MacGowan - Character Analysis

MacGowan is a young man that works at the local drugstore in Jefferson. He is manipulative and takes advantage of Dewey Dell's naivety. He notices right away that Dewey Dell is a country girl and assumes that she is uneducated. He and Jody, another employee, repeat and refer to Dewey Dell as a country girl and that she "looks pretty good, for a country girl" (242). MacGowan analyzes Dewey Dell's character and notices that she is "one of them black eyed ones that look like she'd as soon put a knife in you as not if you two-timed her" (242).
MacGowan continues talking to Dewey Dell who is in the drugstore in order to get drugs to "cure" her pregnancy. She is not easily convinced by MacGowan, who continues to believe that she is very naive and uneducated. MacGowan asks Dewey Dell if she is married but thinks to himself, "I never saw no ring. But like as not, they aint heard yet out there that they use rings" (243-244). He continues this assumption and answers her scrutiny about his credibility by explaining that, even though he is young and handsome, he is a doctor because women didn't get sick anymore until there were new doctors that were young and handsome. There is no evidence whether Dewey Dell believed this. Dewey Dell is obviously desperate because she repeats that she has money for the medicine and she says that she needs a doctor, even if he really isn't qualified.
In the end, Dewey Dell realises that she must do certain favors for MacGowan in order to get the medicine. However, MacGowan still believes that he has tricked Dewey Dell. He fills a flask with turpentine and gives it to her but she immediately recognizes the smell. Being desperate and in panic, Dewey Dell drinks the turpentine and promises to come back later to receive the rest of the medicine. Dewey Dell realises afterwards, or perhaps before, that the medicine will not work and that MacGowan was lying because she states, "It aint going to work" (251) after meeting with MacGowan for the rest of the medicine.
MacGowan is a trickster and a womanizer. He took advantage of Dewey Dell but still believed it was because she was uneducated and not because she was desperate and in panic.