The Old Devils: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Old Devils: Analysis of Major Characters" explores the intricate dynamics among a group of aging friends in South Wales, focusing on their complex relationships and individual struggles. Central to the narrative is Alun Weaver, a charismatic yet notorious womanizer who grapples with the realities of aging while maintaining his charm and sharp insights. His wife, Rhiannon, navigates her own past with a former lover, Peter Thomas, whose discontent and physical decline starkly contrast with her enduring beauty and resilience. The character of Muriel Thomas adds tension; her domineering nature and disdain for Welsh culture create a palpable friction in the group, particularly with her husband, Peter. Other key figures include Sophie Norris, a free-spirited former lover of Alun, and her husband Charlie, a troubled drinker facing his own demons. Malcolm and Gwen Cellan-Davies represent a more conservative pair, whose interactions reveal deeper undercurrents of friendship and unspoken connections. Lastly, Dorothy Morgan serves as a foil, providing comic relief through her obliviousness and obsession with trivial knowledge. This rich tapestry of characters highlights themes of love, regret, and the passage of time, offering readers a poignant reflection on the complexities of aging and relationships.
The Old Devils: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Kingsley Amis
First published: 1986
Genre: Novel
Locale: South Wales
Plot: Social
Time: The mid-1980's
Alun Weaver, a critic, poet, journalist, and television personality in England, recognized for his service to literature by an award from the queen. In his early sixties, he decides to go into semiretirement in his native town in South Wales. A handsome, charming man with a fearsome reputation as a womanizer, he has not been slowed by age; his famous mane of hair, once deep bronze and now snow-white (somewhat deepened by a dye job), and his quick sense of sexual prey and willingness to please are immediately put into practice as he returns to his old friends, both male and female. He can be monumentally glib, and unrepentant about it, but he is also a scarifying commentator on social, political, artistic, and personal stupidities.
Rhiannon Weaver, Weaver's wife, beautiful as a girl and still handsome as an old woman. Gray-eyed, tall, and fair, she is not without old lovers herself, if more properly so, but she is not, like her husband, sexually obsessed. She knows what he is usually up to when he disappears, but she has come to terms with it. Her big test lies in meeting the one serious love of her life, Peter Thomas, and dealing with him.
Peter Thomas, the youthful lover of Rhiannon Weaver who let her down when she became pregnant while at the university. A retired chemical engineer, he lives in mortal vicious combat with his wife, a Yorkshire woman. Thomas is deeply unhappy and conveys an air of constant melancholy and bad temper in public, punctuated by shards of witty disdain. He is dangerously overweight, and, in early old age, is bald-headed, paunchy, and barely able to transport himself from one chair to another. He is not much of the man whom Rhiannon loved years earlier. He still loves her but does not look forward to being in constant social conjunction with her, given his present state.
Muriel Thomas, the only non-Welsh member of the group, a loud-voiced, breezy woman. Dark-haired and of slender build, she seems to be the physical ideal of a Welsh woman, but she is not, and she despises all things Welsh. She is constantly at Peter, threatening toreturntoEnglandandtoleave him behind, both physically and financially, because she owns all of their property and most of their money. He is terrified of her, and she takes considerable pleasure in humiliating him with blistering verbal attacks when and if it suits her.
Sophie Norris, a former lover of Weaver, and of many others as well. Having possessed a lavish figure and a generous sexual appetite when young, she is still in fairly good shape and is still open to salacious invitation. Only her husband, Charlie, seems immune to her charms, but he knows that she still has an occasionally active social life. She is good to Charlie, however, in other ways.
Charlie Norris, the owner of a restaurant, which is run by his brother. He is a very heavy drinker who is suffering from a variety of serious physical ailments. Intelligent and often aware, despite his pug-nosed drinker's face and dazed demeanor, he is quick to put Alun in his place when he talks nonsense. Charlie is susceptible to terrible nightmares and is constantly on the edge of a serious nervous breakdown. Good-natured and accepting of his wife's infidelities, he is pathetically trying to get from drink to drink without falling apart completely.
Malcolm Cellan-Davies, a retired insurance agent who, on one occasion long ago, had a small book of poems printed. Sixty-one years old, long-faced, tall, erect, and constantly worried about his diet and his tendency toward constipation, he is a very mild and somewhat conservative man. He tends not to see what is going on quite as clearly as his friends, which is probably just as well. He cherishes a memory of his short courtship of Rhiannon Weaver that seems to be quite out of proportion to her memory of the same association.
Gwen Cellan-Davies, Malcolm's wife. She is spectacled, round-faced, and sixty-one years old, with deep-set eyes and tinted, light brown hair. She is often disdainful of Malcolm's literary reputation and of his character in general. There is more there, however, than she wishes to reveal. She is a close friend of Rhiannon Weaver and has been since school days, but despite her talk to the contrary, she is closer to Alun Weaver than she would admit.
Dorothy Morgan, the resident bore, shorthaired, intelligent-looking, and obsessed with telling everyone in long lectures what she has just learned about subjects of no possible interest to anyone. She was a close friend of Rhiannon at the university.