What are these people about?

[Terrance]

This is Part II (Part I was over 10K so I'll wait before I send a 9k
revision). 
jbor wrote:


I said, 

It's easy, I think, to see the alignment, not so easy to see where the
 text is critical of our boys here.


Jbor: 
> You're right: I don't see it at all. Certainly Dixon wants to get the hell
> out of there, and Mason, likewise, has already sought escape "guiltily" in
> the pages of _The Ghastly Fop_, but these responses are quite understandable
> imo. Honest admissions of an inability to cope with the horror.
> 
> I think Dixon is quite critical of his own reaction at 347-8, and his
> physical revulsion and feeling of impotence are quite palpable.

Agreed. 


> 
> Further, I'd compare the "honesty" of their reactions with the way that
> Wicks tries to yoke Native American rituals to his Christian worldview at
> 385-6, and the sophistry with which he pontificates about Indian land rights
> thereafter. His musings in the wake of the massacre are far less palatable
> than either Mason's or Dixon's imo.

Agreed, not in very good taste.  But, the question of honesty is quite a
different matter as regards RC. Isn't it? He's the narrator and
tall-tale teller. He is the Ishmael of this tale. Mason tells Dixon to
go to the site  as a Harlequin, but we've got one of those in RC  who 
is looking back at his youth and playing several parts in the drama he
both constructs and performs. He will even go so far as to step off the
stage and address a particular member or generation of the audience.
Remember, he was not there. Furthermore, I think it is not unreasonable
to read both Mason's reaction and Dixon's reaction as RC's projections
or to take it one step further, to read Dixon and Mason as projections
of RC.  Since the field book says Mason went alone and since it is
pretty clear that it is RC who decides that *they* (Jere and Charlie) 
in fact went together, they entire tale is yarn RC spins, including his
own foolish role.