It is obvious that Sheppard damaged and hurt Norton, but I also believe that Johnson also committed wrongs against him. When Johnson very first appears, he says basically two sentences to Norton, and then immediately treats him like a stupid slave by making Norton get Johnson a sandwich, an orange, and a glass of milk. He even calls Norton “waiter.” Johnson treats Norton with no respect whatsoever even though he is the stranger that should have no authority in that house. Johnson next criticizes Sheppard, which is a hurtful for Norton to hear. Johnson then commits what Norton holds as a grave sin. Johnson enters the mother’s bedroom, and uses her comb in his dirty, greasy, wet hair. Then he goes through the mother’s clothes, and Johnson even goes so far as putting on her corset and dancing around in it. Johnson completely defiles the mother’s things. To put the icing on the cake, Sheppard then basically gives Johnson that room to use as his own. I honestly believe that it must have broken Norton’s heart to have a dirty, deformed, homeless, criminal have no respect for and defile his dead mother’s things.
It is now interesting that after defiling the mother’s things, Johnson now becomes the hope that Norton is looking for. Johnson is the one that Norton relies on to provide information on about where his mother is. Norton can’t handle the idea that his mother no longer exists, so now that Johnson claims that she is still “there” Johnson becomes Norton’s savior in a sense. Just the fact that Norton would rather his mother be in hell than nonexistent, shows how desperately he needed his mother to still be in “being.”
Unfortunately Johnson tells Norton about the bible and heaven, not to help Norton but to spite Sheppard. “This would be Johnson’s way of trying to annoy him” (613). I don’t even think that Johnson even considered that Norton would take what he was saying seriously. But Norton did, he even took what Johnson said about where heaven was as fact, “’It’s in the sky somewhere,” Johnson said, “but you got to be dead to get there. You can’t go in no space ship”’ (612). That is why Norton became obsessed with looking through the telescope; he was looking for his mother. When Norton finally finds what he believes to be where his mother is, he takes Johnson’s words and uses them to get to his mother, which was by killing himself.