A Man In Full

62 pages • 2 hours read

A Man In Full

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 6

Chapters 7-13

Chapters 14-19

Chapters 20-26

Chapter 27-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Prologue-Chapter 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue Summary: “Cap’m Charlie”

Content Warning: The source material contains references to sexual assault, racism, and torture. Additionally, the source material uses outdated, offensive terms for LGBTQIA people, Jewish people, and other groups of people; these terms are replicated in this guide only in direct quotes of the source material.

Powerfully built Atlanta real estate tycoon Charlie Croker is on a morning horseback hunt at his sprawling quail plantation, Turpmtine, accompanied by his 28-year-old wife, Serena; his close friend, Inman Armholster; Inman’s wife, Ellen; and Inman’s daughter, Elizabeth. Charlie revels in his carefully built muscular physique as well as his enormous plantation, which covers “twenty-nine thousand acres of prime southwest Georgia forest” (4). As a young man, Charlie was a star football player at Georgia Tech University. Though football left Charlie with a perpetually injured right knee and a limp, he takes pleasure in the jersey-bull-like back the sport gave him. Around town, Charlie is known as “Cap’m Charlie,” a moniker he loves. Charlie also feels superior to Inman, because unlike Inman, who comes from wealth, Charlie is a “cracker”—slang for a poor white person—who reinvented himself. Charlie’s father was once a worker at Turpmtine, the plantation he now owns.

Charlie’s sense of well-being is punctured when Inman tries to talk politics with him, mentioning a Black activist called André Fleet. The name unnerves Charlie as he doesn’t want to be reminded of his secret dealings with Fleet. Charlie asks Inman to focus only on the hunt. Inman bets Charlie $100 that he won’t get the first shot of the day. Charlie immediately agrees, though he knows he doesn’t have money to squander. Despite appearances of opulence, Charlie owes his bank, PlannersBanc, half a billion dollars. However, he shrugs his worries about money away. Charlie gets the first two shots of the day, which buoys him instantly. But when he spots Serena and Inman’s 18-year-old Elizabeth huddled together, it reminds him of the enormous age difference between him and his wife.

Chapter 1 Summary: “Chocolate Mecca”

Roger White, a lawyer, is stuck in traffic at Piedmont Avenue near the prestigious Piedmont Driving Club because of the ongoing Freaknik street festival. The college weekend festival features Black students coming together and dancing to hip-hop music. White residents around town consider the festival loud and disruptive, but the truth is that the students at Freaknik cause no more harm than white college students do during Spring Break. Still, Roger doesn’t like the fact that the traffic is delaying him from his appointment with Buck McNutter, the celebrity football coach at Georgia Tech. One part of him also disapproves of the wild nature of the celebration, especially when a beautiful young woman jumps atop a car and begins to dance provocatively. However, when a young Black man moons a balcony of white patrons at the Piedmont Driving Club to the tune of “Chocolate Mecca,” Roger feels thrilled at his fearlessness.

Roger’s nickname is Roger Too White because of his light-skinned appearance and upper-class manner. When Roger reaches Buck’s house, Buck introduces him to Fareek “the Cannon” Fanon, a very popular Black football star at Georgia Tech. Roger is put off by Fareek’s obnoxious manner and showy attire and jewelry. Buck asks Roger to defend Fareek against accusations of rape. Elizabeth Armholster, the daughter of the tycoon Inman Armholster, said Fanon raped her last night at a party. Roger is stunned, and inwardly judges Fanon.

Chapter 2 Summary: “The Saddlebags”

Charlie Croker and his team, including his young chief financial officer, Wismer “Wiz” Stroock, are at the PlannersBanc headquarters in downtown Atlanta for a meeting with the team of Raymond Peepgass, the senior loan officer at the bank. Peepgass’s associate, Harry Zale, known as the “workout artiste” for his skill at recovering loans, puts Charlie on the spot by telling him that the fortunes of his syndicate, Croker Global, are sinking. Wiz suggests that if the bank freezes principal payments for a while, Croker Global will have time to improve its balance sheet. Harry instantly kills the suggestion, leaving Charlie fuming, and instead suggests Charlie sell off some of his assets, the prize of which is Turpmtine.

Peepgass privately notes to Harry that by now the nervous Charlie is sweating so much that the sweat patches under his armpits have joined at the sternum, forming “saddlebags.” Sensing Peepgass’s glee at his humiliation, Croker calls him an “asshole” in front of his team. Peepgass feels deeply insulted.

