Character Analysis
Head of the Sales Department, Kagle, according to Slocum, has ability and experience that don't count anymore. He started at the bottom and had to work his way up, a self-made man who doesn't try to hide this fact at all.
Kagle has no tone, no manners, and he lacks true wit. He wants desperately to be popular, and he goes out of his way to make conversation with everyone who works for him. But this only makes people dislike him even more. Kagle is awkward, a nervous extrovert, and he's uncomfortable with people on his own level or higher.
Like most men in the office, Kagle has a wife and two college-aged children, and he also hates going home. He sleeps around with prostitutes and charges them to the company as legitimate business expenses. "Gauche is what he is, and gauche is what he knows he is (although he is so gauche he doesn't even know what the word gauche means, but Green does, and so do I)" (2.103). Slocum notes that Kagle's biggest mistake is thinking that what he does is more important than who he is.
Slocum isn't as afraid of Kagle as he is afraid of most others in the company, and it seems Kagle is comfortable around Slocum, too. They have some kind of implicit trust and know they are safe with each other. Kagle even tells Slocum that he would allow him to make a speech at the annual company convention—quite the opposite of what Green seems to think. However, because Kagle is almost too good to Slocum and no longer scares him, Slocum despises Kagle a bit and tries to conceal it.
Kagle is convinced that everyone in the company is after his job. Right before Slocum learns the news about his promotion, Kagle confides, "I think they've finally decided to fire me!" (2.99). Kagle is right: the company does decide to get rid of him and move Slocum into his place.
When Kagle receives this news, he claims that he was the one who recommended Slocum to his place, even though everyone knows this is not true. Kagle is allowed to remain in the company for a short while, and then it seems he simply disappears and is filed away.