Sixteen - Interesante

Exactly two interesting things happened in this chapter. Well, maybe more, but these are the only two I noticed. Firstly, Mike delivers a crushing falcon punch of words straight to Cohn's poor little sad Jew face: "Why don't you see when you're not wanted, Cohn? Go away" (p. 181). Then he almost makes the mistake of striking a boxing champion, but luckily, the confrontation is averted. For now. I think the particularly important thing here is figuring out why Mike flew off the handle. It's all too easy to just write him off as being drunk, borracho, muy borracho. However, I doubt that's it. I think the reason why he goes postal on Cohn has a lot more to do with who Brett happens to be sitting next to. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Pedro Romero. Mike gets mad because everybody in the room can smell the hormones in the air, and everyone knows little Pedro's going to be the next guy to have a go at Brett. Tsk tsk. But rather than doing the acceptable thing, he goes crazy on Cohn, like everyone else in this book. It's easier to blame the Jew than to actually address the problem at hand. One could almost call it a foreshadowing of World War II. Except that this book precedes said war. So this unarguably means that Ernest Hemingway could see into the future.

Important thing number two is that Jake is a tool. In that by the end of the chapter, he completely goes back on everything he said at the beginning of said chapter. At first, Jake attempts to protect Romero from evil foreigners who will ruin his bullfighting career. He tells Montoya not to show him the letter so as to protect him from foreign influence. However, later that night, he helps Brett track down Romero and throws her into his lap. Figuratively. This sounds an awful lot like a foreign influence that could be detrimental to Romero's career. So essentially, Jake goes back on his word and betrays both his old friend Montoya and his new friend Romero simply because Brett bats her eyes and asks real nice like. I do declare, he's a tool. And it sounds like Jake's feelings for Brett undermine everything he believes in, from fishing to bullfighting, and is proving detrimental to his life.

These are tools. Jake is one.

Edit: This is a Falcon Punch, Mr. Costello