# Dr. Hugh McGuire — Look Homeward, Angel character guide

> Dr. Hugh McGuire in Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Dr. McGuire, Dr. Hugh McGuire, McGuire, Hugh, Hugh McGuire, Doctor McGuire

**First appearance:** 0003-look-homeward-angel

## Snapshot

The Gant family's blunt, hard-drinking physician, whose cynical bedside manner and battered past make him the reluctant witness to births, illnesses, and deaths.

## Who they are

Dr. Hugh McGuire has seen the Gant family through its fevers, births, and griefs, dispensing diagnoses with the same unsparing honesty he applies to his own ruined health. His own life has been a long defeat, marked by drink and a dead wife, and he carries that knowledge into every sickroom. He matters because he is the one figure who tells the family the truth about itself, and his presence at the novel's crises gives Eugene's world its harsh, unsentimental edge.

## Links

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