I’m not talking about Jack Nicholson‘s Bobby Dupea abandoning Karen Black‘s Rayette Dipesto at a gas station in rural Washington. This I understand. Dupea comes from an eccentric musical family and, despite his job history as an oil worker, regards himself as an intellectual rebel artist. He’d rather slit his throat than submit to a conventional middle-class Bakersfield life as Rayette’s husband (and perhaps as a father to their unborn child). And so, like a chickenshit junior high-school nihilist, he decides to escape.
That part adds up. Dupea is a tragic figure who’s running away from himself…hell, from everything. I was almost like that in my early 20s.
What I don’t get is why Bobby leaves his brown suede jacket hanging in the gas station bathroom. He’s heading into “colder than hell” weather without protection from the elements? That’s crazy. And how much money could he possibly have in his wallet? It all fits except leaving the jacket in the bathroom.