Character Study

Bob Dollar:
Bob is a young man who recently from a junior university. Currently, he is employed by Global Pork Rinds Inc. to scout out the location for their next hog farm in Texas. He has "the broad face of a cat, pale innocent eyes fringed with sooty lashes..." (Proulx 1) and has grown up without a mother or a father. He was dropped off at a young age, at his Uncle Tam's house after his parents decided they would rather go on an adventure to Alaska with out him. He is very inquisitive and helpful, and he is very kind. However, he is a bit of a pushover and he doesn't always seem to be the most clever. (His cover story for going to Texas was that he was looking for a Texan wife...that seemed like a pretty lame cover story to me.)



Uncle Tam:
Uncle Tam was Bob's primary care giver when he was growing up. It was speculated by Bob that he is homosexual (with his old roommate and business partner, 'Bromo'), but Bob was never sure. "The two men were housemates and business partners and, Bob wondered a few years later, if perhaps not something more, for there was in their relationship an odd intimacy that went beyond household or business matters." (Proulx 16) Tam is the owner of a junk shop, and he has an obsessive love of plastic. He looks at plastic items as art, and loves watching 'Antiques Road Show'. Tam is quiet and introspective, but he clearly loves his nephew, Bob. He was never rich, but he gave all that he could to him so that he could grow up properly. He is very dedicated and quietly passionate about the things that he loves.


Wayne 'Bromo' Redpoll
Wayne is the business partner and housemate of Tam. He is the polar opposite of Tam. He is openly aggressive about allot of things, most of them particularly inane. He is impatient and argumentative and very competitive. "...Wayne tried to counter Bob's skill [at crossword puzzles] by dredging up odd crossword information and explaining it to him as though that were the point of the puzzles..." (Proulx 13) As soon as Wayne realized that, even as a youth, Bob was better then him at crosswords, he made it look like he was still better then him. Wayne is constantly feeling extreme about something. Either he loves plastics passionately or he hates cliches and sayings and wants to damn them to hell. This is the perfect foil for Tam's stoicism.


Orlando
Orlando is Bob's "fat boy". "In every installation of life...there was a fat boy." For Bob, his fat boy became his only (and therefore best) friend when he was younger. Orlando was big and scary. He dropped out of school, wore skulls and crossbones and overalls. "He was not like other fat boys. He was not jolly...Bob Dollar knew instinctively that this was an evil fat boy." (Proulx 31) He is a minor character, but I think that he is important to the way that Bob grew up. He had a large influence on him, convincing him to steal prescription drugs from Tam and offhandedly making Bob feel self conscious about his lack of real friends.



LaVon Fronk
LaVon lives in the Texas panhandle, in the city of Woolybucket. This is the lady I was talking about before. The yakker. She talks to the extreme. She puts her knack for gossiping and telling stories to good use by beginning to write a book about all of the families of Woolybucket. She is very driven and knowledgeable about the area. She seems to be a perfect representative of her area. She was born and raised in Texas and knows all about the cowboy values and has good old Texan common sense. She also has a way of blatantly stating the truth that is refreshing. Mixed into her long tirades about her family history or the history of "barbed war" (that would be Texas speak for 'barbed wire') she does make some very good points about life. She does, however, have some very unexpected parts to her character. "'That's Pinky.' She reached for the box, set it between them and pried up the cover. Bob was horrified to see a tan tarantula with baby pink feet staring up at him." (Proulx 70)