Lullaby (novel) - Character and Setting

Character and Setting

Carl Streator is the protagonist of Lullaby. Over the course of the novel, a few important aspects of his character are revealed that play a part in his narration style and his character. Firstly, he imparts to us at the beginning of Chapter 2 that he is a journalist. Because the novel is set up as a frame story, the majority of Lullaby is written as a retelling by Streator himself. This is apparent throughout the novel as he describes the people and events around him. He will often recount a person’s appearance in terms of 'the details': "The details of Nash are, he’s a big guy in a white uniform. He wears high-top white track shoes and gathers his hair into a little palm tree at the crown of his head" (p. 25).

His past, which we know little about until the end, explains a good portion of his character. He begins to notice the book Poems and Rhymes From Around the World at each scene of infant death where he has been assigned to report. Streator soon makes the connection and begins a quest to rid every library and home of the culling song, which at first seems to be a philosophical journey to do what is ultimately right. But, we soon learn that Streator is motivated by a dark past that has changed him into the cynical, dark reporter he is today. The death of his wife and child, a direct result of the reading of the culling song, had distanced him from reality for nearly twenty years. He makes no direct comment about this history until Chapter 29, wherein he talks about his unknowing postmortem sexual intercourse with his wife Gina and the perfect quiet of his baby Katrin,

That was my last really good day. It wasn’t until I came home from work that I knew the truth… Gina was still lying in the same position… Katrin was still quiet.

I tell him where I’m living. I tell him the name I use now. I tell him where I work. I tell him I know how it looks, with Gina and Katrin dead, but I didn’t do it. I just ran…I say, I don’t know what to do. I say, but it’s all going to be okay.

In the end, he seems content in his mission alongside the police sergeant (aka Helen) to chase after the story.

The setting of Lullaby is constantly changing. In both the present tense narration and the story he is reflecting on, Streator is constantly moving in pursuit of something. He works in a big city atmosphere and lives in an apartment surrounded by other tenants who become symbolic of everything Streator hates. Soon after he meets Helen, they start their cross-country mission. Most of the towns they end up in are small, nowhere places that seem to represent the emptiness that the culling song creates in people lives. Similarly, the trucker stops that Streator and Helen drive through in their present day adventure are representative of how the stories that they are chasing are temporary. The idea that a story is always told ‘after the fact’ seems to hint at a bigger picture: humans are a victim of their past.