Character guide

Claude Wheeler

major

Also known as Claude, Mr. Claude, Wheeler, Lieutenant Wheeler

Claude is the second son of a prosperous, teasing father and a gentle, devout mother, and he feels every small humiliation of provincial life — the stinking hides, the coarse hired men, the college winters he can't afford to finish. He wants cleanliness, purpose, and a self he can respect, but the people around him keep handing him the mules. His restless dissatisfaction is the engine of the whole book: it drives him toward Enid, toward the army, and toward the question of whether any place can finally fit him.

Enid Royce

major

Also known as Enid, Miss Enid, Caroline Royce

Enid is the daughter of a grizzled mill owner who thinks she has more brains than a girl needs and would rather see her run a business than a household. She is good, disciplined, and slightly elsewhere — her father warns Claude that her missionary motives may not leave room for a husband. Claude's courtship of her becomes a test of whether his hunger for meaning can be answered by a woman whose meaning is already spoken for.

Mrs. Wheeler

supporting

Also known as Mother Wheeler, Mother

She runs the Wheeler household alongside Mahailey, absorbing her husband's jokes and her sons' moods without complaint, and she understands Claude's disappointments better than she can say. When she runs down the path to offer to iron his linen coat, it is a small, futile gesture of love against a world that keeps handing him the mules. Her tenderness is the emotional baseline Claude carries with him — and the thing he is trying, in some sense, to earn his way back to.

Mahailey

supporting

Also known as Old Mahailey

Brought West by a family that scattered, Mahailey found a home with the Wheelers and never left; she can't read, counts herself lucky to have shoes, and senses every current of feeling in the household. Claude fixes her rolling pin and butcher knife, and she loves him for never flinching when he touches her. Her memories of the creek and the wild-plum thicket are the book's tenderest image of the home Claude is trying to leave — and of what leaving will cost.

Ralph Wheeler

supporting

Also known as Ralph

Ralph is the son who fits: he runs errands, sorts socks, laughs at Claude's tight shoes, and tells his mother the truth about how hard Claude is to manage. He is affectionate but conventional, and his easy competence throws Claude's restlessness into relief. On the wedding morning he becomes the comic witness to his brother's panic — the ordinary brother against whom Claude's extraordinary dissatisfaction is measured.

David Gerhardt

supporting

Also known as Lieutenant Gerhardt, Gerhardt, Dave

Gerhardt moves through French households and officers' quarters with a grace Claude can only envy, teasing his friend out of a sulk and steering him through dinners he can't understand. He is educated, musical, at home in the war as Claude is not, and his patience with Claude's awkwardness is a form of generosity. Their friendship becomes the emotional center of Claude's army years — the answer, or part of one, to the question of what he was looking for all along.

Bayliss Wheeler

supporting

Also known as Bayliss

Bayliss is the Wheeler family's model of success: shrewd, thrifty, and certain that the Erlichs will end up without a roof over their heads. He measures people by their habits and their interest payments, and his gentle, grieved corrections—two cups of coffee, a mortgage, a draft from an open window—make him the small tyrant of the family table. He matters because Claude's future is constantly defined against him: what Bayliss calls wisdom, Claude suspects is just a locked door.

Gladys Farmer

supporting

Also known as Gladys

Gladys teaches the children of dead men and has built a private philosophy from it: everything beautiful—love, leisure, art—is locked up, and successful men like Bayliss hold the keys. She has sacrificed small pleasures, even a trip to the opera, to keep her salary and her standing. Claude is her one hope, the strong boy with the finer strain who might succeed without turning hard; if he marries Enid and goes heavy and broken like Mr. Royce, her whole theory of life collapses.

Victor Morse

supporting

Also known as Victor, Morse

Victor is the kind of man who orders garnished toast in an officers' smoking-room and shrugs off a change of destination with 'c'est la guerre.' He came from a bank in Crystal Lake, a preacher's daughter, and two pairs of white pants a summer, until Canadian officers at Niagara Falls opened his horizon. Claude, so little Victor's kind, finds himself oddly fond of him; Victor's easy cosmopolitanism is both a temptation and a mirror for what the war might make of a Nebraska boy.

