So Long, See You Tomorrow

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1980

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-9

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Character Analysis

The Narrator

The narrator is a lightly fictionalized representation of author William Maxwell. The fact that he’s never named contributes to the association of character and writer. Physical and personality descriptions also align. As a boy, the narrator is thin, quiet, and studious. He prefers the company of a book over rambunctious schoolmates. He is an emotional and sensitive child who is keenly alert to his father’s opinions of him. He is teased and bullied by older boys at school but is more hurt by a seemingly friendly boy who calls him a “sissy” under his breath.

The easy friendship the narrator forms with Cletus is much different than his relationships with other children. Cletus likes to play games the narrator suggests and doesn’t tease him for saying things other boys would laugh at. Though he doesn’t know it at the time, both boys have experienced loss and family disruptions. They meet daily in the scaffolding of an unfinished home, a symbol of families in transition.

As a grown man, the narrator spends time in therapy revisiting the traumatic experience of his mother’s early death, which still upsets him to the point of tears, underscoring Family Instability and Its Effect on Children, which can be profound and enduring. He also holds onto the memory of Cletus. He still feels pangs of guilt when he remembers passing Cletus in the hallway after his father’s death and saying nothing. He is an old man, but he maintains the feelings of the sensitive child he once was. By imagining and writing Cletus’s story, the narrator hopes he can make up for the failure to acknowledge his friend many years before.

Cletus Smith

Unlike the narrator, Cletus is a farm boy with daily responsibilities. His dog Trixie waits for him by the mailbox every day after school and long after the boy has moved away. Their faithful relationship signals the sincerity, youthfulness, and goodness of the boy. The narrator makes a point of identifying Cletus with Trixie: She is the first invention in his imagination of Cletus’s life. The dog’s observations in Chapter 8 are a stand-in for Cletus’s awareness.

Cletus is quiet and observant. During his mother’s affair with Lloyd, Cletus understands what is happening more than the adults realize. Lloyd catches Cletus looking suspiciously at him and Fern, long before Clarence suspects anything. At the barbershop, Cletus blushes when the barber asks Clarence about his friendship with Lloyd. Then, in a major story point, Cletus shocks his father with his perceptive assessment of his mother’s willful nature. Clarence responds by striking his son. He later takes to beating the dog, another parallel between Cletus and the boy.

Part of what moves the narrator about his friend’s story is that Cletus does not deserve what happens to him. Adult passions and transgressions bring life-altering consequences to innocent children who don’t fully comprehend what is transpiring.

Clarence Smith

Clarence is a tenant farmer in a subordinate relationship with the landowner he works for. He is taciturn and unobservant. He notices that his wife hasn’t washed his shirt before church but doesn’t notice her obvious sadness after the service. He is prone to violent episodes toward his wife during which he temporarily passes out. During the divorce proceedings, a dozen people testify as witnesses to his abusive behavior. Years before, Fern’s surrogate father Tom Evans told her he’d witnessed Clarence beating a horse and objected to their marriage because of the incident. After the divorce, he repeatedly whips and beats the family dog.

On the other hand, he is a loyal friend to his neighbor Lloyd. They are as close as brothers and even look alike in a newspaper photo. They help each other with harvests, chores, and repairs. Clarence gladly spends all night tending to Lloyd’s sick calf out of a spirit of neighborly reciprocity.

Clarence is strongly characterized by his silence, which is key to the story’s depiction of Father-Son Communication. The narrator’s imagination of Clarence may partially derive from his relationship with his own uncommunicative father. Clarence favors avoidance over confrontation with Lloyd. When the barber asks about their friendship, Clarence says nothing. Cletus’s only visit with him after moving to town is an afternoon of emotionally tortured silence. Clarence’s uncharacteristic weeping and compulsive talking in the immediate aftermath of the divorce embarrasses his acquaintances, who shun him. The culture of silence influences the younger generation. The men who cross the street to avoid Clarence set the stage for the narrator to pass Cletus in the school corridors without speaking.

Lloyd Wilson

Lloyd is a tenant farmer, and his landowner Mrs. Stroud is physically attracted to him. He’s good-looking with a wandering eye. He has excess sexual energy and provokes the jealousy of his wife Marie. He is self-aware enough to admit that he’s a stranger to himself. He feels shame and self-loathing because he can’t control his adulterous desires for his best friend’s wife.

Prior to the affair, he is a good friend to Clarence. He is also a warm father figure for Cletus. The boy feels protected and understood when Lloyd puts his hand on his shoulder. Lloyd tries to maintain friendly relations with Cletus after Marie leaves him, but the boy is not deceived.

During the affair, Lloyd knows that what he is doing is wrong. He is determined to keep going, though, because he is happy for the first time in his life. He prioritizes love and passion over morality and stability. He knows from the first kiss with Fern that the love affair is doomed, but he proceeds anyway. His intuition and self-knowledge are not enough to curb his behavior.

Lloyd and Clarence are foils, linked figures whose features are illuminated by being paired and contrasted. They are both complex, dynamic characters. The rupture in their relationship leads to violent deaths out of proportion with their prior friendship. Maxwell alludes to Cain and Abel. Clarence and Lloyd are as close as brothers, but their bond is broken by anger and envy, leading to murder and a generational curse.

Fern Smith

Fern, Clarence’s wife, is another complex character. Like the narrator, her mother died when she was a child. As a young woman, she had an affair with a married man in defiance of her surrogate father Tom Evans, who loved her like a daughter. She married Clarence partially to spite Tom, who strongly objected. Before their divorce, she tells Clarence she was in love with someone else when they met, a reference to the married man. Clarence knew nothing about it.

When she first moves to the farm, Lloyd perceives her disappointment. She wants more from life and she has a romantic view of love, which matches Lloyd’s. During the affair, she impresses him with her talent for inventing excuses to sneak away. She indulges in romantic gestures like leaving secret notes in his pockets. When they are apart after her divorce, she writes long love letters to Lloyd. She knows that people are judging her but, like Lloyd, she prioritizes love and happiness over social approval.

The strongest characterization of Fern comes from Cletus. After overhearing her threats to move out and take the kids, Cletus asks his father not to argue with her about it. When Clarence asks him why not, he says that if his father tells her she can’t do something, then she is sure to do it. Unbeknownst to Cletus, this insight explains why she married Clarence in the first place.

Clarence sees her divorce suit against him as deeply unjust. After all, she cheated on him with his best friend. Yet he is an abusive husband. Her unheeded fears about Clarence’s violent potential are based on traumatic past experiences and prove justified.