American Pastoral characters

Also known as Skip

Appears from the start

A novelist and former classmate of Seymour Levov who attends a high-school reunion and tries to reconstruct the hidden tragedy behind the life of the man everyone once admired. His imagined account frames most of the novel.

Also known as The Swede

Appears from the start

Seymour Irving Levov, a tall, fair-haired Jewish athlete idolized at his Newark high school during the Second World War. He inherits his family's glove business and seems to achieve an effortless American success that fascinates Nathan Zuckerman.

Appears from the start

The Swede's younger brother, a blunt and successful surgeon whose fierce judgments contrast with Seymour's patience and restraint. Years after their school days, he gives Zuckerman the first indication that his brother's admired life ended in disaster.

First appears in chapter 2

The Swede's forceful father, founder of the Newark glove business and a demanding guardian of family and craft. Proud of what he built, he questions his son's choices while remaining deeply invested in Seymour's prosperity.

Also known as Miss New Jersey

First appears in chapter 2

Seymour's wife, an Irish Catholic former beauty queen from a working family. Capable and ambitious, she creates a cattle farm at their old stone house in rural Old Rimrock and shares the outwardly ideal life he has pursued.

Also known as Merry

First appears in chapter 3

Seymour and Dawn's only child, an intense girl whose severe stutter causes her anguish. As a young teenager she becomes passionately absorbed in opposition to the Vietnam War, bewildering parents who have tried to give her security and affection.

First appears in chapter 4

A young woman who approaches the Swede after Merry disappears, claiming to serve as an intermediary with the underground. Her taunting demands and uncertain connection to Merry leave him unable to decide how much she knows or whom she represents.

First appears in chapter 5

Merry's therapist, consulted by the Levovs during their daughter's troubled adolescence. Calm and professionally reassuring, she becomes a source of counsel to the family after the bombing.

First appears in chapter 7

The Levovs' cultivated neighbor in Old Rimrock, descended from a family prominent in the area's history. An architect and preservationist, he represents the established rural world into which Seymour has tried to assimilate.

Also known as Marcia

First appears in chapter 8

An academic and family friend whose radical politics and combative conversation repeatedly provoke Lou Levov. She treats the country's upheavals as material for argument, even as the Levovs experience them as a private catastrophe.

First appears in chapter 9

William Orcutt's wife, a fragile and erratic member of the Levovs' social circle. Her behavior during a tense family dinner turns the gathering's concealed hostilities into physical chaos.