The most heartbreaking scene ever....

Just an interesting note.... i do believe that the sightless man you refer to is none other than Levon Helm. Well, that name may not mean much but he is actually the drummer for "the band". Many are not familiar with the band as they were back up musicians or something for Bob Dylan. They eventually broke off and made several (i think a lot) of really good music. I'm sure most will recognize the song "the weight" sung by Levon himself. If you are at all interested...check out a great scorsese documentary called The Last Waltz...it was the Band's last performance and is a great movie. Enjoy the tidbit..

~Jimmy

I agree about this being a heart-wrenching scene. The moment when the patrolmen asked him if there was anything he wanted and he paused and then said "No," was, I think, the most pregnant pause I have ever witnessed. That pause said so very very much.

That old man came to realize that asking to be murdered was the same as committing suicde, and by those rules he simply had to live out his days in loneliness. This is a code of honor in cowboys, and Pete simply had no pity for the man. Pete was teaching him that there's no escaping this life.

The suffering Mike endured caused an awakening in him that will change his life forever. Pete's forced nurturing took Mike across the border of childhood into manhood.

Terror with Napalm- I want ya'll to STAY calm!

The most heartbreaking scene in this film, to me, was really where Pete wants to comb Melquiades' hair, and it just comes off, 'cause, man, he's been dead for probably more than a week allready. He wants a way to show tenderness to his lost friend, but all ways are futile. Maybe even the burial-in-mexico expedition itself.

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There are lots of grasshoppers in the weeds.
But not like Wilbur!

I tend to agree. I would have shot him. It was criminal not to, really. Also, that would be a murder with a witness, Pepper, and that means Mexico wouldn't extradite Jones to the U.S.

Levon Helm is also quite the excellent singer. He just released a record called Dirt Farmer which was one of my favorite country records in years.

I find this sentence by the Original Poster to be astonishing. "...Part of me wanted Pete to be merciful to this poor soul and another part of me wanted to urge the blind man to leave his remote home and reconnect with life again in a city..."

What does 'a city' have to do with 'reconnecting with life'?
It never fails to amaze me how some people actually view the whole world as being some sort of quaint but necessary support system for the cities!
Note: Cities are not 'life'. Cities are just large accumulations of people in a limited area.
What indeed will happen to the blind man? Obviously he has lived long in his environment and is at the end of meaningful life and well knows it. Filled with pathos as his existence is, what is a meaningful alternative? What would he do if suddenly transported to a 'city'? Attend therapy? Attend an opera? Cruise the strip with his head sticking out the sunroof of a limousine?

He's an old dying man with nothing left to do, in the place that he knows so well. He's not happy about things, but what else is there?

OP. Leave the city from time to time. See some of the world uncluttered by the view from the middle of the anthill. :) Peace.

Yeah, pretty painful scene to watch but so it was the whole movie which I think is a great one all around. Yet, it's nothing less than a hymn to the comprehensive missery of a small society that finds no purpose for its collective or individual lives.
Those love affairs totally devoid of the most elemental bit of passion or even lust; the kitchen sink lovemaking where the only point of interest for both was the tv screen, and you keep on with the list of the mechanical motions of everyone existing almost for nothing. This would easily explain Pete's real reason to engage himself on his strange venture which makes you wonder what was he doing next after his job was done.
Moreovr, the only signs of life were actually seen south of the border.
This movie should be bought by the immigration authorities and show it for free in Mexico and Central America to fully eliminate wetbacks landing in the US.

If pigs had wings the sh*t of this world would be perfectly shared