This Boy's Life Characters

The great thing about real people is that they don't need a lot of embellishment to be rich or fleshed out. Life does all the work and the author just reaps the rewards! In this case, the author kn...

Ah, Dwight. What can one say about an insecure, obsessive compulsive, verbally abuse, drunk, borderline sociopath? Well, if you're Jack's mom, you say "I do," and rob your only son of any shot at a...

Rosemary is Jack's mom and she's kind of a hot mess:My mother had faith in me. She didn't have faith in discipline. Her father, Daddy, had given her plenty, and she had yet to see the profit from i...

Roy is like Dwight 1.0, arriving in Utah as part of some kind of sadistic head game. He treats Jack's mom like crap, and tries to make like a normal family. "He would hold no grudges as long as my...

Arthur is a "sissy," (12.1) who Jack picks on, but also kind of likes. They get into a huge fight when they first meet, but seem to get over that and become good friends. Jack likes him because "He...

Chuck is the most prominent of Jack's various hooligan friends. He comes from a religious family and "talked dark religion when he was drinking." (20.12) Jack "felt easier with him than with the ot...

Chuck's dad "owned a big auto parts store near Van Horn, and was also a minister of the Pentecostal church." (20.12) He's a laughing, smiling fellow who wants to believe the best in the boys, even...

Arthur is Jack's real father, who Jack puts a lot of faith in and who constantly ends up letting him down. "We would all be together again, as we were meant to be." (31.14) Jack says at the very en...

Sister James teaches Jack in Salt Lake City: She feared we would spend our time with friends from the public schools we attended and possibly end up as Mormons. (2.7) Despite her fears, she's prett...

Dwight's youngest daughter is "pinch-faced and scrawny, and on the back of her head she had a bald spot the size of a silver dollar (8.1). We later learn that she's been abused, since Dwight promis...

Skipper is Jack's older stepbrother, and like a lot of people Jack has faith in, he lets Jack down. He refurbishes an old Ford with the intention of going down to Mexico with it. He even "took a jo...

Norma is Jack's elder step-sister, who he has a crush on and who may be one of the reasons he's okay moving in with Dwight: I was tempted by the idea of belonging to a conventional family, and livi...

Mr. Mitchell is Jack's civics teacher, a World War II vet and a rather toxic anti-Semite among other things. He delivers delightful lessons like:As far as concentration camps were concerned, we had...

Geoffrey is Jack's older brother, who seems to be the only one in the family with a sense of responsibility. He goes to Princeton, which feeds Jack's fantasies about a better life: I… told strang...

Bobby is Norma's first boyfriend, a half-Indian boy who she ultimately leaves for Kenneth. She calls him "Bobo" and he's kind of a loser, since "Bobby wasn't going anywhere. He didn't even have a j...

Mr. Howard is Jack's possible salvation: an alumni of Hill who seems really excited by Jack's interest in the school:He seemed to get younger and younger, as if talking about being a boy had change...

Kenneth is Norma's doom, the boy she passes over Bobby Crow to marry for reasons that aren't entirely clear. He's a religious nut, for starters. He's also incredibly judgmental. Kenneth could take...

Marian is an early nemesis of Jack's, a large, loud woman with "arms as thick as a man's," (5.4). She and Jack hate each other, an "instinctive and mysterious" (5.5) dislike probably caused by the...

We never see Tina, but she plays a big part in the third act when, at the tender age of fifteen, she finds herself in a mommy way. Tina "was one of a pack of miserable girls who ran around in tight...