Characters
- Mr McIlvaine: first-person narrator
- Martin Pemberton: Freelance journalist, who writes scathing reviews and is at odds with his father
- Augustus Pemberton: gained wealth from the slave trade and the production of low grade war goods during the American Civil War
- Harry Wheelwright: the only friend of Martin Pemberton. McIlvaine doesn't like him
- Emily Tisdale: fiancée and schoolfriend of Martin
- Revd. Charles Grimshaw: in the circle of Augustus Pemberton
- Edmund Donne: One of the few policemen in New York who is not corrupt.
- Dr. Sartorius: Doctor with a Faust-like thirst for knowledge . He worked in military hospitals during the Civil War. In this role he appears in E.L. Doctorow's later novel, The March. McIlvaine gives the origin of his name, the Latin word for dressmaker.
Read more about this topic: The Waterworks
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“The major men
That is different. They are characters beyond
Reality, composed thereof. They are
The fictive man created out of men.
They are men but artificial men.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“There are as many characters in men
As there are shapes in nature.”
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)
“When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.”
—Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936)