The Characters
Loretta is the character who sets the story in motion, yet she is the least conscious of her connections to the world that she represents and engenders, a world glamorized by films and magazines. She concentrates, rather, on her own body, her own concerns—the way she looks in the mirror, the way her hair is styled. Although she is constantly pushed around, she swears that she lets no one boss her. She is a brilliant creation that allows the author to explore the efforts of a second generation to deal with conflicts and contradictions that Loretta cannot contemplate. She is, in a sense, so close to the culture which shapes her that she cannot differentiate herself from it.
Jules, on the other hand, fights his father and his society. As a child he is fascinated by the destructive power of fire and burns down a barn; years later he will be in the forefront of rioters planning the conflagration of a whole society. Jules has all the violent tendencies of Loretta’s brother, Brock, and like his uncle, Jules murders a man, a policeman who is meant, no doubt, to be reminiscent of his father, Howard. Yet Jules is also capable of tender love, not only for Nadine—the rich girl he meets while delivering flowers in Grosse Pointe—but also for his mother and sister, to whom he writes moving letters.
Maureen, who has passively shared much of her mother’s degradation, sees in Jules the hope of her life. Yet her aspirations, unlike his, are essentially middle-class. She thinks that she would be content with the status quo as long as she found a refuge from its hurtful elements. Unlike her mother, she is tormented by the differences between literature and life, between films and reality. How could anything be more real than her life, she wonders, in her attack on the way that novels intensify life and make readers care about characters that do not exist. In one of the most remarkable passages of the novel, she vents these feelings in letters to her college literature instructor, Joyce Carol Oates.
Oates is, indeed, a major character, even though she appears only in Maureen’s letters and in the “Author’s Note,” where she claims that them is “a work of history in fictional form,” a story told to her by the character who appears as Maureen in the novel. Oates’s humor, her ease with men, her attentive but somewhat removed attitude toward her students fascinate and, to a certain extent, repel Maureen. She wonders how her teacher can appear to be so self-contained, yet she also admires that independence, that seeming lack of illusions about the world. Oates, in short, is the antithesis of what Maureen knows about her family and society. In her experience, individuals cannot have that much control over themselves. On the contrary, they are usually the victims of forces that they are not strong enough to defeat.
Characters Discussed
Loretta Wendall
Loretta Wendall, née Botsford, the mother of Jules and Maureen. A generally passive and not particularly intelligent woman, she has an extravagantly romantic nature that is never satisfied. Her one truly independent gesture, an escape to Detroit from the stifling home of her in-laws, ends in humiliation but does achieve her goal of leaving the country for the city. As she grows older, she becomes more limited in her aspirations and more shrewish in her complaints. She is crudely racist and moralistic but is also a survivor in a brutal and violent environment. She drinks to avoid facing the blankness of much...
(This entire section contains 477 words.)
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of her life and generally neglects her family. She changes character, dreams, lifestyle, and men, depending on her situation. Her children are baffled and frustrated by her inconsistencies in behavior and in her often irrational and unpredictable actions toward them. The Detroit riots destroy her home, but rather then discouraging or defeating her, this experience actually rekindles some of her old desire for adventure and excitement.
Howard Wendall
Howard Wendall, Loretta’s husband and the father of Jules and Maureen. Stolid and unintelligent, Howard is dominated by his mother. A policeman at the start of the book, he is later forced to work at jobs that he hates. Unable to meet the emotional needs of his wife or of his children, he has become a mere shell by the time of his death.
Jules Wendall
Jules Wendall, the son of Loretta and Howard. He continues the romantic tendencies of his mother, often to his own destruction. Searching for wealth and adventure, he roams Detroit’s streets, stealing and living independently even as a child. When he is older, he runs off with an unstable rich girl, who first abandons and later shoots him. He also becomes involved with a wealthy and bombastic but ineffectual criminal who is murdered. Through each disaster, Jules continues a deep love for his family, none of whom, however, can meet his needs. After a period of severe depression, during which he exists as a pimp, the violence of the Detroit riots serves as a catalyst and reawakens his romantic need for adventure and self-importance.
Maureen Wendall
Maureen Wendall, the daughter of Loretta and Howard. She shares her mother and her brother’s romantic nature, but eventually she responds to the brutality of the life around her by abandoning her dreams of being a teacher, repudiating her family, and deliberately entrapping and marrying one of her college professors. She then settles into the highly respectable middle-class life of which her mother had dreamed but never achieved, setting up a barrier between herself and her past. This past includes a brutal and almost fatal beating by one of her mother’s husbands, who discovered that she had been prostituting herself to earn money to escape her life at home.
