Chances Are . . .

A round, dynamic protagonist, Teddy is an intellectual and editor whose life is a constant negotiation with physical and psychological fragility. His character is shaped by a series of traumas, from childhood sports injuries to the emotional distance of his academic parents, which culminate in recurring mental health crises that he calls “spells.” When he is a teenager, his life is drastically changed by a basketball injury at the hands of a bullying teammate, and the early trauma of this moment is echoed in his disastrous fall at Rockers during the later timeline. Teddy’s persistent vulnerability informs his cautious, monastic existence and his aversion to confrontation: traits that stand in contrast to the two different versions of traditional masculinity that his friends Mickey and Lincoln represent. Unlike his friends, Teddy seeks refuge in the intellect, becoming a “generalist” who takes courses across numerous disciplines and later finds a niche as an editor who excels at fixing the flawed work of others. This role as a diagnostician allows him a sense of control and purpose, but it also reinforces his tendency to remain an observer of life rather than becoming actively involved in the events around him.

Teddy’s primary internal conflict revolves around his deep-seated fear of intimacy and his profound loneliness. He keeps the world, including his closest friends, at arm’s length, guarding secrets that he allows to define and isolate him. His most significant secret is the truth of his last day with Jacy, when she confided her doubts about her wedding and he, in turn, revealed the erectile dysfunction that resulted from his spinal injury. This confession and the perceived disappointment that it caused Jacy have both haunted him for decades, becoming a cornerstone of his misguided self-perception as a man who is incapable of having a complete, loving relationship. His interactions with his colleague Theresa, a woman to whom he is clearly attracted, further highlight this conflict, for despite their years of friendship, he remains unable to progress to a true romance, and he ultimately chooses the safety of maintaining his emotional distance. His journey is therefore a quiet, internal struggle to overcome the “habit of a lifetime” (138) and risk making new emotional connections.

Teddy undergoes a significant transformation by the novel’s end when he decides to renovate the Chilmark house. In attending the reunion on Martha’s Vineyard, a place that holds the source of his deepest trauma, he must confront his past directly. His conversations with Lincoln about their shared history, his witnessing of Mickey’s complicated life, and his ultimate confession to Theresa about his past with Jacy all serve to break down his carefully constructed defenses. By choosing to stay on the island and repair the Chilmark house, Teddy decides to embrace a future of physical labor and connection rather than morose woolgathering, and his new direction is exemplified by his offer to mentor Delia. He essentially turns his talents for “repairing what’s broken” (296) toward a hands-on commitment to another person, rather than limiting his efforts to detached intellectual exercises. His new goal shows that he is finally ready to build a life that does not depend on diagnosing the flaws in the lives of others.

Of the three friends, Mickey initially appears to be the most straightforward, as he embodies a traditional, working-class masculinity that is defined by his physical strength, stoicism, and uncomplicated worldview. His identity is firmly rooted in his West Haven upbringing, his love for rock-and-roll music, and his loyalty to his family. Unlike the ambitious Lincoln or the intellectual Teddy, Mickey rejects the performance of class mobility, and even as a college student, he famously prefers to remain a “kitchen slave” (4) rather than catering to the upper-class sorority girls out front. This choice establishes him as a man who is comfortable in his own skin and unconcerned with the societal expectations that trouble his friends. He is the group’s anchor, a “what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy” (169) whose easygoing nature is only disrupted by impulsive flashes of violence when his loyalty is tested or a friend is threatened.

Beneath this simple exterior, however, lies a deep well of secret conflict and guilt that renders him a far more complex character than he seems. Mickey’s entire adult life is predicated on two foundational lies: his decision to go to Canada with Jacy and his subsequent decision to hide the details of her death from his friends. When he flees with her to Canada, this act is not a political protest against the war but a profound gesture of love and loyalty to Jacy, which he makes at the cost of breaking a solemn promise to his deceased father to answer his country’s call to service. Mickey’s secret choice and the subsequent tragedy of Jacy’s illness and death combine to shape his life in ways that his friends never suspect. This easygoing musician who seems to live without regret is in fact haunted by a past that he feels unable to share. His story reveals that his seemingly simple life is an elaborate construction: a means of coping with a burden he has carried alone for over 40 years.

Mickey’s development culminates in his painful but necessary confession, which realigns his relationship with his friends and himself. The reunion at the Chilmark house (the very place where his life of deception began) forces him to confront the unsustainability of his secrets. His decision to tell his story is a profound act of vulnerability, for he willingly shatters the stoic persona that he has maintained for decades. In doing so, he redefines his friendship with Lincoln and Teddy, replacing the myth of their shared past with a more honest, complicated truth. When he bitterly states, “the guy you remember is gone, just like Jacy” (276), it is clear that part of him rejects dispelling this long-held illusion, but his confession nonetheless opens the possibility of developing more authentic connections and a new kind of future: one in which he no longer has to face his past alone.

Although Jacy is physically absent from the novel’s present-day timeline, she remains a central figure whose memory drives the narrative. As the “D’Artagnan” to the men’s “Three Musketeers,” she functions as the enigmatic catalyst for the novel’s central mystery, and like the character of D’Artagnan, she also serves as the emotional touchstone for her three friends, even long after her death. Her character embodies the theme of The Unknowable Past and the Fallibility of Memory, as Lincoln, Teddy, and Mickey each hold a different, incomplete version of who she was. For them, she represents the untamed energy and possibility of their youth, a “wild as the wind” (85) spirit who defied the conventions of her wealthy Greenwich upbringing and transcended the unspoken rules of social class to forge powerful friendships with the working-class hashers. Her passionate opposition to the war, her outspoken boldness, and her intense performances with Mickey’s band all mark her as a rebellious and charismatic figure who challenges the world around her.

