Character Analysis
Stay-Puft
Michaelis is known throughout the book as the "ticket-of-leave apostle," because "ticket-of-leave" refers to a man who is released from prison before serving a full sentence. It's like probation, which means that any little slip-up could send Michaelis back where he came from. Conrad has a tendency to give people exaggerated physical appearances, and Michaelis is no exception. He was supposedly once a thin, athletic man. But poor nutrition in prison has caused his weight to balloon to the point that he's basically disabled.
Can't Get 'er Done
Like Stevie, Michaelis believes in a world "planned out like an immense and nice hospital, with gardens and flowers, in which the strong are to devote themselves to the nursing of the weak" (13.5). But also like Stevie, Michaelis has difficulty articulating his thoughts clearly. As several people say throughout the book, he lacks the capacity for "consecutive thinking," which means that his thoughts don't logically follow one another (13.3).
He believes that the collapse of the line between rich and poor is completely inevitable, and feels that this prophecy has come upon him from some power beyond himself. He spends all of his time in a room of an old woman's house sitting "in that tiny cage in a litter of manuscript" (13.3), writing a book about his struggles and his beliefs. But the general consensus seems to be that nothing will ever come of this book, since Michaelis "has no logic" (13.5). As with Stevie, Conrad offers us a model of human compassion, only then to list the reasons why this model can't stand up to a world full of jerks. In this sense, Michaelis plays a very similar role to Stevie… he's just not as vicious.