Chapter 3 Summary: “Turpmtine”

After the meeting, Charlie and Wiz take Charlie’s Gulfstream Five private plane to Turpmtine. Charlie reflects that the bank’s inspection of his luxurious assets has turned them against him. For instance, the G-5 has a custom-designed wooden desktop table, which cost $3.6 million, and a painting of 19th-century enslaver Jim Bowie by the renowned painter N.C. Wyeth. Charlie likes the painting, which shows Bowie on his deathbed, still brandishing a knife at Mexican soldiers who have broken in during the Siege of Alamo. As the plane soars over downtown Atlanta and then Cherokee County, Croker notices many of his own resplendent buildings, including “Croker Concourse,” a 40-story building that is expensive to maintain but yields little profit.

Charlie and Wiz discuss their predicament with PlannersBanc. Wiz suggests that Charlie sell off Turpmtine to buy himself some time. Charlie wants to sell their food business, Croker Global Foods, instead, but Wiz reminds him that the food division brings Charlie more money than all his other businesses combined. Charlie knows Wiz is right but can’t bring himself to part with the quail plantation. Charlie distracts himself by thinking about Gwynette, the flight attendant on the flight. She reminds him of Martha, his first wife, to whom he was married for 29 years. Thoughts of Martha trigger guilt since Charlie left her for the younger, more beautiful Serena. Charlie has three grown children with Martha and an 18-month-old daughter with Serena.

The plane lands at the hangar bordering Turpmtine. As Charlie and his team walk toward the stables, they notice a commotion. The stable hands tell Charlie a snake is spooking the horses. Charlie spots a six-foot-long rattlesnake in a bush. He asks for a sack and seizes the hissing, spitting snake by its neck. He drops the snake in the sack in his outstretched arms and carries it to the Snake House on the premises. As Charlie releases the snake in a terrarium, he feels a burst of energy. He tells Wiz he has a solution to their problems: He will lay off 15% of the food division.

Chapter 4 Summary: “Beige Half Brothers”

Roger White visits Wesley (Wes) Jordan, the mayor of Atlanta and Roger’s fraternity brother from Morehouse, the prestigious Black liberal arts college. Like Roger, Wes is light-skinned. Wes comes from a privileged background but likes to affect what Roger considers a street accent, calling Roger “brother.” Roger notices that Wes’s office has been very recently redone with stunning artifacts from Yorubaland, a cultural region including parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. Roger wants Wes’s help in the Fareek case. However, Wes tells Roger he has to proceed with caution, as Inman Armholster, Elizabeth’s father, is the financial backer of André Fleet, the former-NBA-star-turned-activist who is Wes’s political rival.

Fleet’s pitch is that Atlanta’s Black leadership has been highjacked by the “Morehouse elite,” or light-skinned, wealthy candidates like Wes. Roger wonders why a white tycoon like Armholster would support André. Wesley tells him that the canny Armholster is acting in what is known as “the Atlanta Way” (105). The Atlanta Way is opportunistic: Inman knows the city’s Black vote is key to any election, and he can sense the Black vote is swinging toward the charismatic Fleet.

Chapter 5 Summary: “The Suicidal Freezer Unit”

Croker Global Foods’ warehouse is located in the unfashionable Oakland side of San Francisco’s Bay Area. At 8:45 pm, 23-year-old Conrad Hensley shows up for his night shift at the freezing and packing plant. Conrad is married to his childhood sweetheart, Jill, and they have two children. Although Conrad makes $14 an hour at the plant, he hopes to save enough money to buy his family a condo.

At the plant, Connor meets his mate Kenny, who, as usual, is listening to loud songs with objectionable lyrics. Connor chides Kenny for listening to songs with lyrics such as “peel yo’ cap” (113), which means “cut open a skull,” as they inspire rage and toxic masculinity. Kenny asks Conrad to lighten up. The men begin their shift, which is filled with physical hazards. Not only does the freezing air conditioning and its chemicals cause them to cough continuously, Conrad’s back nearly gives out lifting a frozen 80-pound carton onto a pallet. The worst accident of the night occurs when wagons carrying cartons of frozen produce overturn, and the cartons slide toward Kenny and Conrad. Conrad protects Kenny with his body. The men are bruised but survive.

