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Ace Merrill
Dennis was Gordie’s older brother. He was born as a miracle child after Mom experienced a series of miscarriages. He was 10 years older than Gordie, and Mom and Dad always paid him much more attention and gave him much more affection than they did to Gordie. Dennis often ignored his baby brother, but when he did spend time with Gordie, Gordie cherished it. As a teenager, he was popular in Castle Rock for his athletic ability. He enlisted in the Army and died in a tragic car accident during basic training.
Dennis Lechance Quotes in The Body
The The Body quotes below are all either spoken by Dennis Lechance or refer to Dennis Lechance . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2
Quotes
I cried when I heard, and I cried more at the funeral, and I couldn’t believe that Dennis was gone, that anyone that used to knuckle my head or scare me with a rubber spider until I cried or give me a kiss when I fell down and scraped both my knees bloody […] that a person who had touched me could be dead. It hurt me and it scared me that he could be dead…but it seemed to have taken all the heart out of my parents. For me, Dennis was hardly more than an acquaintance. He was ten years older than me if you can dig it, and he had his own friends and classmates. We ate at the same table for a lot of years, and sometimes he was my friend and sometimes my tormentor, but mostly he was, you know, just a guy.
Related Characters:
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Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6
Quotes
This business about being ignored: I could never really pin it down until I did a book report in high school on this novel called The Invisible Man. When I agreed […] I thought it was going to be the science fiction story […] When I found out this was a different story I tried to give the book back but Miss Hardy wouldn’t let me off the hook. I ended up being real glad. This Invisible Man is about a Negro. Nobody ever notices him at all unless he fucks up. People look right through him. When he talks, nobody answers. He’s like a black ghost. Once I got into it, I ate that book up like it was a John D. MacDonald, because that cat Ralph Ellison was writing about me.
Chapter 8
Quotes
No, it’s not a very good story—its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to his own […] But it was the first time I had ever really used the place I knew and the things I felt in a piece of fiction, and there was a kind of dreadful exhilaration in seeing things that had troubled me for years come out in a new form, a form over which I had imposed control. It had been years since that childhood idea of Denny being in the closet of his spookily preserved room had occurred to me; I would have honestly believed I had forgotten it. Yet there it is in “Stud City,” only slightly changed…but controlled.
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Dennis Lechance Quotes in The Body
The The Body quotes below are all either spoken by Dennis Lechance or refer to Dennis Lechance . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2
Quotes
I cried when I heard, and I cried more at the funeral, and I couldn’t believe that Dennis was gone, that anyone that used to knuckle my head or scare me with a rubber spider until I cried or give me a kiss when I fell down and scraped both my knees bloody […] that a person who had touched me could be dead. It hurt me and it scared me that he could be dead…but it seemed to have taken all the heart out of my parents. For me, Dennis was hardly more than an acquaintance. He was ten years older than me if you can dig it, and he had his own friends and classmates. We ate at the same table for a lot of years, and sometimes he was my friend and sometimes my tormentor, but mostly he was, you know, just a guy.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6
Quotes
This business about being ignored: I could never really pin it down until I did a book report in high school on this novel called The Invisible Man. When I agreed […] I thought it was going to be the science fiction story […] When I found out this was a different story I tried to give the book back but Miss Hardy wouldn’t let me off the hook. I ended up being real glad. This Invisible Man is about a Negro. Nobody ever notices him at all unless he fucks up. People look right through him. When he talks, nobody answers. He’s like a black ghost. Once I got into it, I ate that book up like it was a John D. MacDonald, because that cat Ralph Ellison was writing about me.
Chapter 8
Quotes
No, it’s not a very good story—its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to his own […] But it was the first time I had ever really used the place I knew and the things I felt in a piece of fiction, and there was a kind of dreadful exhilaration in seeing things that had troubled me for years come out in a new form, a form over which I had imposed control. It had been years since that childhood idea of Denny being in the closet of his spookily preserved room had occurred to me; I would have honestly believed I had forgotten it. Yet there it is in “Stud City,” only slightly changed…but controlled.
