# Patrick Sullivan — The Autobiography of an Idea character guide

> Patrick Sullivan in The Autobiography of an Idea by Louis H. Sullivan.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Patrick, Sullivan

**First appearance:** 0000-i-the-child

## Snapshot

Louis's father, a musician and dancing master with artistic leanings and nondescript notions, who seeks out orators rather than creeds and wants to be proud of an educated son.

## Who they are

Patrick is drawn to painting, orchestras, and above all to a thinker and orator, attending Theodore Parker's sermons not for doctrine but for the eloquence itself. He is a proud man who spends good money on his son's education and expects that investment to be honored, a pressure Julia relays bluntly to Louis. His restless, aesthetic, vaguely formed character sets the family somewhat 'without the pale' and gives Louis both a model of artistic longing and a warning about drifting without shape.

## In the story

### [I: The Child](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_autobiography_of_an_idea_se/chapters/i-the-child)

The child's father, described as Irish and indifferent to the child's move to the grandparents' farm.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_autobiography_of_an_idea_se/characters/patrick_sullivan
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_autobiography_of_an_idea_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_autobiography_of_an_idea_se/characters