Omensetter’s Luck (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: William H. Gass
- First Published: 1966
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Symbolic realism
- Time of Work: The late 1880’s and early 1890’s, with a flash-forward to the early 1900’s
- Setting: Gilean, Ohio, a river town
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Language or languages
- Locales: Ohio
Characters Discussed
The Reverend Jethro Furber, a fiery preacher from Cleveland who despairs of his assignment to Gilean, an Ohio River town. Short, pale, bone-thin, and intellectual, Furber uses his Sunday sermons to excoriate his parishioners, but he does not believe one word he preaches. A master of the dramatic and rhetorical turn, Furber is a jumble of contradictions: a devil- worshiping minister, a philosophical relativist, a skeptic, and a cynic. Like a small child working a puzzle, he has trouble holding together his complex “modern” parts. Despairing of human love...
[The entire page is 1311 words long]
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