Peter Holmes

Character Analysis

Peter Holmes is your classic everyman. He loves his family. He hustles at work. He supports his friends. Sounds like the kind of dude you could kick back and chill with, right?

Unfortunately, he's stuck in the midst of the apocalypse, which certainly complicates things. As Peter adapts to his new circumstances, doing the best he can for the ones he loves, we get a sense of what life is like for countless other Australian families undergoing the same hardships and trials.

Family Guy

Just think about what the dude is up to when we first meet him, for example. He's been spending a lot of time with his family lately, especially because he's been out of work since the war. Although he loves his baby and his baby mama, he feels adrift without a job to keep him balanced in these stressful times. Knowing this, you should be able to understand why the offer of work from the Navy "made him happy when he went to sleep, and his happiness had lasted through the night" (1.3).

Unfortunately, this leads to tension on the home front. While Peter is a realist, his wife Mary lives a life "sheltered from realities, living in a sentimental dream world of her own" (5.61), and she's not happy about him leaving. That's how Peter sees it, anyway, though it's hard to disagree with his assessment entirely when we remember the near-constant stream of honey-do lists that Mary sends Peter's way, even up to the very end. Although Peter criticizes her pretty harshly for this at times, we think that our buddy dost protest too much.

Peanut Butter Jelly Time

That's because Peter needs Mary to help him escape reality. For example, he might complain about her garden obsession, but that doesn't stop him from "happily planning their garden for the next ten years" alongside her and enjoying it just as much as she does (4.36). In fact, we'd argue that Peter needs to escape reality more than most, due to the immense stress of being a naval officer. In our eyes, Peter and Mary balance each other out perfectly—he's the yin to her yang, and she's the peanut butter to his jelly.

At the very end, though, Mary hits Peter with a role reversal. Although she has long been hesitant about taking euthanasia pills, she's now the one telling Peter to "get this all over" and refusing to see their daughter because she'd "rather think of her like she was" (9.226). Turns out that Mary isn't a fanciful little girl, after all; she's just been trying to keep her family together. And perhaps the most touching moment in the novel is this couple's final one, when Mary tells Peter how much she's enjoyed being married to him. This is when we see Mary's true colors—and Peter's, too.

In the end, it's only fitting that this loving family dies the same way that they lived—with each other.