# When God Laughs — Character guide

> Key figures in When God Laughs by Jack London.

- [Tom King](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/tom_king.md): A battered old prizefighter, twice crowned and now broke, who steps into the ring one more time because the rent and the butcher will not wait.
- [Johnny Sheehan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/johnny_sheehan.md): A young, hungry boxer with fresh legs and a rising name, sent across the water to take the crown off an aging champion's head.
- [Matthew Turner](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/matt_turner.md): A hard-bitten sailor whose steady hands and level head keep the Mary Rogers clawing west around the Horn while his captain rages at God.
- [George Dorety](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/george_dorety.md): A solitary passenger aboard the Mary Rogers, watching a captain bargain with the Almighty over every mile of westing won.
- [Jim](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/jim.md): A quiet, uneasy partner in a rough Pacific venture, whose flickering eyes betray thoughts he would rather Matt never read.
- [Ah Cho](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/ah_cho.md): A Chinese laborer swept into a colonial courtroom, where the machinery of another man's justice grinds fine and slow around him.
- [Sandel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/sandel.md): Sandel steps into the fight as the fresher, faster man, his body a machine tuned for the ring and his confidence unbruised by failure. Against him stands Tom King, broke and fighting for his family's next meal, and the m
- [Alexander Burrell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/alexander_burrell.md): Burrell moves through the story as a man of means whose private life has become a public problem, the kind of scandal that money cannot quietly bury. His relationship with Loretta places him at the center of a triangle t
- [Loretta](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/loretta.md): Loretta comes to Ned in the big living-room with wet lashes and trembling lips, confessing she is wicked and ashamed, yet unable to name what she has done. She is caught between Billy, who wants to marry her, and Ned, wh
- [Yi Chin Ho](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/yi_chin_ho.md): Yi Chin Ho sits in prison awaiting the chopping-block, a man the jailer calls a wag for his irrepressible humor even on the edge of death. He slips out at night to the Governor with a scheme: a nose, drawn on paper, seal
- [Dan Cullen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/dan_cullen.md): Big Dan Cullen commands a vessel in the Pacific, a man whose authority rests on physical presence and the habits of a life spent at sea. He is the kind of captain who believes the ocean can be mastered by nerve and seama
- [The Boy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/the_boy.md): A young sailor on a perilous voyage.
- [Monte Carquinez](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/monte_carquinez.md): Carquinez is the narrator's dear friend and comrade, a man who only becomes fully himself when wine sings in his blood and the high pitch returns to his thought. He calls himself Aztec, Inca, Spaniard, and looks it, with
- [Stowsher Bill](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/stowsher_bill.md): Stowsher Bill belongs to the hard-bitten company of sailors and drifters whose lives Jack London knew firsthand, a man whose nickname carries the freight of every blow the sea and the world have dealt him. His dark past 
- [Ned Bashford](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/ned_bashford.md): Ned Bashford moves through the social world of the story as a man of travel and worldly confidence, the kind of Greek who has recovered from long sickness and thinks he understands women. When Loretta sobs against his sh
- [Cruchot](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/cruchot.md): A French sailor with a violent temper.
- [Karl Schemmer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/karl_schemmer.md): A German sailor on a troubled ship.
- [John Gorman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/john_gorman.md): A sailor involved in a mutiny.
- [Mary Rogers](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/mary_rogers.md): A ship that becomes the center of a survival story.
- [Doctor Bicknell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/doctor_bicknell.md): Doctor Bicknell presides over a busy hospital ward where the suffering arrive on stretchers and the day's work is measured in lives saved or lost. His exchange with the patient called Semper Idem reveals a man whose prof
- [Pak Chung Chang](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/pak_chung_chang.md): A Chinese prisoner in the Chinago story.
- [Bloody Vange](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/bloody_vange.md): A notorious criminal and escapee.
- [Mrs. Hemingway](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/mrs_hemingway.md): A woman aboard a ship with her husband Jack.
- [Youth](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/youth.md): A personification of youth in a philosophical tale.
- [Love](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/love.md): A personification of love in a philosophical tale.
- [Daisy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters/daisy.md): A woman in a story about love and loss.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_god_laughs_se/characters