Characters
The most memorable character in them is Loretta Wendall, whose affectionate relationship with her children, through all the ups and downs of a tragic, degrading life, shapes a stunning portrait of triumph over adversity. Her optimistic son Jules, who is still looking and hoping for the American dream after being shot by his girlfriend Nadine, is a powerful affirmative voice in the novel. Nadine herself, with her endless hair washing and response to both love and wealth, is suggestive of the neuroses fostered by modern social conditions. Maureen, who experiences, seriatim, a life of prostitution and rape, a beating, a coma, and an adulterous affair, represents the type of modern individual who sees all experiences as morally indifferent. Even relatively minor characters, like the continually nagging and subtly powerful Grandma Wendall, who maintains her authority even while bedridden in a nursing home, illustrate that vital energy and damnable bad luck that mark the Oates fictional character. With the exception of Jules, the male characters are lightly and stereotypically drawn.
Characters
Brock Botsford
Brock Botsford is Loretta’s brother. In the book’s initial chapters, he is portrayed as a teenager with a gun, seeking trouble. When Loretta invites Bernie Malin to stay overnight in her room, Brock enters and fatally shoots him. Years later, he reappears in Detroit to stay with Loretta and Maureen after Furlong leaves. Maureen believes his presence helps her recover from a catatonic state. Brock is admitted to a hospital with a mysterious degenerative illness, but he doesn't die; instead, one day he dresses himself, leaves the hospital, and is never seen again.
Pat Furlong
Pat Furlong is Loretta’s second husband. Due to a back injury, he does not work and spends his days drinking in bars. Eventually, Loretta grows weary of him and has Maureen prepare his meals when he returns home late. Furlong’s attempts at being a responsible father consist mainly of accusing Maureen of engaging in bad behavior. Upon discovering Maureen's involvement in prostitution, he nearly beats her to death, resulting in a four-month jail sentence.
Randolph Furlong
Loretta's son with Pat Furlong, known as “Ran,” disappears from the novel after his infancy. Occasionally, he is mentioned as being out on the streets.
Bernard Geffen
Bernard Geffen is Jules’s wealthy and eccentric employer who hires him as a driver and frequently gives him large sums of money—first one hundred dollars, then ten thousand dollars. Initially, Jules is wary of Geffen’s unpredictable behavior and the substantial amounts of money, but he is reassured when the bank honors the checks. A few days after starting the job, Jules drives Geffen to a house, waits outside for a while, and then enters to find the house empty and Geffen dead, with his throat slit by a butcher knife.
Nadine Greene Nadine Greene, Bernard Geffen’s niece, is the great love of Jules’s life. Jules becomes enamored with her after seeing her walk past his car while waiting for Bernard. Later, he visits her home, and they steal her parents' car, fleeing to California. In a Texas motel room, while Jules is bedridden with illness, Nadine leaves him. Years later, they cross paths in Detroit; she is now married to a wealthy man and lives in a prosperous suburb. She rents an apartment for their clandestine meetings, but after their first night, she shoots both Jules and herself, though neither is killed.
Bernie Malin In the early chapters, when Loretta is a teenager living with her brother and alcoholic father, she takes Bernie as her first lover. However, Loretta’s brother, Brock, shoots Bernie while he is in bed with Loretta.
Marcia
In June 1967, prior to the onset of the race riots, Jules resides with Marcia and her four-year-old son, Tommy.
Joyce Carol Oates
After recovering from the physical assault by Furlong and the ensuing emotional trauma, Maureen enrolls in some courses at the local college. The book includes several letters that Maureen writes to Joyce Carol Oates, a former teacher.
Mort Piercy
Mort Piercy serves as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Wayne State University and leads the UUAP, an organization he manipulates to funnel federal funds into violent radical activities. By the novel's conclusion, Jules departs for California to work as Mort's assistant.
Vera
Vera is a timid young woman whom Jules meets at an activist gathering. He cruelly exploits her upon returning to street life after being shot.
Betty Wendall
Betty, the younger sister of Maureen and Jules, rarely stays at home, opting instead to spend time with street gangs in Detroit. She plays a significant role when Pat Furlong discovers Maureen's involvement in prostitution. Betty alerts Maureen before she returns home, informs Loretta about the situation, and interacts with Maureen when she isolates herself.
Howard Wendall
When Loretta discovers Bernie Malin's lifeless body in her bed, she seeks the help of Howard Wendall, a police officer. Howard assists Loretta in disposing of the body, but in return, she has sex with him, becomes pregnant, and marries him. Howard later loses his police job due to accepting bribes and relocates the family to his parents' rural home. After World War II, he finds Loretta and the children in Detroit, where they have fled the Wendalls, but Loretta is arrested there. Howard rejoins the family in Detroit, only to die shortly after in an industrial accident.
