Hollander Hierarchy

In order from "good" to "bad"

Lucy: “Lucy Talos looked up at the Boss right quick, then looked away, and straightened a salt-shaker. At first guess it might have been the look any wife gives her husband when he shoves back after supper and announces he thinks he’ll step down town for a minute. Then you knew it wasn’t that. It didn’t have any question, or protest, or rebuke, or command, or self-pity, or whine, or oh-so-you-don’t-love-me-any-more in it.” (51) And, “I helped Lucy with hers, and then she picked up the other one and helped him [Willie]. They started for the door. HE had drawn himself erect now and looked straight ahead, but her hand was still on his arm, and if you had seen them you would have got the impression that she was expertly and tactfully guiding a blind man.” (532) Lucy stands by Willie even through his affairs, drinking, and spotty temperaments. Even though she does not agree with Willie most of the time, she undeniably and heartily supports him. And although she is disappointed by Willie’s failure to live up to her moral standards, she forgives him and instead focuses on their son Tom.

Phebe: “‘She knows… she will tell. All of them will know. All of them in the house will look at me and know - when they hand me the dish - when they come into the room - and their feed don’t make any noise!’” (248) Phebe found Duncan’s ring after he killed himself and was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. She is Annabelle’s slave and was tragically sold after her discovery.

Anne: Anne was distraught at Jack’s lack of ambition and for this reason, refused to become more involved with him. Near the middle of the book, she betrays Jack and commits to being Willie’s mistress, maybe because Willie was entirely made of ambition. She is a crucial character and her personality shines through.

Jack’s Mother: “‘Don’t be vulgar,” she said, because she definitely did not like what is known as vulgarity in conversation. ‘It’s the truth,’ he said.” (226) Jack’s mother, we never actually learned her name, was a materialistic phony woman who heavily relied on men. The relationships throughout her life were constantly unusual, evidenced by her and Jack’s relationship. It seemed that she would do whatever it took to please everyone.

Sadie: “There was Sadie, who had come a long way from the shanty in the mud-flats. She had come a long way because she played to win and she didn’t mean to win matches and she knew that to win you have to lay your money on the right number and that if your number doesn’t show there’s a fellow standing right there with a little rake to rake in your money and then it isn’t yours any more. She had been around a long time, talking to men and looking them straight in the eye like a man. Some of them liked her, and those that didn’t like her listened when she talked, which wasn’t too often, because there was reason to believe that when those big black eyes, which were black in a way which made it impossible for you to tell whether it was a blackness of surface or a blackness of depth… ‘I’ve got my arrangements, and I stick to my arrangements as long as I’ve got my arrangements.’” (119) “‘He’s [Willie] got to come back, do you hear? He’s got to. Because he can’t do without me. And he knows it. He can do without any of those sluts, but he can’t do without me. Not without Sadie Burke, and he knows it.’” (206) And, “I had also found out that Sadie Burke had put the weapon into Duffy’s hand and had aimed it for him, that she, too, had killed Willie Talos.” (572) Sadie is a jealous, vulnerable, and hard working employee of Willie. She has a ruthless burning desire to succeed will do whatever it takes to succeed. Sadie plays a role in creating who Willie turned out to be; she is always by his side providing him with information and tips.

Adam: “‘You want to do good… That you can’t see somebody sick without having to put your hands on him. That you can’t see somebody with something broken without wanting to fix it. Somebody with something rotten inside him without wanting to take a knife in your strong, white, and damned well-educated fingers, pal, and cut it out.’” (332) Adam was one of the protagonists who truly only wanted to do good in the world by helping everyone he could. His actions at the end of the book (killing Willie) are justified with the newly acquired knowledge of the betrayals of his closest friends and family.

Hugh Miller: Much like Willie, Hugh is a politician seeking reform yet unlike Willie, he opposes corruption. He is arguably one of the most genuine characters who remains ethical and refuses to get involved in any kind of “dirt.”

