Yeah, no, I get what you mean. But, even if he just took advantage of circumstance, like Wolfe says, he followed it through to the end, even when it looked like he might get executed for a murder he didn't actually commit! That's pretty badass.
Personally, I think that there's a lot about Paul Chapin (actually, both Chapins) that we're not seeing accurately through Archie's eyes. In that last scene where he comes to see Wolfe, Archie says: It was a bright day outside, and the strong light from the windows gave me a better look at him than I had ever had. I saw that his eyes weren't quite as light-colored as I had thought; they were about the shade of dull aluminum; and his skin wasn't dead pale, it was more like bleached leather, it looked tough.
So it's almost like Archie psyched himself into thinking of Chapin as this serial killer/vampire creature to the point where, when he met the guy, he even *looked* eerie and otherworldly (is "Creepy Albino" on tvtropes? I suspect it is) but then once he knows the whole thing was a hoax, all of a sudden Chapin even *looks* different. So I really wonder how much of what comes earlier is trustworthy and how much is colored by Archie's perception of the Chapins as creepy serial killer couple of the year.
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Yeah, no, I get what you mean. But, even if he just took advantage of circumstance, like Wolfe says, he followed it through to the end, even when it looked like he might get executed for a murder he didn't actually commit! That's pretty badass.
Personally, I think that there's a lot about Paul Chapin (actually, both Chapins) that we're not seeing accurately through Archie's eyes. In that last scene where he comes to see Wolfe, Archie says: It was a bright day outside, and the strong light from the windows gave me a better look at him than I had ever had. I saw that his eyes weren't quite as light-colored as I had thought; they were about the shade of dull aluminum; and his skin wasn't dead pale, it was more like bleached leather, it looked tough.
So it's almost like Archie psyched himself into thinking of Chapin as this serial killer/vampire creature to the point where, when he met the guy, he even *looked* eerie and otherworldly (is "Creepy Albino" on tvtropes? I suspect it is) but then once he knows the whole thing was a hoax, all of a sudden Chapin even *looks* different. So I really wonder how much of what comes earlier is trustworthy and how much is colored by Archie's perception of the Chapins as creepy serial killer couple of the year.