karras’s final struggle in the end had me wondering…

I really don’t understand the originating question, “why did he jump anyway?”…

Karras jumped because (whether rightly or mistakenly) he thought that the way to get the demon out of the MacNeil house for good was to take it out the window with him: ” I won’t let you hurt them – you’re coming with me!” is not the cry of a man who has any illusions about the consequences of jumping out the window with the demon inside of him. He will smash the shutters and jump – and if he is killed in the process, so be it: Regan and family will be safe.

This is why I find Blatty saying that Karras hopes there will be “a net out there” irrational and incoherent.

First, Karras doesn’t really have time to think ahead that far.

Second, had he been thinking about the jump, he’d be a moron to think that he could possibly escape without horrendous if not fatal injuries.

Third, if Karras was really the highly logical person the novel presents him as being, he would not be likely to fantasize about a “net” – whether physical or metaphorical – to buffer his fall.

Fourth, a “net-hoping” Karras contradicts the “man for others” type of compassion he has manifested throughout the book: throughout, he gives himself utterly to others, no matter how it hurts, regardless of the consequences. To have Karras, at the very end of his life, and as his very last act, suddenly turn cold, calculating, and avoiding toward his own compassionate impulses, vitiates the Karras that Blatty has so skillfully etched – as well as introducing an obtrusively gratuitous venality to this saintly character.

If Blatty really said that Karras was hoping for a net, I can only think that Blatty was having an incautious moment, and made a verbal faux pas.

I don’t disagree with you,oki9Sedo… Maybe WPB was a little incautious. I posted the clip a while ago. It’s interesting aside from this conversation 😉 . I don’t think he meant that Karras was literally hoping for a net; He didn’t want to die… like you say, he wanted to save Regan (and the rest) and if he had to die in the process, so be it. Either way, he jumped and saved everyone. Yeah, I think he jumped for the same reason you do; “he’d only overcome the demon for long enough to make himself jump”. Had he stayed in the room, things probably would have gone MUCH worse.

I don’t disagree with you,oki9Sedo… Maybe WPB was a little incautious. I posted the clip a while ago. It’s interesting aside from this conversation . I don’t think he meant that Karras was literally hoping for a net; He didn’t want to die… like you say, he wanted to save Regan (and the rest) and if he had to die in the process, so be it. Either way, he jumped and saved everyone. Yeah, I think he jumped for the same reason you do; “he’d only overcome the demon for long enough to make himself jump”. Had he stayed in the room, things probably would have gone MUCH worse.

Yeah, if he hadn’t jumped Pazuzu would have used his body to kill Regan and do God knows what else.