I Have A Lot Of Thoughts And Feelings About John & Evelyn Miller And How Their Meeting Affected John.

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about John & Evelyn Miller and how their meeting affected John.

It's a popular theory that Dutch has bipolar-i & was experiencing a manic episode the entire game.

How many times did John watch Dutch go from being so full of energy, skipping sleep and meals and everything in endless persuit of whatever plan has taken hold of his imagination, at the expense of everything else- just to slipping into a depression that could last days or weeks or months that seemed to suck all the life and energy out of the man, the sparkle in his eyes gone.

Hosea and Arthur are used to the pattern and do their best to manage the behaviour but it's disturbing for a younger John to witness for the first time. Arthur explains it's "Just Dutch being Dutch" and it's not something he has to worry about.

And then in 1907 John stumbles across Evelyn Miller and discovers that Dutch's philosophical hero shares the same tendencies that John associated with "Just Dutch being Dutch".

When he sees Miller slip into that pattern of behaviour, he knows it for what it is. He does what he can , trying to get him to eat or leave his cabin or just talk to him. And he fails.

By 1911 John has incorporated a lot of philosophical and flowery language into the way he speaks, a lot of pretty words that don't mean anything, just like Dutch, just like Evelyn.

Did he pick up this cadence from reading and rereading the book that Miller died over? Another collection of thoughts that John carries the burden of being the only person to read, the only person who can try and make sense of it.

How many times did he read through that book in those few years, subconsciously thinking if he could maybe understand this book, if he could understand Evelyn Miller, then maybe he could understand Dutch.