Dec 27, 2009

Appointment in Samarra | Characters

The swift, vivid portrayal of character is one of O'Hara's greatest strengths as a novelist, and beginning with this first novel even the minor characters, such as Al Greeco, the bootlegger, and Caroline English's mother, are finely and realistically drawn. Like Sinclair Lewis in Main Street (1920), and William Faulkner in his stories about Jefferson, Mississippi, O'Hara peoples the town of Gibbsville, Pennsylvania (based on his hometown of Pottsville), with characters representing a variety of social levels, ethnic backgrounds, attitudes, and tastes, in order to present...