More thoughts to get down, and thank you to @cudvac and @mcicioni-blog for discussions:
Not a lot of time, but may I add a couple more random thoughts:
1. Not sure about him considering the priesthood (Catholic or ?Episcopalian ?Methodist??) – he strikes me as a pragmatic man with little interest in things spiritual, and as far as my unreliable memory goes, he never mentions God. Then why is he reading the Bible instead of Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare or Mark Twain in his introductory scene? I can’t figure that out.
2. He occasionally reads books. OK, in the film he only reads the Bible (once) and old newspapers (once, for professional reasons), but if he came from a stock of plantation owners his family home must have had a library, and I am also sure that he went to college.
mici's campfire 