During “lunch break” at 12:30 am, the assistant night manager visits the plant carrying a manilla folder. The manager tells them that Conrad has been fired as part of a 15% lay-off. Kenny goes into a tirade at the news and asks who the “bright boy” is who decided to fire someone as dedicated as Conrad. Kenny begins to cry. He tells Conrad that this is why he has a nihilistic attitude: The world is a terrible place.

Chapter 6 Summary: “In the Lair of the Lust”

The “bright boy” who ordered Conrad’s firing is Charlie. At his mansion on Blackland Road, Charlie is unable to sleep. Charlie misses his life with Martha, who lives just half a mile away in their former house. Charlie is aware that the only reason he had an affair with Serena was because he thought Martha had started looking too old and heavy. Serena, whom he met when she came to Croker Concourse to give an art seminar as part of her grad school internship, is stunningly slim and beautiful. When Martha discovered his affair with Serena, their marriage ended. Although Charlie was consumed by his desire for Serena at first, that attraction seems to have faded.

Charlie decides to go riding to distract himself from his thoughts. In the process of dressing quietly in the dark, he sets off the burglar alarm. Soon, the alarm and phone calls from the alarm company wake up the household. Serena calls Charlie “gaga.” Charlie feels insulted that the much younger Serena is speaking to him as if he is incapable. Meanwhile, the housekeepers, the nanny, and Charlie and Martha’s youngest son, Wallace (Wally), show up in the master bedroom. A weary Charlie sends them away, abandons his plans of riding, and falls asleep, regretting his life choices.

Prologue-Chapter 6 Analysis

Author Tom Wolfe’s maximalist prose style and commitment to social realism are evident in the novel’s opening chapters. The linear narrative is told from the close third-person perspective of various characters, mainly Charlie, Conrad, Peepgass, Roger, and Martha. Wolfe describes the clothes, possessions, and mannerisms of these characters in great detail, in a style reminiscent of the social-realist novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens and Emile Zola. Characters’ speech, accent, tics, and possessions reveal their characteristics and values. For instance, Charlie’s lavish wealth reflects his greed and pride. Wes Jordan’s recent acquisition of Yoruban arts and crafts shows his political canniness; knowing that he is seen as elitist, Wes displays symbols of Black pride and authenticity. Similarly, Roger’s excessive attention to clothing including his “$2,800 custom suit and $125 shirt” (27), shows that appearances are extremely important to him. Here, Wolfe uses The American Obsession with Wealth and Status as both a theme and a narrative device, characterizing Charlie, Wes, Roger, and others through their material possessions.

This section introduces key features of Wolfe’s literary style, including the use of details, hyperbole, and satire; stretches of dialogue in accents; close attention to human foibles; and long sentences filled with parallel clauses. An example of this style can be seen in the prologue when Charlie revels in Turpmtine:

Ahhhh…the husky aroma of the grass…the resinous air of the pines…the heavy, fleshy odor of all his animals…all thirty-six buildings that stood upon it, plus a mile-long asphalt landing strip…all of it was his, Cap’m Charlie Croker, to do with as he chose, which was: to shoot quail (4).

Charlie’s reverie is filled with hyperbolic happiness, yet the long list of his possessions is satirically juxtaposed with his underwhelming ambition, which is to hunt small birds.

This use of satire, hyperbole, and juxtaposition reveals the hypocrisy of the characters as well as the inequality in American society. While the first few chapters present an exhaustive description of Charlie’s assets, including the gleaming Croker Concourse building in Cherokee County, Conrad’s world in Chapter 5 acts as a sharp corrective to Charlie’s excess. Charlie’s wealth is juxtaposed against Conrad’s poverty, where the young man jeopardizes his health every night to make $14 an hour. Wealthy people like Charlie seek thrills by using a private jet to visit an office in the same city, but for those like Conrad, working in the “suicidal freezer unit,” everyday life itself is filled with unwanted thrills and physical danger. The scene in which Conrad and Kenny are nearly killed by a cascade of sliding produce linguistically mirrors Charlie’s earlier hyperbolic reflections on Turpmtine, to different effect: “A massive gush of product hit the slick concrete of the aisle. A huge sack split open…pinto beans, streaming in every direction…a loaded pallet jack came speeding up the aisle from behind” (126). Conrad and Kelly nearly drown in the slush of pinto beans, the red color of the produce symbolizing the blood of the labor class. Conrad and Charlie’s link illustrates The Ripple Effect of Race and Class Inequalities, as Charlie’s blasé attitude toward his decision to lay off 15% of his employees belies the extent to which that layoff destabilizes working-class people like Conrad.

