The Death of Opposites

It's a well told story that turns my stomach. Sparkling detail utterly disjointed from the sorrow they portend. Such disparity between the grandmother's good intentions and the results of her actions. Such senseless divergence between the mood of the story at the start and finish. Yet the narrator's tone is even and steady and fateful. Such misfit between the spoiled childishness of John and Jane and their horrific end. Bailey, murdered for his clothes; the wife and the baby, euthanized. Such a difference between Georgia and Tennessee. Such stoicism demontrated by the grandmother in facing the death of her children; and such tenderness in comforting their killer. Such cold-blooded meanness versus middle-class sloppiness. Pity and terror for sure, but the only tragic death is the grandmother's, and as in Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" the hero is a half-crazed, unrepentant fanatic, who kills when people get too close, whose humanity gives a shudder as he pulls the trigger.