Jules Wendall
Jules is guided by his romantic desires but consistently struggles to turn his impractical dreams into reality. His main aspiration is to win the heart of Nadine Greene, his true love, whom he becomes enamored with upon first seeing her in his parents’ driveway. In the novel, Jules experiences two tumultuous relationships with Nadine. The first ends in disappointment when she leaves him as he lies bedridden with the flu. The second concludes disastrously, with Nadine shooting him before taking her own life. Other relationships in Jules's life mirror his tumultuous connection with Nadine. Shortly after his father's funeral, he implores Edith Kaminsky, a girl he barely knows, to give him a photo of herself. When the picture blows away as he crosses an expressway, he chases it through traffic, driven by romantic obsession.
Throughout the book, Jules cohabitates with different women, including Faye, who introduces him to Nadine’s uncle, and Marcia, who tolerates his infidelities. He is also known for being courteous and protective toward his sisters, mother, and grandmother.
Apart from his romantic entanglements, Jules is characterized by his constant involvement in trouble. As a child living in the countryside, he wanders off from his family at the site of a burning airplane crash and later sets a barn on fire. His business dealings—with Bernard Geffen, his uncle Samson, and Mort Piercy—never feel entirely legitimate to him, even when they are. Jules has a problematic history with the police. As a youth, a policeman chases him when he contemplates breaking into a building. Frustrated at having to run, the officer puts a gun to Jules’s head and pulls the trigger, though the chamber is empty. This incident foreshadows the novel’s climax, where Jules, with nothing left to lose and caught up in the chaos of a riot, fatally shoots a policeman.
Loretta Wendall
The novel begins with Loretta as a sixteen-year-old in 1937, living with her father and brother, Brock. After Brock shoots Bernie, the boy she has been intimate with, Loretta seeks help from the local policeman, Howard Wendall. In exchange, he demands sex from her, and when she becomes pregnant, he marries her. However, Loretta later questions whether the baby, Jules, is Howard's or Bernie's. After Howard loses his job, they move with his parents and sister, Connie, to a country house owned by a distant relative. Feeling trapped, Loretta leaves while Howard is in the army and relocates to Detroit, where an old friend resides.
After arriving in Detroit, Loretta attempts to earn money through prostitution but is detained by the first man she approaches. Once again, she finds herself in a difficult situation, and Howard comes to her rescue. They have three children together before Howard dies in an industrial accident. Following his death, Loretta marries Pat Furlong and has another child. When Furlong brutally beats her daughter, Maureen, nearly to death, Loretta cares for her, hopeful that Maureen will recover because "her appetite is good." As her children grow up, they leave to fend for themselves on the streets but often return seeking her approval, which she rarely gives. For example, when Maureen reveals her intention to marry a married man, Loretta scolds her, calling her a whore. After riots destroy her apartment building, leaving her homeless, Loretta meets a man named Harold at a temporary shelter at the YMCA. By the novel's end, they plan to marry.
Maureen Wendall
Maureen, Loretta and Howard Wendall's second child, strives to be a good girl, but the pressures of city life pull her into a secretive world of crime. A pivotal moment in her childhood occurs when she is elected secretary of her homeroom and entrusted with the blue notebook used for recording class meeting minutes. Sister Mary Paul emphasizes the importance of maintaining the notebook's cleanliness and respectability. However, one day, after encountering Jules on the street and receiving money from him, Maureen realizes she has lost the notebook.
Shortly after misplacing the notebook, Maureen becomes fixated on money. She starts secretly meeting with older men, going to motels with them, and engaging in sexual activities for money. She hides her earnings in a book in her room. When her mother's second husband spots her in a car with one of these men, he discovers the money and beats her severely. For nearly a year, Maureen isolates herself in her room, gaining weight and ignoring those who try to communicate with her.
Once Maureen regains her composure, she enrolls in night classes at the University of Detroit. She details her recovery and future plans in letters addressed to "Joyce Carol Oates," her teacher at the university. One of her plans involves marrying her English teacher, a man with three children, despite never having spoken with him outside class. The teacher eventually becomes infatuated with Maureen, and by the novel's conclusion, they are married and living in a suburban apartment. By this time, Maureen has also severed ties with most of her family.
Samson Wendall
Samson Wendall is the affluent and accomplished sibling of Howard Wendall. During their childhood, Jules and Maureen have limited knowledge about their Uncle Samson, except for his wealth. At the age of twenty-seven, Jules is employed by Samson as his driver and to gain experience in his tool-and-die business. This opportunity arises because Samson is dissatisfied with his son, Joseph, who has decided to travel across Europe by hitchhiking.