Wolfe also includes colloquialisms, literary and cultural allusions, and songs to enliven the polyphonic world of the novel while deepening the class and racial divides between characters. Characters often use colloquial terms, such as “cracker,”, “Deb,” and “Okie” to describe themselves or each other. As the frequent use of these terms, each describing a type, show, characters in the novel are extremely concerned with status and class. The old football song about himself that Charlie loves—“Charlie Croker was a man in full / He had a back like a Jersey bull” (6)—is loosely inspired by an old southern folk song, which goes, “Uncle Bud was a man in full.” The song and the allusion to Bowie show Charlie is firmly rooted in white Southern conservative values. Jim Bowie is a historical figure known for his role in the Texas Revolution as well as in furthering the slave trade. Characters use colloquialisms and cultural allusions to demonstrate their in-group status, furthering the novel’s depiction of The American Obsession with Wealth and Status.

As characters navigate their relationship to wealth and status, so too do they demonstrate an obsession with The True Meaning of Masculinity. While characters like Charlie, Peepgass, and Roger are shown as preoccupied with money, appearances, and status, none of them is positioned as a model of ideal masculinity. Charlie thinks being a man is acting on animal desires and letting his inner animal loose, which is why he feels “almost whole again” when he showily wrestles with a poisonous snake (89). Other characters, like Kenny, think manhood is linked with violence, coolness, and nihilism. It is only Conrad who suggests that masculinity is about none of these values but rather about taking the right action and sticking to one’s principles. In contrast with the excesses and violence valued by the novel’s other male characters, Conrad’s principled attitude positions him as the novel’s moral center.

As these chapters show, the novel satirizes racial biases and wealth disparities even as it perpetuates harmful stereotypes about Black and working-class people. For instance, Wolfe draws on stereotypes to portray the manner of speech of some Black characters, such as when Wes greets Roger with: “Ain’t we da buttas, baby” (95), “the buttas” meaning “the butters,” or smooth people. Similarly, the Filipina nanny in Chapter 5 is given lines like, “Oh no Mister. She don’t wake up” (149). Idiomatic and colloquial speech is not reserved for characters of color in the novel. Charlie’s exaggerated Southern drawl is heavily satirized: “Awright y’all … c’mon ov’ere” (87). While Wes’s “mock Authentic Black mode” is an object of satire (91), that satire is limited by the author’s whiteness. Further, several Black characters who are central to the plot, like Fareek and André, are not given point-of-view narration.

Despite this limited, often stereotypical portrayal of minority characters, the novel acknowledges that not all Black experiences are the same, highlighting how race, class, and gender interact to shape social hierarchies. In the novel, wealthy Black men like Roger and Wes have more societal power than poor Black people. Roger demonstrates his own class biases when, for instance, he thinks of the young woman dancing on the car’s hood as a “Black Deb,” the light-skinned college-educated daughter of a Black professional couple, and judges her provocative dancing as unseemly for a woman of her class. Roger’s judgments reveal that class and gender divides intersect with race to further complicate social hierarchies, creating layers of privilege and oppression that operate in different ways across the novel.

Similarly, the novel’s depiction of young women is often highly sexualized, satirizing its male protagonists’ obsession with youth and beauty while highlighting the novel’s own limitations in presenting a nuanced portrayal of female characters. Charlie notes that Elizabeth is a “sexy little number” (5) whose riding pants hug “the declivities of her loins fore and aft” (5), and Serena is described similarly. Charlie’s sexualization of his friend’s daughter is in part satirical, emphasizing his own shortcomings. However, characters like Serena and Elizabeth are not given a point-of-view narration, so their portrayal is always mediated through the male gaze, rendering their depiction one-dimensional. Additionally, even though the text is set in the late 20th century, women are entirely absent as lawyers, judges, activists, doctors, and corporate executives. Instead, women are often shown in service-industry roles or other stereotypically feminine jobs, such as flight attendants, executive assistants, and so on. The text concerns itself chiefly with what it means to be a man, largely ignoring women’s experience.