Miscommunication in The Surrounded

One of the scenes that struck me from today’s reading was the scene with George Moser, specifically the passages on pages 26 and 29.  Max and George’s interpretations of the same conversation are so drastically different that it made me think about our discussion of language in All the Pretty Horses.  We had talked about how Perez told Rawlins and John Grady that they did not speak the language, despite the fact that they knew Spanish.  Perez meant that they did not understand the language of prison.  In the scene with George Moser, it appears that George and Max are speaking different languages.  Max dislikes George because he feels that everyone is in debt to the man, and consequently, he is very wealthy.  Max also points out that physically, it is clear that George does not do manual labor to earn his money.  It seems like these are the main reasons that Max “despises” George.  However, when we get narration from George’s point of view, we see that he is having trouble with his business and with his wife as well.  He is clearly not as well off as Max had thought.  George also mentions that he did not understand how Max could have been offended by what he said, and in fact, he had been trying to be especially nice.  As we move forward in the novel, it will be interesting to see how these rifts between individuals develop.  This problem of miscommunication, or lack of a common ‘language’ seems to be significant.