The Watchmaker of Everton: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Watchmaker of Everton: Analysis of Major Characters" explores the complex relationships and internal struggles of a small-town watchmaker named Dave Galloway and his son, Ben. As the central character, Dave embodies the challenges of modern existence, grappling with feelings of alienation and a yearning for connection, particularly with his son, who has recently committed a grave crime. The narrative delves into Dave's past, including the impact of his wife leaving him and his role as both father and mother to Ben, revealing his emotional dependencies and the weight of familial expectations.
Ben, a seemingly good son turned criminal, represents the turbulence of youth and the desire to assert autonomy, complicating his relationship with his father. His girlfriend, Miriam, plays a vital role in his defiance, showcasing the influences of environment and peer relationships. The story also highlights Dave's friend Musak, who offers support during Dave’s moments of crisis, and illustrates the struggles of communication and understanding among characters. Lastly, Wilbur Lane, the family's attorney, adds another layer to the narrative by reflecting societal judgments and pressures surrounding mental health and familial loyalty. Together, these characters paint a poignant picture of identity, legacy, and the search for understanding in an increasingly disconnected world.
The Watchmaker of Everton: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Georges Simenon
First published: L'Horloger d'Everton, 1954 (English translation, 1955)
Genre: Novel
Locale: Everton and elsewhere in New York State, and various locations in the East and Midwest
Plot: Psychological realism
Time: The mid-1950's
Dave Galloway, a watchmaker and repairer with his own small shop in Everton, New York. He is the novel's center of consciousness. Forty-three years old, a good citizen, and an ordinary, happy man not much given to reflection, at the opening of the novel Dave has still to learn the “secret in men” which he hopes to communicate at the novel's close to the grandson who will shortly be born to his imprisoned son. The alienation and purposelessness of the modern hero are registered in the details of his drab small-town existence: his lack of friends, his retreat from women, and his clockworklike home habits and work routines. So contracted is his life that he depends almost entirely for love and recognition—for a very sense of self—on the son to whom he has been both father and mother since his wife Ruth left him fifteen years ago, when Ben was an infant. Dave attempts not simply to understand why Ben has stolen and murdered but also to assert the unbroken continuity and closeness of their relationship. Dave's bewildered attempt to do so comes in the face of the fact that Ben has severed his ties with the past and his father, refusing even to acknowledge his presence in court. As a result of his quest to maintain a relationship with Ben, Dave confronts his own deeply buried desire to rebel (which drove him to marry the town tramp) and that of his long-dead father. Through such a quasi-mystical sense of heredity, he can cling to a sense of identity with Ben.
Ben Galloway, Dave's sixteen-year-old-son, quiet and self-possessed, a good son who has never given any trouble, and (until recently) a good student. One Saturday night Ben packs his suitcase, pockets a pistol bought from a school friend, steals his father's decrepit car, and picks up his girlfriend Miriam. The two head for Illinois, where they can legally be married. On the road, still close to home, Ben shoots a man for his car and a few dollars. Captured after an inconsequential shoot-out with police, tried, and imprisoned for life, Ben regrets nothing. Instead, he seems almost exultant, certainly callous, and suddenly adult: He has slept with Miriam, and he has imposed (if only for twenty-eight hours) his will on life.
Miriam Hawkins (in some versions, Lillian), Ben's girlfriend. Small for her fifteen and a half years, and not strikingly attractive, Miriam commits herself to Ben as absolutely and exclusively as he to her, persistently refusing to let him take responsibility for the killing. In the months before their elopement, Dave discovers, Ben has lived more in the shabby Hawkins home—with its horde of badly behaved children, a slatternly mother, and a drunken father—than in his own neat apartment.
Musak, Dave's one close friend, a solitary, middle-aged cabinetmaker. A big man who nevertheless moves with silent grace, taciturn and sometimes cynical, Musak is something of a mystery to Dave even after years of friendship. It is while Dave is playing his regular Saturday night game of backgammon at Musak's place, over a bottle of rye, that Ben decamps with Miriam. After discovering Dave's loss, Musak comes to Dave's apartment, for the first time. He is unquestioning, knowing how to deal with grief and disillusionment, and helps Dave survive.
Wilbur Lane, the top-notch attorney Dave hires to represent his son. Lane is fat, busy, able, self-important, and well-connected. He dislikes Ben for his obstinate sanity (mental instability being the only plea that could possibly save him from imprisonment) and regards Dave as an insignificant nuisance who knows less about his son than the policemen who arrested him. Significantly, he reminds Dave of his successful businessman stepfather, Musselman, against whom as an adolescent Dave defined himself and because of whom he cut himself off from his mother and his past.