Reverend James J. Lasher Character Analysis

James Lasher is a reverend who lives in Homestead (on the other side of the river from where Paul lives). Unlike most of the people in Homestead, he went to college. In fact, he earned a master’s degree in anthropology, but because the country is so focused on production and money, there’s very little anthropological work to do, so Lasher serves as a chaplain in the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps. Paul and Finnerty meet Lasher at a bar one night, buying him drinks and listening to him talk about his vision of the future. The divide between the educated upper class and the disenfranchised working class, he says, is sure to lead to conflict. By replacing manual laborers with machines, he argues, the country has stripped many of its citizens of their sense of dignity, leaving them with little self-worth and setting society up for a class war. By articulating these ideas, Lasher becomes a moral compass of sorts in the novel, encouraging Finnerty (and, later, Paul) to open his eyes to the intense class division in society. Lasher and Finnerty end up working together to establish a group of anti-automation revolutionaries called the Ghost Shirt Society, which Paul soon helps lead. The revolution overtakes Ilium but fails to mount a country-wide victory. Still, Lasher is happy simply because he stood up against injustice, explaining to the others that, because he’s a reverend, the only thing that matters to him is that they at least tried to take a stand against immorality.