# John Andros — Short Fiction character guide

> John Andros in Short Fiction by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** John

**First appearance:** 0182-jacob-s-ladder

## Snapshot

A successful businessman whose careful life is quietly undone by a married woman he meets by accident on the water.

## Who they are

John Andros moves through the world as a man who has gotten what he wanted, until a moonlit evening and a stranger's confession make him realize how much he still wants what he cannot have. The woman in the rowboat is married, and the husband's voice floating up from the deck turns an idle hour into a reckoning. His story is about the cost of a life spent getting everything right except the one thing that mattered.

## In the story

### [I](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_16_se/chapters/i)

Ardita's uncle, a gray-haired man in a white-flannel suit, who tries to persuade her to go ashore and forbids her marriage to a libertine.

### [The Baby Party](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_16_se/chapters/the-baby-party)

Father of Ede, arrives home from work to find his wife in a heated argument at the baby party.

### [V](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_16_se/chapters/v)

Reveals that the spectacle was partly a business deal, handles international cables, and proposes marriage to Rags.

### [Chapter II](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_16_se/chapters/ii)

The narrator, referred to as Eddie, is Ellen's oldest friend who tries to protect her from the mysterious man and her own dangerous choices.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_16_se/characters/john_andros
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_16_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_16_se/characters