Gregor Kennedy Character Analysis

Gregor is Ed’s father, who passes away six months before the beginning of the events of the novel. He is a furniture salesman who dies of liver failure alone in his own moving van. Ed describes his father as kind and gentle but also lazy and alcoholic. While he is alive, Beverly, his wife, yells at him constantly for being drunk and for not providing a better life for their family. Gregor serves as an example of an individual who died without a purpose in life and without living up to his full potential, an example which Ed wants to avoid. At the end of the novel, the man with the cards reveals that he orchestrated Gregor’s death as part of his plan to control Ed’s life.