Iida Post #3

Male Characters: Good to Bad

1.       Littlepaugh: Although not a large part of the story as he has already committed suicide by the time that this book is taking place, Littlepaugh is the man who keeps his integrity even as Jack Burden uncovers the dirt about him. He is perfectly happy working at his job in the electric company until Judge Irwin takes his place through a bribe. He tries everything to get the truth out and the corruption stopped, but nobody, not even Governor Stanton, will listen. He kills himself so as to not be a monetary burden on his sister. He seems to do everything with integrity, as far as we know.

2.       Adam Stanton: Adam has devoted his life to serving others and giving everybody the medical care they deserve, even living in a cheap and squalid apartment so as to not make his clients pay what they can’t afford.  He even agrees to be the director of the Willie Talos Hospital even though he hates Willie. The only thing keeping him from the top spot is his somewhat snobbish attitude towards the people who are not of blue-blood lineage like him and the fact that he can’t understand that people like his father could be both good and bad at the same time.

3.       Hugh Miller: The man who resigned rather than be a part of the corruption that Willie was a part of has strong morals and ethics and seems to try to live by them as much as possible, however his ethics are somewhat hypocritical because of his blue-blood, plantation-family lineage. He can afford to be ethical because he has never been in a situation where he has not been able to, where other people who have not been so entitled, do not have the same opportunity.

4.       Judge Irwin: Although he made a mistake when he was young and poor and going under financially, for the rest of his life Judge Irwin has tried to be decent and honorable and ethical. His one time of bad judgment does not take away from the fact that the rest of his life was lived in the pursuit of the truth and justice, which cannot be said of many people.

5.       Jack Burden: Jack thinks of himself as both cynical and as a realist, but beneath his hard exterior there is a kind of idealism. He is drawn to Willie Talos because Willie is the first politician to actually try to give back to the people, even though he does it in a very corrupt and underhanded way. Jack may define himself as having no morals, but I think that instead he is feeling lost in a world where the people he used to admire have shown that they are not worthy of that admiration. He is like a child who has lost his innocence, not good or bad but just learning how to live with the mess the world is.

6.       Mr. Trice: The husband of Annabelle Trice, who Cass Mastern falls in love with, who kills himself when he finds out that his wife is cheating on him, is neither good nor bad but just fully and completely in love. We don’t learn what his job was or how he acted with people but that he could love his wife so much as to kill himself over the loss of her love shows that he was a caring person. However, giving her back her ring was a vindictive and uncalled for measure.

7.       Cass Mastern: Cass is neither good or bad and when he has his affair with Annabelle he is really too young to know what he is doing or that he would be the cause of his friend’s death. Ignorance is not a crime, and the remorse Cass feels after his friend has died is enough to show that he at least has a heart.

8.       Willie Talos: Willie is a realist, and though he wants the best for the people, he knows that the only way to get what he wants is through corruption, bribery, blackmail, and any other forms of intimidation he knows how to use. He is not a particularly moral man. He doesn’t care that Sadie Burke gets so upset every time he sleeps with a new girl and he doesn’t care about his wife or his son’s happiness, only how their image improves his own image.

9.       Gilbert Mastern: Gilbert is a realist as well, a business-man who doesn’t understand his brother Cass and his difficulties with owning slaves. He is not moral or immoral and is most concerned with making money.

10.   Tom Talos: Tom is a cocky, carefree teenager. He is incapable of being moral or immoral because he has never been taught right from wrong. Lucy, Willie’s wife, knows this, and after Tom’s car accident she says “I would rather see him dead at my feet than what your vanity will make him.” (p322). Because of the amount of slack his father gives him, Tom is allowed to run wild, without any real understanding of the consequences.

11.   Governor Stanton: The only redeeming factor about Governor Stanton is the fact that he was a good father to Adam and Anne. Other than the good memories they have of him, he was a corrupt, cheating, bribe-taking politician who refused to listen when Littlepaugh comes with the evidence of Judge Irwin’s bribery.

12.   Sugar Boy: Sugar Boy doesn’t have much of a personality other than as the person who drives around Willie and does his dirty work for him. The only thing he cares about is money, and doesn’t mind who gives it to him or how he gets it.

13.   Mac Murfee: Mac Murfee is a typical scheming politician, and is just another member of the group of politicians who traded power back and forth but never really changed anything of importance. The only redeeming factor for him is the fact that Willie campaigned for him in the beginning of the book because he was brought in by the opposing party to split his vote.

14.   Byram White: As the State Auditor, Byram becomes important because he tries to do an underhanded deal to get more money, making Willie’s impeachment imminent. He too is just another shady politician, doing deals on the side to try to get rich, who does not care about the people he is serving and only about the money in his pocket.

15.   Tiny Duffy: Tiny Duffy, however, is the worst of all because he, although part of Willie’s opposition, was able to be bought and controlled by Willie. He has no morals and no courage, and is content to be Willie’s pet.

 

Female Characters: Good to Bad

1.       Lucy Talos, Willie’s wife, is the best female character. She is strong enough to be able to fight with Willie about his decisions regarding their son, Tom. “You will ruin him,” ( p322) she says, after Tom is hospitalized because of a car accident. She knows what she wants and she refuses to let Willie destroy her and her family. She is both ethical and courageous.

2.       Sadie Burke is relatively good too. She is the most knowledgeable person about politics and is the one that Willie needs the most, whether he knows it or not. She is courageous, knows what she wants, and, even though she loves Willie, she is not going to be pushed around by him. “He’ll come back,” she says, and it’s the truth, too.

3.       Lois is neither good nor bad, and the only real reason the reader has to dislike her is because Jack disliked her because of her ideas and because of her personality and because she may or may not have married Jack to be part of his blue-blood ancestry. Her faults are that she tries to mold Jack into what her picture of a perfect husband would be, but she doesn’t do this out of malice but instead because she doesn’t know any better.

4.       Lilly Mae Littlepaugh is the sister of the Littlepaugh who killed himself because he lost his job because of Judge Irwin’s bribe. Although her brother sent her a letter revealing the corruption she swore she did not have it and the only reason she gives it to Jack is because he bribes her with 300 dollars. She is completely motivated by money and not by morals or ethics. She just wants to get along in the world and doesn’t mind if bribery and lies are used to do it.

5.       Anne Stanton  is extremely manipulative, and everything she does hurts Jack even more than before. Jack is very much in love with Anne, and she uses that against him, pulling him behind her on a rope. She leads him on and then refuses to marry him, she uses her influence over him to get information from him that she shouldn’t have, and then she breaks him completely when she starts sleeping with Willie Talos. She knows that what she does hurts him, but she enjoys the position of power. “I did kiss a man up in Maine. He was a nice boy, Jack, and I liked him a lot and he was fun to be with. But I didn’t love him. And if you and I hadn’t had that row and I hadn’t felt that the world had sort of come to an end and I wouldn’t be with you again, I wouldn’t have done it.” (p418).

6.       Annabelle Trice is cheating and manipulative, and makes her husband kill himself because of her affair with Cass Mastern. Although the affair with Cass could be blamed on  just  bad judgement, her conduct afterwards shows what a bad person she is: she sells Phebe, her loyal slave, because she couldn’t handle the way that she was looking at her, as if she knew. Her conduct seems less motivated by true affection and grief regarding her husband and more for her own social status.

7.       Jack’s mother is the most manipulative and power hungry of all the women in the book. She keeps up a constant string of new men with which to anger and humiliate Jack, and she picks a fight with him every time he comes home. If not for her bad child-raising, Jack would be much saner, less cynical, and less confused.