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My favorite thing about the friendship is that it feels somehow…archetypical to me. The rich boy. The poor girl. The boy who’s half one thing, half another. It’s like a fairytale setup or some other kind of ancient story transplanted to 1970s West Virginia. Maybe I’m reading too deeply into it, though.

I do think Matt is (inadvertently) being self-righteous, snooty, and insulting. But I also think that’s the point. If he doesn’t change by the end of the book I won’t be too happy, but it looks to me like all that is set up as his character arc. I think he’s going to see how wrong he is and change. He already kind of sees how wrong he is, he just doesn’t know how to fix it. One thing I like about this friendship is that Jesse and Dickie bring Matt’s faults to the surface and force him to face them. My guess is that he will face them and never be the same again.

It is a little odd that Matt seems so possessive of Jesse. I think he implied in the first chapter that Earl is known for abuse, though? He said something along the lines of “knowing what he’d do to Jesse,” and when we meet him as a kid, he’s clearly prone to violence. So I can understand Matt’s desire to keep Jesse from getting physically and emotionally hurt. But if it’s that bad, maybe he should be calling the police…it’s hard to say from the vantage point of chapter 10. There’s clearly a lot of history that I don’t know at this point.

Lastly, like other people have said, the fact that they face so much adversity and injustice, and in various ways save each other from it, gives them a strong bond and a sense that they need each other, not just so they aren’t bored but because each fills a spot in the others’ lives that no one else could fill.

Plus, now every time someone asks me “How are you doing?” I really want to answer, “Lookin for a breakthrough.” XD