Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad CatholicataTimeNeartheEndoftheWorld: Analysis of Major Characters
"Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at Time Near the End of the World" features a range of complex characters navigating personal and societal chaos in a fictional Louisiana setting. The protagonist, Dr. Thomas More, is a psychiatrist grappling with alcoholism and emotional turmoil stemming from his past traumas, including his wife's infidelity and his daughter's death. He represents a flawed yet relatable figure who confronts existential crises while attempting to revolutionize psychiatry. Ellen Oglethorpe, his nurse and new wife, embodies a strong moral compass and provides a stabilizing influence in his tumultuous life.
Supporting characters include Miss Marva, More's psychic mother, who adapts to societal upheaval with entrepreneurial flair, and Art Immelmann, a manipulative stranger whose actions exacerbate tensions in their community. Other characters, such as Lola Rhoades and Moira Schaffner, reflect the varied and often conflicting relationships More has with women in his life, each influencing his journey in different ways. The narrative weaves through themes of love, betrayal, and societal change, offering a satirical yet poignant look at human behavior in the face of impending chaos.
Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad CatholicataTimeNeartheEndoftheWorld: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Walker Percy
First published: 1971
Genre: Novel
Locale: Louisiana
Plot: Social satire
Time: 1983, with a coda in 1988
Dr. Thomas More, the narrator, a psychiatrist in Paradise Estates, Louisiana. By his own admission, this forty-five-year-old man loves “women best, music and science next, whiskey next, God fourth, and my fellow man hardly at all.” His life is complicated by his two most prominent qualities: his heart full of love and his good mind. Because of his wife's adultery, his daughter's death, his guilt over his affair with his neighbor's daughter, and his conviction that the world is going to end, this bad Catholic is afflicted with alcoholism and troublesome mood swings. His personal problems land him in a mental hospital, where he is both a patient and a member of the staff. When his plans for revolutionizing psychiatry through his mood-altering invention—the lapsometer—fall through, he returns to his life as a practicing psychiatrist, forsakes his philandering, chaotic lifestyle, and marries his nurse, Ellen Oglethorpe.
Ellen Oglethorpe, More's nurse, a beautiful but tyrannical Georgia Presbyterian who believes not in God but in doing what is right. When she threatens to leave and become Art Immelmann's traveling secretary, More pulls her off the plane, marries her, and regains some stability in his life.
Miss Marva, More's mother, a psychic. Unlike her son, she is on good terms with the world. When a group of black revolutionaries called the Bantus take over 99 percent of Paradise Estates, she nevertheless flourishes by selling “astrological real estate” to the Bantus.
Eukie, Miss Marva's black servant. She calls More a “trea-sure,” but he insists that he is good for nothing but serving cocktails to his wife's bridge club.
Art Immelmann, an insidious stranger who poses as the liaison officer between the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) and the Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations. He talks More into signing over the rights to the lapsometer to him and then uses the invention to increase tensions among people. After adding the lapsometer to the Maryland arsenal, he promises that More will win the Nobel Prize.
Lola Rhoades, an accomplished cellist, twenty years old, one of More's girlfriends. Foolish, impetuous, and gallant, she saves More's life when he has an attack of “brain hives” in a grassy bunker by fetching her brother to help him. The six-foot-tall beauty saves More's life a second time by shooting at a Bantu who is holding a gun on him.
Dr. George “Dusty” Rhoades, More's neighbor and Lola's father. Rhoades, who is president of the American Christian Proctological Association, is also an arch conservative and bigot. He strongly disapproves of More's conduct with his daughter. He saves More's life after his attack of “brain hives” by injecting him with epinephrine.
Moira Schaffner, a secretary at the Love Clinic, another one of More's girlfriends. A poor girl who supported herself by working for the civil service and for the NIMH before coming to Paradise, she makes More jealous because of her attraction to Dr. Buddy Brown. Along with Ellen and Lola, she hides out with More in the abandoned motel during the riots.
Dr. Buddy Brown, a doctor at the Love Clinic. Not only does he contend with More for Moira's affections, but he also disagrees with More's belief that Mr. Ives is not insane enough to be committed to the Happy Isles Separation Center (the innocuous name of which is a euphemism for euthanasia).
Mr. Ives, a mute and possibly senile psychopath. After working for the Hartford Insurance Company, Mr. Ives loses his wife, retires to the woods in Louisiana, and then moves to Tampa, Florida, where he spends his time digging for the fountain of youth. Dr. More keeps him from being sent to the Happy Isles.
Dr. Kenneth Stryker, the chief of staff at the Love Clinic. He is a tall man who emphasizes propriety, even to the point of dressing like a funeral director. He is completely devoid of moral scruples.
Dr. Helga Heine, a Bavarian gynecologist and assistant to Dr. Stryker. She makes love to Dr. Stryker after observing the lovemaking of two of their patients.
Father Kev Kevin, a former priest, now a Love Clinic counselor. He implements some of the findings of the article that More had intended to send to the journal Brain, but he completely misinterprets their meaning.
Father Rinaldo Smith, a priest who ministers to a small congregation, performing the traditional rites of the Roman Catholic Church. For a time, he is More's fellow patient in a psychiatric ward, where in his disturbed state he reveals a prophetic vision of the spiritual condition of America.
Doris, More's wealthy former wife. Reared as an Episcopalian and accustomed to Virginian gentility, she is embittered by the death of their daughter, Samantha. Increasingly absorbed in Eastern mysticism, she leaves More, telling him that she is going “in search of myself.”
Alistair Fuchs-Forbes, Doris' British lover, a hypocritical guru. He tells More that he shares More's hatred of materialism, even though he is primarily interested in Doris' money. Ironically, he gets Doris, but she leaves her money to More.
Victor Charles, More's stammering former servant who worked for more than twenty years for him and his mother. One of the leaders of the Bantu movement, he eventually runs for Congress and asks More to act as his campaign manager.
Colley, an encephalographer, electronic wizard, black belt in karate, and graduate of the New York University medical school. More refers to him as a “black Leonardo.”
Charlie Parker, a Paradise golf professional and self-proclaimed nonconformist. Even though he and his wife try to revive Choctaw customs and camp near a Confederate salt mine, his conservative side becomes apparent in his angry verbal attacks against the rioters who burn the golf course.
Leroy Ledbetter, a seventh-generation Anglo-Saxon American and a friend of More. He and More are part owners of the Paradise Bowling Lanes. Leroy destroys his business when he refuses to give a lane to a black couple from Tougaloo and thereby incites a riot.