Empire Falls

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2001

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue and Part 1, Chapters 1-8

Part 2, Chapters 9-14

Part 3, Chapters 15-22

Part 4, Chapters 23-32 and Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Character Analysis

Miles Roby

The protagonist Miles Roby is a 42-year-old separated father of Tick, brother of David, and son of Grace and Max. He defines himself via his relationships with others, particularly with regard to his deceased mother and his daughter. In the scene where Miles is introduced, his “anxious eye” looks down toward the “dark, high-windowed shirt factory where his mother had spent most of her adult working life” as he hopes to “catch a glimpse of his daughter, Tick” (20). Shortly thereafter, the reader learns how his best friends think of him: reliable and steady, “the same old Miles” (22). His soon-to-be ex-wife, Janine, sees his steadiness as boring behavior steeped in monotonous routine, referring to him as “the Human Rut” (194). His brother, David, agrees that Miles is too cautious and often self-sacrificing, though Miles thinks his brother is impulsive, as his history of addictive behavior suggests. For his part, Miles “had always thought of himself as a model of tolerance” (43).

Throughout the book, Miles navigates middle age, reminiscing on the regrets, recriminations, lapses, and failures that accumulate over time. His mother’s affair and its attendant consequences linger in the background, defining him in ways that he only vaguely realizes until he knows the truth of Charlie Mayne’s identity. In one of his early encounters with Mrs. Whiting, she brings up Adam and Eve, claiming that they, unlike Miles, knew what they wanted: the “forbidden fruit.” When Miles suggests that the only profit on the sampling of forbidden wares is regret, Mrs. Whiting counters his argument: “Do you imagine that refusing the forbidden fruit would’ve made them happier? Would that have eliminated regret or merely redefined it?” (62). Her argument, on the surface, refers to Miles’s lack of self-interest, his denial of his desires, and his refusal to take risks. As Miles and the reader learn later, it also obliquely refers to Miles’s mother’s affair with Mrs. Whiting’s husband, as well as Mrs. Whiting’s subsequent response to it. Miles must make peace with this past by forgiving his mother and rediscovering himself in the process.

Christina “Tick” Roby

Tick is an incredibly sensitive young woman, prone to anxiety attacks and self-doubt. She is also disarmingly intelligent and, according to her father, “heartbreakingly beautiful” (39). Miles “often tried to explain that it was her intelligence, her wit, that was keeping her from being more popular with the boys” (39). Tick knows that she is smart, but she is often frustrated by the dimwittedness of adults, and she astutely observes the contradictions and hypocrisies regularly heaped upon adolescents by the adults who are supposed to be teaching them. She is inspired by Picasso: “She simply marveled at how content the man was to be different, to go his own way, self-reliantly, as Emerson said you should in that essay” (181). Thus, though Tick makes mistakes—realigning herself with Zack Minty, for example, or befriending the lost cause that is John Voss—the reader is assured that she will eventually find her own voice. Her slow recovery from the trauma of witnessing the shooting is also promising: While it may be slow, it has a clear arc, and she wants to go home before her father can fully grapple with the thought.

The origin of the nickname “Tick” is never revealed, though the metaphorical associations suggest both unloved parasite (which might be how she sees herself at times) and potential explosive (as in “ticking time bomb”). This latter association reminds the reader that Tick, however sensitive and intelligent, is also drawn back into Zack Minty’s circle—with its allure of popularity and danger—and retains possession of the Exacto knife long after she intends to return it. When John Voss pulls his weapon, Tick slashes his face with the knife, and later, Zack’s hand as he tries to help her up in the aftermath. While the author does not fully explore the possibilities in Tick’s latent aggression, he does gesture toward the potentially explosive emotional depths that are locked away within both daughter and father.

Janine Roby/Comeau

Janine is an almost wholly self-serving person with few redeeming qualities. One wonders why Miles married her—as does he, admitting that he never truly loved her. Her obsessions with weight, sex, and money reveal her shallowness, and it is only in her last interaction with her daughter that the reader sees that she has feelings for anyone other than herself. She excoriates her ex-husband for his routine ways and then turns her ire on her new husband, Walt, when she discovers his true age and financial status. Janine also appears oblivious of the effect that her obsession with weight and food is having on her daughter.

Underneath her bitter invective, there is a frightened middle-aged woman scared of becoming irrelevant. Janine is hurt by her daughter’s dismissal of her, unaware of how bringing Walt into Tick’s life might have impacted their relationship. She is also hurt by her mother’s good-natured disapproval of her obsessions, but in neither case can she bear to allow her hurt to show: “Janine turned her back on both her daughter and her mother” (277). While in this scene, the act is literally physical, it describes Janine’s psychological defense against her personal pain. In the end, she will welcome Miles and her daughter back home, if wearily, after sending the feckless Walt away.

Francine Whiting (neé Robideaux)

Francine Whiting—almost always referred to as Mrs. Whiting, with its formal honorific—is the only major character whose inner thoughts are not accessible to the reader. This serves to emphasize her imperiousness, as well as to highlight her inscrutable motives. To the very end, Miles will be unsure if Mrs. Whiting’s generosity toward his family—employing his mother, paying for her cancer treatments, and helping Miles with college and later a job—was an elaborate form of retribution or an offer of redemption. When she is introduced, long before she becomes Mrs. Whiting, the narration states, “Francine was a bright, ambitious young woman, newly graduated” (13). While her own family was impoverished, she quickly takes to the ways of the Whitings, as she “had carefully observed and then adopted their table manners, fashion sense, vocal idiosyncrasies, and personal hygiene” (14). Ultimately, Francine will out-Whiting the Whitings themselves, becoming the sole inheritor of their fortune and influence.

She is obsessed with power and control and never fails to let anyone who crosses her know it: “In Mrs. Whiting willfulness had become a driving force whose relentless purpose was the removal of all obstacles, large and small” (348). Still, she expresses genuine fondness for Miles and his mother, despite her desire to orchestrate their destinies. The narrator explains “that for her, affection was not impossible so much as unnatural and difficult, that she resembled the soil her family had tended for so long before selling out: blighted, but not entirely barren” (481-82). Her death by drowning feels both fated and deflating, a swift and potentially unsatisfying end to a character who wielded such enormous power over the fates and fortunes of everyone else in Empire Falls.