Character Clues
Character Analysis
Family Life
You can get a sense for people by how they relate to others—their family members especially. This novel begins in the March home when Augie is an older child. There's more description than narration in the early episodes. Bellow apparently wanted us to understand the ins and outs of the March home life before getting into the story. This approach corresponds well to Augie's personality and values. Family is important to him. It's where he came from, and Augie dwells on the details that shaped his upbringing:
Grandma Lausch was our boarder, not a relation at all […] she preferred to live with us, because for so many years she was used to direct a house, to command, to govern, to manage, scheme, devise, and intrigue in all her languages. (1.4)
How the family members relate to one another shows us who they are, as do the roles in the family they assume. The very fact that a non-relation runs the March house tells us that Augie's mother isn't leadership material. "She didn't have much to teach, poor woman," Augie says of her (1.3). Grandma is the authority in the family. Augie's mother, half-blind, is too docile and passive to be a commanding presence. It's Simon, not she, who eventually replaces Grandma as the head of the household.
This is another sign of characterization—and not only of Simon. The older boy's ascension contrasts him with his mother, his younger brother Augie, and also Grandma Lausch, whom he's replaced. We know that Augie isn't fit to lead the family, we know that Grandma Lausch has lost her influence, and we know that Simon has grown older and bolder. Augie describes her as "power-robbed" when Simon can get away with calling her "Gram" and other less than respectful terms (4.52).
Direct Characterization
Augie uses a lot of direct characterization to give us a sense for the people he's describing, but his language is never bland, so we're never bored. When telling us about Mimi Villars, for example, he doesn't just say that she speaks her mind. He tells us that she's "hard and spirited, editing her words for no one" (11.17) and that her laughter is "violent, total, and critical" (11.14). Augie also likes to give us quirky snippets of a person's history. He introduces Mimi as follows:
Mimi came from Los Angeles. Her father had been an actor in the silent movies. She'd speak of him when she wanted to say how she hated Englishmen. Originally she came to Chicago to study, but she was expelled from the university for going past the bounds of necking at Greene Hall, in the lounge. She was a natural for being bounced. You wouldn't doubt that she was capable of the offense, if it was one, and as for the penalty, it was a favorite subject of her ferocious humor. (11.15)
Notice how the characterization smoothly moves from thought to thought so as to include details about her family history, her heritage, her feelings about her heritage, her intelligence, her sexuality, her regard for social norms and school rules, and the ferocity and target of her humor. Bellow packs a lot of meaning into a few lines, making this book a continuous fountain of ideas and images.
Physical Appearances
As Sherlock Holmes can attest to, you can learn a lot about a person by how they dress, but physical appearances don't always tell the full or accurate story.
Augie changes very little in the novel, but he's often in very different clothing. Sometimes he's dressed in muddy garments, having just fled police. Sometimes his clothes are torn from the wear and tear of a poor man's life. When wealthy family members and acquaintances are treating him, he is dressed in the manner befitting nobility.
Augie never characterizes himself (or others) by his clothing, but he observes that others do. People make assumptions about his fitness for sales by his torn gloves. They treat him with respect and dignity when he's dressed for success.
We wouldn't say that physical appearances never matter to Augie. He describes the abortionist in unflattering terms:
This doctor was a man made dolorous, or anyhow heavy of mood, by the bad times, and he looked very unprofessional. There was a careless office of old equipment, and he sat in rolled sleeves and smoked cigars at a desk where my book-accustomed eyes spotted a Spinoza and a Hegel and other things odd for a doctor, and especially one in his line. […] The doctor didn't misrepresent what he had to offer—he was too careless even for that. He wasn't hardhearted maybe, but he appeared to ask, 'What could I accomplish by caring?' Perhaps there was a disdain about him for the double powerlessness of creatures, first to oppose love and then to be free of the consequences. (12.110-111)
Notice that the way the illegal abortionist appears—careless, rolled-sleeves—leads Augie to speculate about what's in the man's heart. In this case, the unprofessional appearance of the doctor actually corresponds to an unprofessional substance. The doctor is there to make money, and he really doesn't care if his methods harm his patients.