The Enemy Within

Throughout life everyone is forced to face their own worst enemy and will have a lot of trouble confronting and dealing with them that worst enemy will always be themselves. This enemy brings many problems and inner conflicts that are difficult to solve. Everyone has their own way of coping with these problems, some more critical than others. In the book Drugstore Cowboy, by James Fogle, the main character Bob deals with this dichotomy in different was throughout the book and his two sides are very easily differentiated.

Throughout the book Bob is faced with difficult decisions and has the choice of either being that humane and caring man or the cruel and manipulative man that he can be. As he is making these decisions Bob has to not only think of the situation but also make sure that his crew is safe or if he needs to use them. Bob is a very complex individual with two conflicting sides to him, one that is used to show his humane and caring nature and the other is used to intimidate or manipulate people. Deep down, Bob is a caring and humane man.

He protects his crew with his life; he puts himself on the line for his crew and for the people he cares about like his mother and Diane. This side of Bob is made very clear when he visits his mother and shows her nothing but respect and he even shows some humility when speaking to her. When Bob’s mom exclaims that Bob is a thief he replies, “Jesus, Mama, when have I ever stole anything from your house? Name me one thing I ever took from you without telling you? Just name me one thing? ” (Fogle58). The way he replies and speaks to his mother shows that he has the outmost respect for her, his way of talking to his mother shows humility.

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When speaking with his mother he always calls her mama or mom; he never called her by her first name or by anything else. Bob also shows a lot of submissiveness when he is with his mom, it seems like he still feels like a little kid when he talks or confronts her. Bob would do anything for his wife, Diane. Bob loved Diane; when he first met her he felt like she wasn’t like other woman. Bob took Diane cross-roading but had the intentions of stealing her car, instead he fell for her. Fogle comes to explain how Bob felt about Diane, “Bob loved Diane body and soul by then.

Even narcotics had never brought him the pleasure and satisfaction that Diane did back then “(166). It seems like Bob is truly a caring and humane person because of how he felt and still feels about Diane. Bob seems to put Diane before himself subconsciously he might not want people to see how much he really cares about her but deep down she means everything to him, he will defend her as much as he can. It also seems that Bob only wants to keep Diane happy but he thinks that the only way he can do that is with narcotics.

Bob seems to always try to hide how he feels about the people close to him because he is scared that something might happen to them and he just wants them to be safe and out of harm’s way; he is truly a caring and protective individual. On the other hand Bob can also be a very maniacal and manipulative, he can even seem inhuman and cruel; he uses any means necessary to obtain what he is after, he finds a way to manipulate and control people to make his plans go how he wants. Bob will use people to control a situation to go in his favor without any resentment about what happens to the other people.

Bob show his manipulative side when he told his crew: “I just wrote the narcos and anonymously told them that the reason they could never catch Bob Hughes for possession of narcotics was that he had an arrangement with the guy that lived on the north side of him”(Fogle 82). Bob doesn’t seem to have any problem using people to get what he wants he doesn’t seem to have a conscience. Most of Bob’s actions show how he is a manipulative man, he uses people in order achieve what he wants. Bob would go through any means necessary in order to get whatever he wants.

Through Bob’s actions it seems that he is nothing but a selfish man that only cares about what he will receive from the situation. It seems that Bob only wants to do only what he will benefit from; he doesn’t seem to care about anything or anyone else. Bob is also cruel and inhumane towards his own crew. When Bob walks into the room after an attempt to get drugs he sees Nadine’s dead body and a hat on the bed; he then pays more attention and is more worried about having a hat on the bed than Nadine being dead. After seeing Rick balling and crying over her “Bob shook his head in disgust. ’She beat you, man.

Your own woman beat you out of part of your own cut on a score. She got what she deserves’” (Fogle 134). This shows how Bob not only doesn’t care about what happened to her, but also he has been desensitized to death, he only cares about the fact that she wasted the drugs and left them with the burden of having to get rid of a dead body. Bob only sees that because he feels like she cheated them out of the drugs and they can’t do anything about it. Bob also seems to react this way because of how Nadine has acted in the past, she would complain a lot and always wanted more than she could handle.

Throughout the book Bob shows that he can and will use and manipulate people into doing what he wants so that he gets what he wants and whatever it is he has been working for. In both scenes Bob shows how he can get into people’s heads and make sure that they do whatever he wants them to do to achieve whatever he wants. Life is full of nothing but conflicts and difficult situations and everyone has their own way of dealing with them. Throughout the book, Drugstore Cowboy, Bob is put through various difficult situations which he handles in one of two ways: being a humane and caring man or being a manipulative and maniacal man.

Bob is depicted as both a caring and maniacal man in the sense that he cares a lot about his crew but also if the situation calls for it he will not care at all for them. Bob will manipulate anyone who gets in his way of obtaining what he wants, but he cares for those close to him but will sometimes even use them in order to get what he wants. Bob has a very complex way of living and thinking and it is showed in various ways throughout the book.

Work Cited

1. Fogle, James. Drugstore Cowboy. New York: Dell Publishing, 1990. Print.

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