![]() Tony’s alternating invisibility and hypervisibility often leaves him feeling unbearably lonely, and when he dies at the end of the novel due to gunshot wounds sustained in the robbery, he feels as if he has at last been freed from wearing the “mask” of his identity, which has always imprisoned and minimized him. Octavio selects Tony as the one to facilitate the robbery, ordering him to purchase bullets and hide them in some bushes at the coliseum entrance and come dressed in full regalia, so that when he demands the safe which holds the powwow’s cash prizes, he’ll be harder to identify and trace. ![]() Tony inadvertently gets involved in selling drugs, a path on which he meets Octavio and becomes a part of his scheme to rob the Big Oakland Powwow. Tony is not particularly intelligent, though his counselors at the Indian Center attempt to inspire him by pointing out that he’s smart in other ways. ![]() True to his name, Tony is something of a loner who has always been ostracized because of his strange face, disfigured due to fetal alcohol syndrome-which Tony calls “the Drome.” He has an adversarial relationship with himself and often sees himself as a monster. 28 It elevates Tony from mediator of virtuosic formal innovation (like Benjy) or catalyst of ironic climax (like Stevie) into the realm of something else.
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