Big Mouth & Ugly Girl

The text’s other main protagonist, Matt Donaghy is a “tall, lanky, whippet-lean boy who blushed easily” (6). He is 16 years old and a junior at Rocky River High School. He is a budding playwright and a natural performer: “Matt Donaghy had something of a reputation at Rocky River for being both brainy and a comic character, but secretly he was a perfectionist, too” (4). It is Matt’s facility with words, and his overuse of them, that inspires his self-imposed moniker Big Mouth, an identity on display in his joke that he would blow up the school.

Matt is a good student, receiving steady A-minuses and As in English. He writes for the school paper and is vice president of the junior class. The victim of accusations of an attempted school bombing and the subsequent social fallout that comes with such an accusation, Matt’s academic success and popularity both suffer, with Matt taking a steep decline into misfit status over the book, leading to an attempted suicide. This is also the event that brings about his relationship with Ursula Riggs, his most important relationship in the story. Despite their many similarities, including their troubles at home, the two serve as foils of each other. For example, Matt is often overly emotional, while Ursula is more curt and pragmatic. Such traits complement each other and contribute to a strong, balanced relationship.

Trevor Cassity is one of two antagonists in the text, the other antagonistic force being the Brewer family, namely the Brewer twins and their father, Reverend Brewer. Cassity is a senior, a “football player, a popular, aggressive guy” (25) whose father works for Ursula’s father. Cassity is also a bully, the ringleader of the physical assault on Matt and the kidnapping of Pumpkin. Though Matt suspects Cassity of kidnapping Pumpkin, it is Ursula who leads the confrontation of this young man and ensures Pumpkin’s safe return. In this final confrontation with this bully, Oates takes care to mention that Cassity, haven just woken up and being confronted on his doorstep, “wasn’t looking very cool” (233). As with the Brewers, the text stresses that even this bully is nothing more than a child, even though his offences against Matt are quite serious. This supports the novel’s theme about the fallibility of adults and the ways a parent’s choices and behavior influence their children.