Character Clues
Character Analysis
Physical Appearances
Physical appearances in the novel tell us a whole lot of different things—so many things, in fact, that we are just going to list some of them:
They can tell us how hard a character's life has been, as in the case of the Boatwright women, who look much older than they are.
The physical features characters have inherited from their parents (like Bone's hair, which could have either come from her absent father or her Cherokee ancestor) can tell us a lot of a character's origins. These features also help us figure out where characters rank on the Boatwright scale. Bone is a bit of an outsider, even in the Boatwright clan, due to fact that she doesn't know who her father is.
A character's physical appearance can tell us if a person is off or different somehow. Glen, for instance, has a crooked smile and cold eyes, and Raylene wears overalls and short hair.
Appearances can also be misleading, like in the case of Shannon Pearl. Bone thinks that because Shannon is ugly on the outside, she must have a beautiful personality, but actually Shannon is pretty hateful and morbid as a result of her appearance.
Actions
Characters are what they do, right?
Well, sort of. The thing is, characters do things for different reasons. Reasons matter. Tommy Lee, Bone's cousin, is a thief and general ne'er-do-well rapscallion who ends up in jail a lot, and we aren't given any reason to like him. Earle, though, also has a tendency to wind up in jail, and he does a lot of things—like getting into fights, sleeping with young girls, and getting drunk off his skunk, sometimes behind the wheel—that we might not like, but we still don't think of him as a bad dude, because we see how much he loves his family.
We don't dislike Anney when she gets all dressed up and goes off to do whatever it is she does in order to feed her girls; on the other hand, we don't like James Waddell, because even though he is respectable and lives in a nice house, he's a total condescending jerkwad. We might even like Shannon, who hates everyone but has good reason to, better than Mrs. Pearl, who never sees any bad anywhere ever because… well, she just doesn't.
Is it always Opposite Day in Greenville County? How the heck are we supposed to judge people? Well, maybe the point is that we shouldn't be so quick to judge. In a novel that culminates with a character doing something that we might not understand (we're referring to Anney leaving Bone for Glen), it makes sense that we've been prepped not to judge too harshly: the whole book has been teaching us the lesson that the world isn't all cut and dried.
It's like all the smaller stories scattered throughout the book are mini-games leading up to the boss battle, and that boss battle is about judging people until you know their story.
Family Life
We're gonna extend "family life" to also mean "home life," as in how a character lives. Glen, for instance, chooses houses that are "shabby imitations" (6.43) of his brothers' nice houses, while Alma and Nevil and Ruth live in houses that are big, run-down, shady, and affordable. The Boatwrights don't care about appearances like Glen does; they prefer houses that are practical. This makes them seem more genuine and comfortable about who they are. Glen, on the other hand, seems kind of pathetic and inadequate because he's a try-hard... and no one likes a try-hard.
Or, take how Raylene lives on the edge of town. We know that there is something "different" about Raylene because she is an outsider in more than one way. For one thing, she chooses to live away from the rest of society: she tells Bone that "out here I can do just as I damn well please" (18.62). She's also an outsider due to the fact that she's a lesbian. Her living situation on the outskirts of town is symbolic of her status as an outsider in general.
Given that this novel is all about family, it's not surprising that the characters' family lives matter a whole lot. The Boatwrights are always over at each other's houses, and they all seem pretty open and honest and comfortable with each other, even if they do fight every now and then (what family doesn't?).
Glen, on the other hand, has a distanced and unhappy relationship with his family, and this is part of what makes him into an unpleasant person. After Anney's miscarriage, Glen becomes really possessive about "his" family (Anney and the girls) and moves them far away from the other Boatwrights, saying "We don't need nobody else" (4.45). Trying to take people away from their family? Bad sign, dude. Bad sign.