Something Happened: Analysis of Major Characters
"Something Happened" presents an in-depth exploration of major characters grappling with personal and familial struggles against the backdrop of corporate life. Central to the narrative is Robert (Bob) Slocum, a middle-level executive who embodies the conflicts between professional ambition and personal discontent. He exhibits a complex relationship with his wife, who battles her own insecurities and the challenges of alcoholism, feeling increasingly disconnected from her family. Their teenage daughter struggles with self-image and rebellion, while their sensitive young son becomes a focal point for family dynamics, especially following a tragic accident.
The novel also introduces Andy Kagle, Slocum's boss, who, despite his shortcomings, represents the uneasy balance of power within the corporate environment. Each character is layered, reflecting themes of emotional numbness, fear of mortality, and the quest for love and acceptance. As the narrative unfolds, it reveals how personal tragedies and professional transitions intertwine, leading to profound changes in the characters' lives. This poignant examination of human relationships invites readers to contemplate deeper existential questions and the impact of societal expectations on personal fulfillment.
Something Happened: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Joseph Heller
First published: 1974
Genre: Novel
Locale: New York City and a Connecticut suburb
Plot: Psychological
Time: The late 1960's or early 1970's
Robert (Bob) Slocum, a middle-level corporate executive in his early forties. He works in New York City and lives with his wife and three children in Connecticut. At his office, Slocum is fearful and cynically prudent in dealing with his superiors. At home, he is often competitive and abrasive with his two older children, or he retreats from them to the isolation of his study. He recalls with enthusiasm his earlier, insatiable lust for his wife, but he feels threatened by her increasing sexual assertiveness, and he scrutinizes her carefully for signs of alcoholism and marital infidelity. Slocum himself is a philanderer who is joyless and emotionally numb with prostitutes and his girlfriends. He is preoccupied with death, disintegration, and fear of the unknown, and he ruminates obsessively on unresolved emotional experiences, such as his adolescent flirtation with a girl who later committed suicide and his neglect of his mother before her death in a nursing home. At the end of the novel, following the death of his nine-year-old son, Slocum is promoted to the head of the sales department.
Slocum's wife, unnamed, four years younger than Slocum, a tall, slender, well-dressed woman. She is bored and unhappy, and she has recently become a secretive drinker. In the years since marrying Slocum, she has lost self-confidence. She feels unloved by Slocum and their children, and she is beginning, awkwardly, to use obscenities and to flirt with other men at parties.
Slocum's daughter, unnamed, an unhappy fifteen-year-old high school student. Overweight and anxious about her appearance, she both fears and provokes arguments between her parents. Rebellious in her use of obscenity and her insistence on smoking cigarettes, she expresses fear of her parents' dying or divorcing through her abrasive assertions of indifference. Her eagerness to have a car and her delight in the prestige of a new house express her pleased participation in the economic upward mobility of the family.
Slocum's older son, unnamed, a bright and agreeable nine-year-old. As a young child, he had exasperated and delighted his parents by giving money to other children and by his lack of competitiveness. This family peacemaker has numerous irrational fears, however, and he is physically delicate. Slocum loves and identifies with this boy but inadvertently suffocates him after he is injured in a minor, freak auto accident.
Derek Slocum, Slocum's brain-damaged younger son. This child is a focus of concern and conflict among the characters. A major issue is deciding whether to keep Derek at home or send him to an institution.
Andrew (Andy) Kagle, the head of the sales department at the unnamed company for which Slocum works. A middle-aged man with a limp, Kagle wears the wrong clothes for his executive position, and he is not comfortable dealing with his superiors or the salespeople who work under him. He trusts Slocum and has been good to him. At the end of the novel, Slocum is promoted to sales manager, and Kagle is shunted into special projects.