#I know I use an ungodly amount of quotation marks in this post

[take-care-of-it]

Saw a really good post abt Polly being Anya’s mouthpiece for her true feelings abt Jimmy and like while I do think that’s true, I also think that Jimmy associating Polly (and by extension, Pony Express) with Anya in his mind also says so much about what he thinks of her.

Because Pony Express is, obviously, a capitalist nightmare company that made everything worse. It negatively impacted and exploited everyone on that ship, including Jimmy. So him associating her, his victim, with the company that exploited him, did wrong to him, is incredibly revealing.

She’s not a person to him, that much is obvious by the fact her representation in his mind is a mascot. Because if she was a person, he should feel bad about what he did to her. So she can’t be a person.

But he takes it a step further. She’s not just “not a person”, no, she must be an obstacle. Something that’s ruining Jimmy’s life (through no fault of his own, of course). Through his association of her and pony express, we can see that he’s convinced she has power over him (or at least, the potential to have power over him.) Because she could “use” her pregnancy against him to “ruin his life.” He has victimized himself against her in his mind.

I also think it’s one of the reasons he belittles her skills as much as he does, trying to undermine her confidence in herself as a way to “keep her in check.” To make sure she doesn’t “try anything.”