difficult for him to express. He connects Shakespeare’s description of a villain with Pope, and the words repeat in his mind; the reading makes Pope, and John’s own hostility toward him, feel more definite.

That literary language does not simply describe the conflict from a distance. When John later sees Pope beside Linda, the remembered words return as a kind of authorization for action. The scene binds together the immediate sight of the two adults, John’s earlier experiences of Pope’s visits, and the vocabulary through which John has learned to understand betrayal and hatred.

The Knife Attack

One day John enters the inner room and sees Linda and Pope asleep together. Pope’s gourd and a cup are nearby. John reacts with shock and anger, then takes a meat knife from the outer room and returns, repeating the Shakespearean words to himself as he approaches.

John stabs Pope, who wakes and catches John’s wrist, bringing the attack to a halt. Pope is wounded, but the scene does not end with his death: he remains able to restrain John and turn his face toward him. Linda cries out at the sight of the blood, which she cannot bear. John, who had expected a blow from Pope, instead breaks down crying when Pope holds his attention. Pope then tells him to go and calls him a brave boy. John runs to the outer room to hide his tears.

A Conflict Without a Simple Resolution

The aftermath preserves the antagonism while unsettling its terms. John has attempted to kill Pope, and Pope has stopped him; yet Pope’s final response is not another attack. His recognition of John as brave does not undo the fear, resentment, or violence that led to the assault, but it prevents the confrontation from resolving into a straightforward revenge or victory.

The relationship is shaped by a striking reversal: John approaches Pope as an enemy who must be killed, but the surviving Pope becomes the person who restrains him and sends him away. John’s hatred has been intensified by his devotion to Linda and given a script by Shakespeare; the encounter exposes the gap between that script and the unsettled human relation before him. The conflict therefore marks both the force of John’s hostility and its limits: he can act violently against Pope, but he cannot make the encounter conform to the simple ending his repeated words seem to promise.