Sugar Boy:  “‘What would you do?’ I demanded. ‘I’d kill the son-of-a-bitch,’ he said. And he had not stuttered at all. ‘They’d hang you,’ I said. ‘I’d k-k-k-kill him. They couldn’t h-h-h-hang me before I killed him.’” (584) Sugar Boy’s pure devotion to the Boss is evident in the book and at times, seems a little too over the top. However, he is one of the more pure characters in the book, seeming to escape any fatal deeds (other than killing Adam, which in his mind was absolutely necessary).

Judge: “All I was doing was trying to prove Judge Irwin innocent. I would be able, sooner or later, to go to the Boss and say, ‘No sale, Boss. He is washed in the Blood.’” (302) Judge Irwin made a crucial mistake when he was younger and lived the rest of his life attempting to forget the incident and become a better and bigger person. He proved to be the bigger person by not divulging the fact that he was Jack’s true birthfather as this would ruin both Jack and his mother. He was forced to stand on the sidelines throughout Jack’s childhood, something that must have been very painful for him. Also, even when Jack accused him of his horrendous act and attempted to blackmail him, the Judge remained calm and still did not divulge his agonizing secret.

Jack: “I was supposed to do a lot of different things, and one of them was to lift up fifteen-year-old, hundred-and-thirty-five-pound hairy, white dogs on summer afternoons and paint an expression of unutterable bliss upon their faithful features as they gaze deep, deep into the Boss’s eyes.” (39) “Little Jackie made it stick, all right.” (72) Throughout the book, Jack has his highs and lows and is oftentimes the protagonist. However, his actions cannot always be justified and his deeds are almost never pure. One of the most horrid actions that he took was finding the dirt on the Judge, even after everything the Judge did for Jack when he was growing up. It was often portrayed that Jack is almost never proud of his jobs and how well he executes them.

Tom: “‘Oh, it’s not just football. That’s bad enough, thinking he’s a hero, that there’s nothing else in the world - but its everything that goes with it - he’s wild and selfish and idle and -’” (322) Tom was pushed to the extremes by Willie and felt the need to revolt and act recklessly. He impregnates a girl, is self-absorbed and conceited, and drives carelessly to cause an accident.

Gilbert Mastern: “After the war when the white veranda was a pile of ashes and the fortune was gone, it was not surprising that Gilbert, who had made one fortune with his bare hands, out of the very air, could now, with all his experience and cunning and hardness (the hardness harder now for the four years of riding and short rations and disappointment), snatch another one, much greater than the first.” (230) Gilbert Mastern was a cunning and deceitful as Willie and profits mainly from slavery. To achieve somewhat righteous ends, he uses corrupt means (his story is almost parallel to Willie’s).

Willie: “There is nothing women love so much as the drunkard, the hellion, the roarer, the reprobate. They love him because he is a challenge and a profession. They love him, too, because they - women, I mean - are like bees in Samson’s parable in the Bible: they like to build their honeycomb in the carcass of a dead lion.” (509) And, “He seemed to take a relish in getting her worked up that way and lying back and watching it.” (47) Willie comes into power mostly through means of blackmail. He is crazy for power and will not stop unless he achieves his goals. Though he does prove himself as a good Governor, evident by the mass amount of people that love him, his continuous actions of betrayal and blackmail repeatedly prove his character as mistrusting and immoral.

Cass Mastern: Cass Mastern was a ruthless man who would destroy anything and everything that laid in his path to victory. This is proven repeatedly, one example being that he had an affair with his best friend’s wife, causing Duncan to commit suicide.

Duffy: “I had also found that Tiny Duffy, who was now Governor of the State, had killed Willie Talos as surely as though his own hand had held the revolver.” (572) It is evident in the book that no one truly trusts Tiny Duffy. Willie keeps Duffy close to him in an attempt to keep him out of trouble, but Duffy’s ultimate betrayal eventually lead to Willie’s death.