Character Clues
Character Analysis
Physical Appearance
You can tell a lot about a guy from the shape of his body and the cut of his jib—or so Saul Bellow would tell us, anyway. But you can learn even more about him from the way he looks at himself. Take Wilhelm, for example. The novel's narrator tells us that he's "comparatively young, in his middle forties, large and blond, with big shoulders," and that his back is "heavy and strong, if already a little stooped or thickened" (1.2). But how does Wilhelm see himself when he looks in a mirror?
You had to allow for the darkness and deformations of the glass, but he thought he didn't look too good. A wide wrinkle like a comprehensive bracket sign was written upon his forehead, the point between his brows, and there were patches of brown on his dark-blond skin. He began to be half-amused at the shadow of his own marveling, troubled, desirous eyes, and his nostrils and his lips. Fair-haired hippopotamus!—that was how he looked to himself. He saw a big round face, a wide, flourishing red mouth, stump teeth. (1.13)
Wilhelm's perspective on his own physical appearance is a lot more negative than the narrator's, and he repeats that comparison between himself and a hippopotamus more than once throughout the novel. After fighting with his dad in the dining hall, he storms out, fuming:
Ass! Idiot! Wild boar! Dumb mule! Slave! Lousy, wallowing hippopotamus! (4.1)
We even hear that his youngest son, Paul, calls him a "hummuspotamus" (2.22).
Is anyone else suddenly craving hummus, or is it just us?
When Wilhelm looks at himself, he sees a "big, indecently big, spoiled body" (2.22). We know the poor guy has a lot of self-loathing, and his thoughts on his physical appearance are just some of the ways that loathing comes through. Homeboy needs to pick up a copy of Cosmo and learn to love himself.
Clothing
Wilhelm may think of himself as a great big hippopotamus, but how does that hippopotamus dress? If clothes make the man, can they make the megafauna too? Let's hear what the novel's narrator has to say.
After receiving a compliment from Rubin, "the man at the newsstand" (1.4), Wilhelm tries to get a good look at himself:
He went back a step, as if to stand away from himself and get a better look at his shirt. His glance was comic, a comment upon his untidiness. He liked to wear good clothes, but once he had put it on each article appeared to go its own way. (1.9)
The take-away here is that Wilhelm's clothing mirrors the confused, disordered nature of his mind. He likes to wear nice things, but he doesn't wear them particularly well. On him, the clothes look untidy and sloppy. When Dr. Adler takes a good hard look at his son over breakfast, his view is even less complimentary than the narrator's:
Dr. Adler thought that Wilhelm looked particularly untidy this morning—unrested, too, his eyes red-rimmed from excessive smoking. He was breathing through his mouth and was evidently much distracted and rolled his red-shot eyes barbarously. As usual, his coat collar was turned up as though he had to go out in the rain. When he went to business he pulled himself together a little; otherwise he let himself go and looked like hell. (2.34)
Poor old Wilky. This guy just can't seem to do anything right.
Family Life
Wilhelm thinks of himself as a man who values family. It frustrates him to live in New York City, where people seem so alienated from one another's perspectives and experiences that "[y]ou had to translate and translate, explain and explain, back and forth," and "[t]he fathers were no fathers and the sons no sons" (5.36).
Wilhelm is desperate for a little kindness and sympathy from his father, but Dr. Adler can't give those things to him. Neither can Wilhelm get the compassion he wants from his wife, and he isn't even sure if his own children love him anymore. He may be a man with family values, but he's destroyed most of his chances to connect with the real members of his family. Man, sucks to suck. This leaves him searching for human connection elsewhere, in New York City's crowded streets.
Wilhelm experiences a brief moment of revelation one afternoon as he walks through a tunnel beneath Times Square. For an instant, he feels that the masses of people surrounding him are "his brothers and his sisters," and he feels that he loves them all passionately:
He was imperfect, and disfigured himself, but what difference did that make if he was united with them by this blaze of love? And as he walked he began to say, "Oh my brothers—my brothers and my sisters," blessing them all as well as himself. (5.38)
Wilhelm may not be much of a brother to his sister Catherine, much of a son to his father, much of a husband to his wife, or much of a father to his boys, but that doesn't stop him from wanting things to be better, purer, and right.
Uh…good luck with that.