Nickel Mountain: A Pastoral Novel: Analysis of Major Characters
"Nickel Mountain: A Pastoral Novel" delves into the lives of a diverse cast of characters, primarily centered around Henry Soames, the owner of a diner in the Catskill Mountains. At forty-one, Henry grapples with a heart condition linked to his weight, yet his greater struggle lies in his quest for companionship and meaning in life. Despite acknowledging life’s randomness, he chooses to believe in personal responsibility, especially regarding his role as a husband and father. Calliope (Callie) Wells, Henry's sixteen-year-old wife, transforms both the diner and Henry himself, showcasing her own evolution from a practical young woman to a nurturing partner.
The narrative also explores the complexities of relationships through characters like Willard Freund, the estranged father of Henry’s son, and George Loomis, a cynical farmer who embodies loss and isolation. Other notable figures include S. J. Kuzitski, a lonely junk dealer, and the Goat Lady, whose desperate search for her son symbolizes hope amid despair. As these characters navigate their intertwined lives, the novel presents themes of love, responsibility, and the human condition, inviting readers to reflect on the nature of community and redemption.
Nickel Mountain: A Pastoral Novel: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: John Gardner
First published: 1973
Genre: Novel
Locale: The farming country in the Catskills of upstate New York
Plot: Pastoral
Time: 1954–1959
Henry Soames, forty-one years old, the owner of the Stop-Off diner located in the Catskill Mountains. His heart condition is the result of his being ninety pounds overweight, but his hunger for food is outstripped by his hunger for talk and companionship. His streak of violence and self-destructiveness is offset by his huge meaningless love of human-kind. “Caught up in the buzzing, blooming confusion,” Henry believes that every person must find something worth being crucified for—in Henry's case, his wife and son and his community of friends, neighbors, and customers. Although he admits that life may be accidental rather than ordered, he nevertheless chooses to believe in the useful fiction of personal responsibility.
Calliope (Callie) Wells, who is sixteen years old when she comes to work at the Stop-Off as a means of making enough money to move to New York. Made pregnant and then abandoned by her boyfriend, she accepts Henry's offer of marriage, though not without misgivings. Welsh in background, she is sharp-boned and practical. As Henry's wife, she transforms the diner into a family restaurant called The Maples. She also changes Henry, making him into what in fact he has always been. Under Henry's influence, Callie undergoes a similar change.
Jimmy, their son.
Willard Freund, Jimmy's natural father. A romantic and idealist, Willard sees Henry both as a friend and as a father who encourages him to realize his ambitions. Willard's actual father exerts quite a different influence, convincing Willard to give up both his dreams and Callie (and therefore his responsibilities). Estranged not only from Henry, Callie, his son Jimmy, and the area around Nickel Mountain but also from his own better self, he becomes cynical until, during a Christmas break from college, he is welcomed back by Henry, who has managed to overcome his own fears and self-doubts concerning the return of his former friend, his son's father, and his wife's former lover.
S. J. Kuzitski, a Russian (or perhaps Polish) junk dealer. A lonely drunk, he spends many nights at the Stop-Off, listening to Henry's ranting. He dies when his truck goes off the road and burns.
George Loomis, a farmer in his thirties who lives alone with his “things” atop Crow Mountain. Broken in body and spirit, he is ironic and cynical, self-consciously playing the devil to Henry's Jesus. George recognizes the hollowness of his own life and the dignity of Henry's. Although responsible for the accidental death of the Goat Lady, George refuses to acknowledge that responsibility to anyone but himself. His silence isolates him even further from the community and its healing, redemptive powers, yet that same silence, as Callie intuits, saves the others; thanks to George's weakness, they are allowed to continue to believe that the Goat Lady will indeed succeed in her strange quest.
Doc Cathey, another of Henry's regular customers. Both a medical doctor and a justice of the peace, he is at once avuncular and diabolically cynical.
Simon Bale, a Jehovah's Witness who works as a clerk in a local hotel until a fire destroys his house and kills his wife. Because he is a religious fanatic and a domestic bully, a man without friends, family, or money, Henry takes him in, a charitable act that Simon claims to be of no consequence. For Simon, nothing in the world matters. When Simon dies in a freak accident, Henry accepts full responsibility and assumes a nearly fatal burden of guilt.
Goat Lady, an unspeakably foul-smelling, dwarf-sized woman with an “inhuman” face. She began a journey from Erie, Pennsylvania, with her cart and goats in search of her son, Buddy Blatt. She possesses no dignity whatsoever and no more knowledge of her son's whereabouts than the word “fair.” She assumes that those she meets will help her on her way. She exemplifies for Callie and the others the hope and faith they must have to make it through the summer drought. Faith and hope are what she gives; charity is what she requires. She dies when her cart is struck by George Loomis' truck at night.
Eleanor Wells, Callie's mother, a Baptist. Henry had a crush on her when they were in school.
Frank Wells, Callie's father. He is cynical, alcoholic, and arrogantly detached from his family and neighbors.
Henry's father, a good but grotesquely fat man who failed at everything he tried, from farming to teaching. Constantly belittled by his wife, he is a source of shame and embarrassment to his son. Try as he may to be different, as his mother demanded, Henry shares both his father's bulk and his equally immense love of his fellow people.
Mr. Taylor, the Utica florist with whom Willard hitches a ride at Christmastime, rather than asking his father to pick him up. Taylor's genuine liking for people and his trust in his workers surprise Willard. Taylor dies when his car smashes into a snowplow; Willard is saved, thrown against Taylor at the moment of impact.
Hessie and Walt, the bickering old couple (she is ninety-two and he is eighty-seven) Henry meets at the very end of the novel. They have returned to Nickel Mountain to exhume the remains of their fourteen-year-old son, Bobby, who was struck and killed by lightning fifty years ago. Different as they are—she is religious, and he is not; she says to let the body stay where it is, and he says a family should be together—they are alike in their grief and in their belief that “you never forget.”