Bob Slocum

Character Analysis

Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur. (1.15)

Is that all you're gonna tell us? Come on Bob, dish the dirt.

Our protagonist, Bob Slocum, has about 500 written just about him. Well, to be fair, that's because the story takes place inside his mind. But we'll dig into those 500 pages and give you the rundown on just what happened to Bob Slocum.

Who's Afraid?

Slocum is afraid of just about everything. No, really. We're not being dramatic. Check out the list:

• He doesn't like closed doors, sick friends, bad news, surprises, and mice that hide behind cupboard doors.
• He fears that he could be losing his marbles.
• He's afraid that something big must have happened to him at some point, and he fears that something will happen to people he knows, especially his children.
• He doesn't like hospitals, because he's afraid of discovering that one of his acquaintances could be dead.
• At the office, he's afraid of just about everyone he works with—and they're afraid of him.
• At home, "there are four people of whom I am afraid" (5.219), and these people all fear him—except Derek, who has the mental capacity of five-year-old.
• Slocum has possibly passed his endless string of fears on to his nine-year-old son, who also fears just about everyone and everything.

By telling us all about these fears right from the get-go, Slocum establishes a sort of trust with us. As he reveals how events unfold, we kind of feel as if we can totally understand things from his perspective. In fact, we may even find ourselves rooting for the guy since he's opened his soul up to us from page one.

But that still doesn't answer the question about why Slocum is afraid of everything. In fact, we never really do find out whether fear is something that's all in Slocum's mind, or if fear is just a pretty normal response everyone in the novel has to the fact that underneath it all, 1960s America is an empty, meaningless, dog-eat-dog place where fear is a totally appropriate response to the absolute oblivion of the so-called real world. Maybe both answers are correct.

Let's dig a little deeper into Slocum's life to see how this all plays out.

Family Matters

In an era that was so obsessed with normalcy, Slocum's family is far from it. His father kicked the bucket when he was seven, and he didn't grieve for him, because he didn't remember much about him. He barely talks to his sister, and his brother died suddenly several years ago. His mother slowly went bonkers before she finally bought the farm herself, and she occasionally haunts his dreams.

And that was just his family life growing up. Slocum's family as an adult isn't your perfect suburban clan, either—unless all suburban families are this dysfunctional, which seems to be a possibility, if this novel is any indication.

Slocum wanted a divorce the moment he was married, not because he didn't like his wife, but because it's just in the nature of things for him to grow bored and complacent easily. He admits he'd probably grow tired of a second wife, so things are just easier for him to remain married. "I think we have learned how to get through the rest of our lives with each other," he admits, "and are both already more than halfway there" (5.98). Way to keep the romance alive, Slocum.

Two of Slocum's three children are healthy, but he grows easily annoyed by his fifteen-year-old daughter and fears constantly for his nine-year-old son's safety. He despises his third son, Derek, and wishes he was never born. Needless to say, coming home after a long day at work is not something Slocum looks forward to, but he's also not the type of guy who would just pack up and leave for a better life. That would take too much effort—and anyway, Slocum doesn't actually believe anything could ever get better, since everything seems equally meaningless to him.

As Bob himself says about the possibility of change, "I know what would happen: nothing. Nothing would happen. And the knowledge depresses me" (2.16-17).

In a way, feeling stuck is comfortable to Slocum.

The Office

Slocum says time and again that he feels more at home when he's at work than when he's in his real home. At least at work he can seal himself off behind a closed door, after all.

Wait. That doesn't seem to be an entirely healthy idea about what you do at work. It doesn't seem like Slocum actually likes being at work. It's just easier for him to shut down there.

Sure, Slocum experiences more freedom at the office than he would at home. He can flirt with Jane in the Art Department and go around with girls in the city after work. But in the end, he's just as unhappy at the office as he is at home.

Bored with his work, he knows that nothing he does really matters much in the long run. "It's a real problem," he sulks, "to decide whether it's more boring to do something boring than to pass along everything boring that comes in to somebody else and then have nothing to do at all" (2.58). Oops, even that has us snoozing.

Not only does Slocum's job itself not really matter in the long run, but even the company itself seems not matter in the long run. Nothing anyone is doing there makes much of a difference. It's pretty meaningless.

When the prospect of promotion presents itself, perhaps Slocum finds that he wants it because it's an unexpected change. He's afraid of standing still even with this new promotion, but he ultimately ascends to his new role with poise and grace. And after that, the things that were important to him, such as delivering a speech at the convention, do start happening to him.

That's something, anyway. Even if Slocum finds that it's still pretty meaningless. At least it's a different kind of meaningless.

Daddy Dearest

Things did happen to Slocum in his past, though we start to figure out pretty early on that they're not the thing that happened to him. In fact, while Slocum tries to find some cause in his past for his current state, it's not clear that there is any such cause. He claims that perhaps the happiest years of his life were those spent in the army (he had a real purpose then), and he's sort of at a loss to understand how he became such a dissatisfied middle-aged man.

Was it something in his past, or was it everything sort of converging all at once? Or is it just the nature of his social reality that is causing these problems for him, and perhaps for everyone else?

Slocum leaves a trail of breadcrumbs in his narrative leading to something that's going to happen. Nothing seems to actually happen in this world, so just about anything unusual is worth waiting for. We just keep waiting for find out what and to whom.

At one point, Slocum claims he doesn't know what will happen to Derek if he doesn't die soon. Would he actually kill Derek? A mercy killing, as he calls it? But we know Slocum too well, and we know that he'll never go through with it. So here we are, waiting and waiting and waiting for something to happen.

And then it finally does.

"Something's happened!" a boy on the side of the road shouts. To his horror, Slocum finds not Derek, but his other son lying next to a car with shattered windows, blood spewing from his face. The worst of Slocum's fears has come true: his son is helpless and in excruciating pain.

Slocum thinks in a split moment that perhaps death would end his son's apparent suffering. He squeezes him in a tight embrace, and the boy suffocates to death.

But here's where the final chapter title makes sense: "nobody knows what I've done," Slocum says. When the doctor reveals that his son would have survived his wounds—and it was asphyxiation that killed him—Slocum's only response is, "Don't tell my wife."

So there we have it. That's what happened. Is Slocum a murderer? He certainly didn't intend harm; he only wanted to do what he felt was best for his son. Was it Slocum's conviction that something terrible would happen that made him think his son would die, even when in reality, things weren't that bad? It's impossible to say.

Slocum's able to live with the consequences of his actions, as we witness his life continue right where it left off before the tragic accident.

Slocum smoothly takes over Kagle's old position, his wife and daughter are happier, and he finds that even he, too, is a bit happier. Is he merely distancing himself from what happened? Or does the passing of time heal his wounds? Either way, what happened, happened. Although Slocum misses his son, it turns out that his son, like any of the other characters, is pretty easy to file away once he's dead. It's as if none of these people actually exist.

And that, maybe, is at the root of Slocum's problems. If no one really exists—not truly—then reality is just kind of a dream. And it's a dream Slocum doesn't believe he can ever escape. Is he right? Wrong? Who's to say?