Mothershed

In "Beyond" Allison meets Mothershed: a self-proclaimed nihilist in life, who is in Beyond after committing suicide. Of him the Judge says, "for the last fifteen years my one intellectual companion has been a rabid atheist, almost an illiterate, who not only scorns all logic and science, but who has a distinct body odor as well" (789). The Judge's characterization of Mothershed is odd, since they spent their afternoons discussing thinkers like Ingersoll, Voltaire, and Paine (786, 787). Mothershed himself seems very angry at his presence in Beyond, glaring and cursing by turn, and in his clothing he carries "a heavy pistol" (786).