Look Homeward, Angel Characters

Eugene Look Homeward, AngelGant, a shy, imaginative, awkward boy. The youngest child in a tumultuous family, with a wastrel father and a penny-pinching mother, he passes through childhood alone and misunderstood, for there is no family affection. He is precocious, with an insatiable appetite for books. He hates his mother’s penuriousness, the family jealousies, and the waste of all their lives, yet is fascinated by the drunken magniloquence of his father. His salvation is the private school he is allowed to attend, for the Leonards, who operate it, develop and shape his mania for reading. At fifteen, he enters the state university, where he is considered a freak although he does brilliantly in his studies. He has his first bitter love affair with Laura James during that summer. In his sophomore year, he becomes something of a campus personality. The great tragedy of these years is the death of his brother Ben, who had loved him in his own strange fashion. Just before he leaves for Harvard for graduate study, his brother Luke asks him to sign a release of his future inheritance on the excuse that he has had his share of their parent’s estate in extra schooling. Knowing that he is being tricked by his grasping and jealous family, he signs so that he can break away from them forever.

Oliver Gant, his father, a stonecutter from Pennsylvania who has wandered to North Carolina and married there. Hating his wife and her miserly attitude, he is drunken and promiscuous, yet fascinating to his children because of his wild generosities and his alcoholic rhetoric. He is the exact opposite of his wife: She has an overpowering urge to acquire property and he wants none of it. He will not go with her when she moves to another house so that she can take in boarders. Their entire marriage has been an unending war, but she wins at last, for his failing health forces him to live with her.

Eliza Gant, Oliver’s wife and Eugene’s mother, the daughter of a family named Pentland from the mountains. They have all grown prosperous through financial acumen and native thrift. Eliza has an instinctive feeling for the future value of real estate and an almost insane penuriousness; she acquires land until she is a wealthy woman. She alienates Eugene with her stinginess, which will never allow her to enjoy the money that she has accumulated. She is rocklike in her immobility, absorbed in her passion for money and her endless, involved reminiscences.

Ben Gant, their son, silent and withdrawn yet capable of deep affection for Eugene. He dies of pneumonia because his mother will not call a reliable doctor in time. His is a wasted life, for he was endowed with potentialities that were never realized.

Steve Gant, another son. He is a braggart and wastrel, with all of his father’s worst qualities but none of his charm.

Luke Gant, another son. He is a comic figure, stuttering, generous, and ineffectual.

Helen Gant, a daughter. She has her father’s expansive nature and takes his side against her mother. She is the only member of the family who can handle the father when he is drunk.

Daisy Gant, another daughter. She is a pretty but colorless girl who plays little part in the family drama.

Margaret Leonard, wife of the principal of the private school that Eugene attends. She directs his haphazard reading so as to develop the best in his mind; she really takes the place of the mother who has had no time for him.

Laura James, a young girl five years older than Eugene who is spending the summer at Eliza’s boarding house. Eugene falls in love with her and she with him. When she returns home, however, she writes that she is to marry a man to whom she has been engaged for a year.