John Ford Character Analysis

John Ford is an elderly white South African man, a retired former schoolteacher and headmaster, and the long-term adulterous lover of Patricia Wiley. They met and experienced an immediate attraction when Patricia brought Looksmart, a highly intelligent Black boy growing up on her farm, to interview with John in preparation for transferring to John’s school. Shortly afterward, they began their affair and never really ended it, though they stopped having sex about 15 years in. Good-looking, well-read, and ostentatiously religious, John is also racist, hypocritical, and emotionally withholding. He hit and humiliated Looksmart during Looksmart’s schoolyears to “put him in his place.” He mocks Patricia’s husband Richard Wiley to Patricia while keeping the topic of his own wife, who died during their affair, off-limits between them. When Patricia is preparing to move away, he gives her a letter but tells her not to open it until she’s reached her destination—hiding from her that he’s dying of cancer and plans to die by suicide. The morning Patricia intends to move, John’s former secretary Mrs. Bell calls and tells Patricia that the police want to talk to her because John mentioned her in his suicide note. After answering the police’s questions and viewing the body, Patricia reads John’s letter—and ends up finding its false sentimentality and evasiveness infuriating. It may be John’s avoidance of the truth, even in death, that motivates Patricia to demand the truth about Grace’s death from Beauty one final time.