However, beneath her vibrant and confident exterior, Jacy is eventually revealed to be a deeply wounded person who is secretly navigating a life built on devastating falsehoods, trauma, and sexual abuse. The gradual revelation of her story through Mickey’s confession recasts her significantly, and her characterization shifts from the men’s shallow vision of a stereotypical “manic pixie dream girl” to a more deeply nuanced and ultimately tragic figure.

As a teenager, she learns that the man who raised her, Donald Calloway, is not her biological father, and he uses this fact to rationalize his recurring sexual abuse of her over the years—incidents that occurred with her mother’s full knowledge and complicity. Later, she is devastated to learn that her biological father, Andy, died of complications due to cerebellar ataxia just before her college graduation. Faced with these harsh truths—as well as the knowledge that the disorder is genetic—she feels an intense need to escape her life.

Her first impulse is to attempt death by suicide, but a timely call from Teddy forestalls this plan, and she accepts his invitation to join him, Mickey, and Lincoln at Martha’s Vineyard instead. Thus, she begins the fateful weekend burdened by these weighty secrets, and her friends have no idea of the stresses with which she is grappling. This hidden trauma explains her complicated relationship with sex and intimacy, which she often weaponizes as a form of control in a world where she feels powerless. Her story is therefore a profound exploration of secrets and hidden truths (See: Symbols & Motifs), for the Jacy that her friends know is really a carefully constructed persona hiding unimaginable pain.

When she makes the bold choice to run away to Canada with Mickey, she seizes a chance for a new life, free from the lies of her past. She briefly finds liberation and a new identity through music and her love for Mickey, but she cannot escape the genetic destiny of cerebellar ataxia, the same disorder that contributed to her biological father’s death. Her physical decline concludes with her own eventual death after a devastating fall, and her life of secrets, rebellion, and tragedy leaves an indelible mark on the men who loved her.

As a flat, static character, W. A. Moser serves primarily as an antagonistic force in the life of his son, Lincoln, and his wife, Trudy. A “small, domineering man” (7), Dub-Yay embodies a rigid, patriarchal, and judgmental worldview that stems from his fundamentalist Christian faith and his outsized pride at being a big name in a small town. His unwavering conviction that he is always right about everything provides a stark contrast to the novel’s broader exploration of uncertainty and moral ambiguity. For Lincoln, he represents a model of masculinity that he internalizes despite his attempts to resist it.

Dub-Yay’s pronouncements and his derisive “Three Stooges” nickname for Lincoln and his friends make it clear that Lincoln was raised in an oppressive emotional environment. Lincoln’s life at Minerva College—an endeavor that his mother engineers in her one act of defiance against Dub-Yay—stands as Lincoln’s means of escape from his father’s small-minded, mean-spirited existence. When a much older Lincoln belatedly realizes that he emulates his father’s key faults, this honest introspection stands as a key moment of irony, for he is forced to concede that he never fully escaped his father’s toxic influence.

Trudy Moser is a minor but pivotal character whose quiet rebellion against her domineering husband profoundly shapes the narrative’s trajectory. Though she remains largely submissive to Dub-Yay for most of her marriage, she possesses a hidden strength and an allegiance to her own upper-class past, and she deeply values freedom and experience. Her secret ownership of the Chilmark house and her adamant refusal to sell it act as significant examples of defiance. By ensuring that Lincoln directly inherits the house and attends Minerva College, she provides him with a crucial link to her own values and offers a critical alternative to his father’s suffocating worldview. Trudy represents the quiet and often unseen power of a parent’s love.

Lincoln’s wife Anita represents the stable, grounded life that he has chosen to build, acting as a voice of reason and pragmatism and often serving as a gentle corrective to his self-absorbed tendencies. Her awareness of Lincoln’s slow transformation into his father allows her to remind him of the better man that he originally intended to be. She exists in contrast to the chaotic, untamed memory of Jacy, symbolizing the safety and certainty of the adult world that Lincoln embraced after college. Her presence in the narrative via phone calls anchors Lincoln to his present reality, even as he flounders in the dangerous undercurrents of the past.

A retired police chief with a deeply cynical attitude, Joe Coffin is a complex minor character who acts as both a foil and a grim mentor to Lincoln. His dark, world-weary perspective on crime and human nature challenges Lincoln’s naïve attempts to learn the truth about Jacy’s disappearance. Coffin introduces a series of gritty, plausible scenarios that force Lincoln to confront the darkest possibilities of the past, but because Coffin’s own story is steeped in regret over the actions of his abusive son, his personal history deeply biases his worldview. Ultimately, the narrative reveals him to be a man who is just as haunted by his own past as the protagonists are by theirs, and he has nothing of value to offer them, other than serving as a cautionary tale of what not to become.

Mason Troyer serves as a localized antagonist and a red herring in the novel’s central mystery. He embodies a crude, entitled, and aggressive form of masculinity that contrasts sharply with the more introspective and conflicted identities of the three friends. His history of harassing women and his boorish behavior make him a plausible suspect in Jacy’s disappearance, driving much of Lincoln’s investigation. Ultimately, however, Troyer has nothing to do with her vanishing, and his presence in the novel therefore highlights the dangers of making uninformed assumptions.