Leonard Dawson

supporting

Also known as Leonard, Len, big Leonard Dawson

Leonard belongs to the solid, working world of the Frankfort countryside—harvests, neighborly help, and old grudges settled with a slap. His coming marriage to Susie Grey resurfaces the memory of that quarrel with Bayliss, a reminder that the Wheeler name is not universally admired. He stands for the life Claude might have had: strong, respected, and rooted, but perhaps a machine with the springs broken inside.

Sergeant Hicks

supporting

Also known as Hicks

Hicks is the battalion's practical memory—he has trained at Arras, heard the Tommies' tales, and can compare this wet, dragging march to Passchendaele two years back. He and Claude wonder together what the real front must have been, sharing the weight of packs and the small camaraderie of men who have stopped expecting comfort. He matters because he gives Claude a soldier's education in endurance, the unglamorous knowledge that will carry him through what's coming.

Mrs. Erlich

supporting

Her parlor—books, a lamp, a Swiss woodcutter on the mantel, young instructors dropping in—is the one place where Claude feels life is charged with generous enthusiasms and romantic friendships. She welcomes him with excited whispers about her cousin the singer, feeds him lentil soup and dumplings, and treats his Nebraska ranch as a grand estate. Yet her warmth also sharpens his loneliness: the plain farm fare and the long silent evenings seem heavier every time he leaves her house.

Ernest Havel

supporting

Also known as Ernest

Ernest is the thoughtful young farmer Claude meets by a thorn hedge on the evening England declares war, and his calm, unhurried certainty sets him apart from the brag and bluster around them. Having sailed from Antwerp, he speaks of the German army as an inexorable harvest already planted, and he refuses Claude's American confidence that will can simply refuse it. His friendship gives Claude a window onto a wider, grimmer world, making Ernest the quiet counterweight to the prairie's cheerful isolation as the story moves toward the war.

Mr. Royce

minor

Enid's stern, religious father who runs the local drugstore.

Nat Wheeler

supporting

Also known as Mr. Wheeler, Wheeler

Nat Wheeler is the county's most imperturbable man, a broad, tobacco-stained farmer who never speaks with full seriousness and treats even his own family to the same easygoing jokes. When Claude begs for the car to drive to town, his father cheerfully assigns him the reeking steer hides and the hired men instead, a joke Claude feels as humiliation. That genial, unbothered authority shapes the household Claude is trying to escape, and it quietly explains the son's hunger for a life his father would never bother to imagine.

Dan

minor

A hired hand on the Wheeler farm.

Captain Maxey

minor

Also known as Maxey, The Captain

Claude's company commander in the American Expeditionary Forces.

Madame Joubert

minor

Also known as Madame

A French woman who hosts American soldiers in her home.

Tod Fanning

minor

Also known as Fanning

A local man from Claude's hometown who also serves in the war.

Bert Fuller

minor

Also known as Bert, Fuller

A soldier in Claude's company, known for his rough humor.

Julius Erlich

minor

Also known as Erlich, Julius

One of Mrs. Erlich's sons, a friend of Claude in Lincoln.

Albert Usher

minor

Also known as young Usher, Usher

A young soldier in Claude's company.

Dr. Chessup

minor

Also known as Chessup

A doctor in the town near the Wheeler farm.

Brother Weldon

minor

Also known as Weldon

A traveling preacher who visits the Wheeler community.

Wilhelmina Schroeder-Schatz

minor

Also known as Wilhelmina, Madame Schroeder-Schatz

A German-American woman who boards soldiers in Lincoln.

Annabelle Chapin

minor

Also known as Annabelle, Chapin

A young woman from Claude's hometown.

Dr. Trueman

minor

Also known as Doctor Trueman

A doctor who treats soldiers in the war.

Lieutenant Colonel Scott

minor

Also known as Colonel Scott

A senior officer in Claude's regiment.

Fritz Tannhauser

minor

Also known as Fritz, big Tannhauser, Tannhauser

A large, good-natured soldier in Claude's company.

