# Brad McLaughlin — New Hampshire character guide

> Brad McLaughlin in New Hampshire by Robert Frost.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Brad

**First appearance:** 0006-the-axe-helve

## Snapshot

A recurring rural New Englander whose world of farms, drovers, and small-town reckonings gives the poems their ground-level texture.

## Who they are

Brad McLaughlin moves through the New Hampshire poems as part of the human furniture of the state — the kind of neighbor whose doings and sayings the narrator records without fuss. He belongs to the same landscape as the mansard-roofed friend who came back ashamed from selling rags in California, a world where trade soils a man and staying put is its own quiet virtue. His presence keeps the poems tethered to the ordinary lives the speaker claims to prefer unimproved.

## Relationships

### [Orion](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/new_hampshire_se/characters/orion)

_friendship_

Brad McLaughlin and Orion are friends or colleagues, possibly sharing work or intellectual interests.

### [Orion](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/new_hampshire_se/characters/orion)

_friendship_

Brad McLaughlin and Orion are friends or colleagues, possibly sharing work or intellectual interests.

## In the story

### [The Star-Splitter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/new_hampshire_se/chapters/the-star-splitter)

Burns his house for insurance to buy a telescope, works on the Concord railroad, and stargazes with the narrator.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/new_hampshire_se/characters/brad_mclaughlin
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/new_hampshire_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/new_hampshire_se/characters