White Angel

Bobby’s older brother is 16 years old, an age in the liminal space between youth and adulthood. Carlton is a typical teenager in his experimental attitude, which expresses itself in his use of drugs and alcohol. His free spirit also appears his hairstyle—a long ponytail—and Bobby gives him a pithy summary: “Carlton believes in shocks,” and he “likes taking risks” (2).

His risk-taking behavior is partly due to his sense of invincibility, as he tells his brother, “There’s not a thing in this pretty world to be afraid of,” and “drugs can’t hurt you if you feel no fear” (3). However, because Carlton’s death is the linchpin for the narrative (and because the reader knows this beforehand), his confidence has an immediately palpable irony. Nevertheless, this confidence is ultimately sourced in his idealism and his belief in possibility, and it is these qualities that truly define him. In his open-minded views about sex and drugs, he even symbolizes the 1960s counterculture movement. He is an optimist and ready to believe in anything. He believes in miracles and in the idealistic dream of Woodstock, and he believes that if he invites his friends to the party, they will mingle with the older generation and create a new, heightened revelry. He inspires others with his confidence, not only his younger brother but also his parents, who also join the party. Carlton’s excitement and willingness to believe causes him to sprint out alone into the cemetery when his friend claims he’s seen a UFO. This action will ultimately lead to his death when he returns to the party.

Carlton is able to inhabit both the world of childhood and that of adulthood. While he shares a world with the young Bobby, he also often sympathizes with his elders—like when his mother wants to send Bobby to bed at the party, and Carlton doesn’t intervene. Bobby, whose young mind operates with either-or tribalist logic, sees this and thinks, “He has joined the adults.” (12) Although Carlton believes in many things, like flying, taking risks, and rejecting fear, his own death is a violent shock, and “his eyes take on an astonished light”, as if he couldn’t quite believe what was happening was possible (13).

Bobby’s mother is a prominent figure in the story. She is a teacher who works with children who have special needs. She has little backstory beyond Bobby’s knowledge that her first husband died in the war when his plane went down in the Pacific. As Bobby narrates, he also shares that she is from Wisconsin and grew up on a farm where she developed a “habit of modest expectations” (6) that she struggles to overcome: “She is a small, efficient woman who looks at things as if they give off a painful light” (6). She is used to disappointment, but she is still powerful, unlike her husband, who has been worn down by his disappointments.

She is tense and nervous, partly due to her worries about Carlton’s mischief. However, the extremity of her anxiety implies a larger backstory, even if Bobby never explicitly shares it. Because she is so haggard, and because Carlton tracks mud over the carpet without a second thought, the reader can infer that this inconsideration is habitual and that Isabel has tolerated too much of it. Instead of being directly privy to this history, the reader sees only her breaking point: When Carlton tracks in the mud—and when her husband seems indifferent to it—she flies into a rage and trashes the house, saying “I just won’t bother cleaning the house anymore. I’ll let you men handle it” (8). She soothes herself later by singing songs from the 1940s in the kitchen, demonstrating her nostalgia for her own youth. Her anger and disappointment are gone when she transforms at the party later that spring, wearing a crimson dress. When Bobby observes this, he suspects this vivacious composure reflects who she once was (and perhaps, deep down, still is). And later when she dances freely, Bobby realizes, “There is no getting around her beauty” (11).

Although she and Carlton are often at odds, she clearly loves him intensely, and they have a deep connection. He inherits his good looks from her: “She is responsible for Carlton’s beauty” (10). When he dies, she is devastated, and “[a] part of her flies wailing through the house, where it will wail and rage forever. I feel our mother pass through me on her way out” (14). She handles her grief by isolating, hiding away from the rest of her family in the guestroom.

Bobby’s father is a high school music teacher, but there is little joy in this occupation. It isn’t what he planned for his career, but financial necessity drove him to it. He is a figure of disappointment in the story, and his image is associated with awkwardness and deterioration. Bobby describes him as a “formerly handsome” man whose “face has been worn down by too much patience” (7). When he dances, he is awkward, and Bobby compares him to a “flightless bird.”

He is very sensitive but has trouble connecting with his son. When interacting with his father in the kitchen, Bobby wants to leave the awkward conversation but fears hurting his father’s feelings: “If he senses he’s being avoided he can fall into fits of apology more terrifying than our mother’s rage” (11). Unlike Bobby’s mother, his father becomes apologetic when he feels ignored, but he usually has an air of futility about him. When his wife is enraged by Carlton’s mud tracks, he doesn’t know how to comfort her and follows her through the house, ineffectually calling her name.

At the beginning of the story, he makes a grandfather clock from a kit in the basement because he wants to be able to leave his sons a meaningful item of inheritance. However, this clock—like its maker’s teaching career—is unsatisfying, “a long raw wooden box, onto which he glues fancy moldings” (3). His space in the house is in the basement, making him an out-of-the-way figure. Nevertheless, he is also a benign figure; when he plays clarinet in the basement, Bobby hears him and finds the music comforting.