Papa Joubert

minor

Madame Joubert's husband, a French farmer.

Oscar the Swede

minor

Also known as Oscar, The Swede

A Swedish immigrant neighbor of the Wheelers.

Willy Katz

minor

Also known as Willy, Poor Willy Katz

A soldier in Claude's company who dies in battle.

Ed Drier

minor

Also known as Ed

A local man from Claude's hometown.

Susie Dawson

minor

Also known as Susie, Dawson

Leonard Dawson's wife.

Mademoiselle Olive

minor

Also known as Mlle Olive, Olive

A young French girl who interacts with the American soldiers.

Captain Barclay Owens

minor

Also known as Owens, Barclay Owens, Captain Owens

A medical officer in Claude's regiment.

Mrs. Voigt

minor

A German-American woman who runs a boarding house in Lincoln.

Troilus Oberlies

minor

Also known as Oberlies

A soldier in Claude's regiment with a classical name.

Susie Grey

minor

Also known as Susie

A young woman from Claude's hometown.

Tom Wested

minor

Also known as Wested

A soldier who serves alongside Claude.

Mr. Weldon

minor

Also known as young Mr. Weldon, Weldon

A young minister who courts Gladys Farmer.

Mrs. Farmer

minor

Gladys Farmer's mother.

Carrie Royce

minor

Also known as Carrie, Caroline Royce

Enid's younger sister.

Jerry

minor

A hired man on the Wheeler farm.

Peachy Millmore

minor

Also known as Miss Peachy Millmore, Miss Millmore

A young woman from Claude's social circle.

Dell Able

minor

Also known as Dell, Able

A soldier in Claude's company.

Silent Irv

minor

Also known as Irv

A quiet, reliable soldier in Claude's regiment.

Gus Yoeder

minor

Also known as August Yoeder, Yoeder, Gus

A German-American neighbor of the Wheelers.

Mrs. Royce

minor

Enid's frail, quiet mother.

Jason Royce

minor

Enid's younger brother.

Edward Chapin

minor

Also known as Edward

Annabelle Chapin's brother, a local young man.

Mademoiselle Claire

minor

Also known as Claire, Mlle Claire

A young French woman encountered by the soldiers.

Nifty Jones

minor

Also known as Jones

A soldier in Claude's company.

Lieutenant Hammond

minor

Also known as Hammond, young Lieutenant Hammond

A young officer in Claude's regiment.

Madame Fleury

minor

A French woman who assists the American soldiers.

Reverend Arthur Weldon

minor

Also known as Arthur Weldon

A minister who marries Claude and Enid.

Lieutenant Bird

minor

Also known as Bird

An officer in Claude's regiment.

Corporal Tannhauser

minor

Also known as Tannhauser

A non-commissioned officer in Claude's company.

Henry

minor

A hired hand on the Wheeler farm.

Bruger

minor

A soldier in Claude's company.

Olive de Courcy

minor

Also known as de Courcy

A French woman of noble background met by the soldiers.

René

minor

A young French boy who helps the American soldiers.

Colonel Maxey

minor

Also known as Maxey

A senior officer commanding Claude's battalion.

Cousin Augusta

minor

Also known as Augusta

A relative of the Wheeler family who visits.

Brewster

minor

Also known as Amos Brewster

A local farmer and neighbor of the Wheelers.

Joe Havel

minor

Also known as Havel, Joe, Mrs. Joe Havel

Ernest Havel's brother, a farmer.

Old Mr. Smith

minor

Also known as old Mr. Smith

An elderly neighbor in the Wheeler community.

Miss Farmer

minor

Gladys Farmer's aunt or older relative.

Mr. Micks

minor

A local merchant in the Wheeler's town.

Colonel James

minor

A senior officer briefly mentioned in the war narrative.

Mrs. Dawson

minor

Leonard Dawson's mother.

Trevor

minor

Also known as Bruce Trevor, The gallant Trevor

A British officer encountered by the Americans in France.

Lieutenant Müller

minor

A German officer captured or encountered by Claude's unit.

Captain Ovens

minor

Also known as Captain Owns

A ship's officer on the voyage to France.