She admires how good Joe Bob is with her children, particularly Jeremy who she has not learned to love yet. Joe Bob is described as a 'big, slow-talking fellow' and over two hundred pounds. The reader can almost envision nineteen year old Nicole being flung across the room like a rag-doll during their arguments. The word "bounce" is used to describe the motion of Nicole hitting off the walls as she was thrown by Joe Bob. Mailer's depiction of the abuse is unsettlingly casual and deadpan. Nicole was ill-treated both mentally and physically by Joe Bob yet Mailer's narration does not reinforce that. .
Gary and Nicole's relationship was intense as well as tumultuous. They loved each other, spent as much time as they could with each other yet in the end abused each other horribly. Gary hit Nicole and also forced her into sexual acts. Their love was toxic and both threatened each other with guns. Violence is narrated differently by Capote and Mailer. The murders, the main catalysts for the texts and the highest form of violence, are depicted differently to the normal violence experienced by the characters. Mailer's The Executioner's Song is over one thousand pages long yet Max Jenson and Ben Bushnell's murders are described in less than three pages. While Gary commits Jenson's murder, Mailer describes how clean the bathroom was and what colors the tiles were. He does not give Gary's insight or thoughts, here or in any of the text apart from his letters. Mailer writes in a matter-of-fact tone about Gary shooting Jenson twice in the head. There is a display of emotion in the form of Gary's remark, "This one is for me" and "This one is for Nicole." This speech can be interpreted in a few different ways. The reader is unsure whether this murder was an act of revenge or whether Gary was somehow delusional and was imagining shooting Nicole. It highlights his uncaring, immoral outlook on human life.