# Buck Fanshaw — Roughing It character guide

> Buck Fanshaw in Roughing It by Mark Twain.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Buck

**First appearance:** 0001-roughing-it

## Snapshot

A popular, generous Virginia City miner whose death and funeral become a comic and heartfelt landmark of frontier society.

## Who they are

Buck is the beloved roughneck whose generosity and good humor made him a pillar of the mining camp, and whose funeral draws the whole community. His significance lies less in his own actions than in the elaborate, mismatched ceremony his friends arrange for him, exposing the collision of frontier manners and formal religion. He matters because his death gives the book its warmest portrait of camaraderie and its sharpest satire of how the West buries its own.

## Relationships

### [The Narrator](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/characters/narrator)

_social_

Buck Fanshaw is a rough but good-hearted miner whose funeral becomes a memorable, humorous episode for the Narrator.

### [The Narrator](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/characters/narrator)

_social_

Buck Fanshaw is a rough but good-hearted miner whose funeral becomes a memorable, humorous episode for the Narrator.

## In the story

### [XLVII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/chapters/xlvii)

A representative citizen who died by suicide in a delirium of typhoid fever; his funeral is the central event of the chapter.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/characters/buck_fanshaw
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/roughing_it_se/characters