Old Man Character Analysis

Old Man is what the narrator and his brothers call one of their neighbors whose garden they raid when Paps is missing and Ma is in a depressive state and therefore unable to care for them. As they eat and trample his vegetables, Old Man watches them from his porch, calling them animals and quoting a Bible passage about insatiable locusts. Intrigued by the old man, the brothers sit with him on his porch, and he shows them how to stop mosquito bites from itching. When he goes inside to make them a salad, though, Joel and Manny start fighting, and when he comes out and sees them tearing at each other, he calls them animals again and tells them to leave. Although he doesn’t play a large role in the novella, he comes to stand for the kind of adult care the boys are missing out on, since he offers to feed them despite the fact that they’ve only brought trouble to his garden. However, that they end up driving him to banish them before actually eating his food indicates that the wild and ultra-macho ways they’ve learned from Paps will ultimately do them a disservice in life.