Father The narrator’s father makes no individual appearances in the story but is grouped together with his mother. They are not neglectful parents, which is clear from the narrator’s description of how specific they are in their rules about when and for how long he can swim, but their son tends not to notice them….
Tag: Characters
Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases – Characters
The Boy As a young child, the unnamed boy is active and curious. He loves to play in the woods, and he is especially drawn to the mushrooms that grow there. His senses are very much alive, and he discerns the way things and people smell. Although he is teased by his brother and sister,…
The Good Shopkeeper – Characters
Housemaid The housemaid is not given a proper name. She is the woman whom Pramod meets in the park and with whom he has an affair. The housemaid tells Pramod that he thinks too much and offers him a temporary escape from his troubles. She also helps him to look at life differently. She expresses…
Fleur by Louise Erdrich – Characters
Tor Grunewald Pauline says as a kind of summary, from an unspecified period of time in the future, that “Power travels in bloodlines, handed out before birth,” which implies that Fleur was responsible for the deaths of the men. She says that now she is about the only one who visits Fleur, who lives on…
An End to Dreams – Characters
Toby Beach Toby is a popular classmate of James, even though the boy is “fat and placid.” He teaches James that “if you had a pony and your father owned the bank, they wouldn’t laugh at you.” Toby’s father offers James a job at his bank that, in his dream, he rejects. In reality, though,…
The End of Old Horse – Characters
The Father The father is a quiet, practical man who works for the railroad. The fact that his sons look up to him is clear from the way that the narrator refers to funny stories his father sometimes told as an example of something interesting that would happen in his otherwise boring day. At times,…
A Day in the Dark – Story – Characters
Miss Banderry Given the status her family once held in the town of Moher, Miss Banderry is most likely Anglo-Irish, a group in Ireland that made up the governing class. Her family was in the milling business and owned a profitable farm nearby. After her brother lost control of the family mills, she gained ownership…
Aftermath by Mary Yukari Waters – Characters
A Girl An unnamed girl is Noboru’s date for the Tanabata Day festival. Like him, she is a university student who embraces the changes wrought by the modernization of Japan. Makiko The protagonist of the story, Makiko is a young Japanese widow living in Kyoto, Japan after World War II. She struggles to raise her…
The Thrill of the Grass – Characters
Maggie Maggie is the narrator’s wife, and the mother of his daughters. They have been together for so long that Maggie ‘‘knew me when I still dreamed of playing professionally.’’ Although they have a warm and affectionate marriage, the narrator does not tell his wife where he goes at night because, although she loves him,…
Sweet Potato Pie – Short Story – Characters
Alberta Alberta is one of Buddy’s older sisters. She is a middle child in the family, as Lil is the eldest daughter. Alberta leaves home at the age of sixteen and moves north in search of work. This was a fairly common phenomenon for poor African Americans living in the South, as the industrial centers…