The Listeners

Agent Tucker Rye Minnick is the novel’s deuteragonist, a dynamic and round character whose arc serves as a foil to June Hudson’s. Initially, Tucker embodies the rigid, impersonal authority of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Exiled to the Avallon for a past transgression, he is a “Bureau-minded” (120) professional, focused solely on accomplishing his mission of surveillance and control with grim efficiency. He views the hotel not as a place of luxury but as a porous security risk, and its inhabitants as subjects to be monitored. This clinical approach is evident in his first meeting with June, where he bluntly lists the federal government’s non-negotiable demands. His professionalism is also a shield, masking a deep-seated discomfort with his assignment and the West Virginia mountains he desperately tries to distance himself from, symbolized by his physical avoidance of the hotel’s pervasive sweetwater.

Tucker’s stoic exterior conceals a profound internal conflict rooted in his hidden past. The “coal tattoo” (27) on his neck marks him as a native of the region, a fact that creates an immediate, unspoken connection with June. This symbol belies the identity he performs as a federal agent, hinting at a history tied to the very class and regional divides the novel explores. The revelation that he is not Tucker Rye Minnick but Richard Monrow Minnick, a boy who flooded a coal mine in an act of violent justice for his father’s death, reframes his entire character. His rigid adherence to Bureau rules is a penance for his youthful, passionate lawlessness. This past makes him uniquely capable of understanding the moral complexities of the Avallon, as he too has been shaped by the conflict between institutional power and personal justice.

His time at the hotel, and particularly his evolving relationship with June, catalyzes a significant moral transformation. He begins to see the limitations of his black and white worldview when confronted with the humanity of those he is meant to be monitoring. The case of Sebastian Hepp, the kindhearted waiter who helps enemy journalists, becomes a turning point. Faced with the choice of arresting Sebastian to save his own career or letting him go free, Tucker chooses compassion over Bureau policy, a decision that mirrors June’s own choice to save Hannelore. By resigning from the FBI and choosing a future with June, Tucker reconciles the two halves of himself, the passionate boy who fought injustice and the disciplined man who enforced the law, ultimately siding with a personal code of ethics over institutional demands.

Edgar David Gilfoyle, the heir to the Avallon, functions as a key romantic interest for June and a primary source of conflict. A static and round character, he embodies the detachment and privilege of the ownership class. For Edgar, the Avallon is not a living entity but an asset, a piece of property to be leveraged for personal gain. This perspective is established when he offers the hotel to the government as a detention center for Axis diplomats in a deal to avoid the draft, a moral compromise made without consulting June. His actions demonstrate a deep-seated instinct for self-preservation and an inability to comprehend the emotional and ethical burden his decision places on the hotel’s staff. He is, as June observes, a “snowball that, when crushed tight into a weapon, would turn to dusty powder” (62), a man fundamentally unbuilt for conflict or sacrifice.

His complicated, long-standing relationship with June highlights the class divides that she can never fully cross. While he feels genuine affection for her, his love is intertwined with his own needs and weaknesses. He sees her as a fixture of the Avallon and, by extension, a part of his inheritance. His marriage proposal is not born of pure romantic love but from a desire to quell rumors about his draft-dodging and secure his social standing. The proposal itself, framed as a practical solution that would allow him to continue his life largely unchanged, reveals his view of marriage as a transaction and his failure to see June as an individual separate from the hotel she manages. He represents the alluring but hollow promise of a world where luxury is a birthright, not a performance, and where personal responsibility can be perpetually deferred.

Though feigning incapacity for much of the narrative, Sandy Gilfoyle functions as the story’s moral center. His presence, first as an absence and later as a silent figure in a wheelchair, exerts a powerful influence on June, Edgar, and the hotel’s ethical landscape. His past actions, such as his decision to enlist in the navy before the draft and his academic obsession with achieving justice, establish him as a character of deep integrity. His commitment to serving his country stands in stark contrast to his brother Edgar’s self-serving deal to avoid the draft, creating a central familial conflict that illustrates the theme of The Inevitability of Moral Compromise in Wartime. When he learns his father intends to leave him the hotel, Sandy declares that “he’d close it down” (244), a rejection of the moral compromises required to sustain the Avallon’s performance of luxury. His elaborate ruse, feigning PTSD to conduct espionage within the hotel, confirms his status as a proactive agent of justice, whose final act is to facilitate Hannelore Wolfe’s escape and secure June’s freedom from the institution he believes has imprisoned her.

As the State Department representative, Benjamin Pennybacker is the catalyst for the novel’s central plot. He is a seemingly affable and sometimes bumbling bureaucrat whose pliable exterior conceals the immense institutional power he represents. He is the agent of the government’s will, tasked with transforming the Avallon into a luxury detention center and managing the ethical minefield of diplomatic reciprocity. He describes his work as a “devil’s game” of “hostage mathematics” (186), where he must trade lives to secure the release of Americans held overseas. This role forces him into a landscape of moral ambiguity, making him the human face of the impersonal and often cruel logic of wartime politics. His own personal heartbreaks, including a lost child and a failing marriage, lend a layer of pathos to his character, illustrating the private sorrows that exist alongside his immense public responsibilities.

Hannelore Wolfe, the silent daughter of the German cultural attaché, represents the innocent lives caught in the machinery of war. Described as a “good listener” (97), she is a deeply observant child who absorbs the unspoken anxieties of the adults around her, while her own inability to speak reflects the suppressed truths and tensions within the hotel. Her episodes of screaming are raw, disruptive expressions of the collective trauma that the Avallon’s polished veneer of luxury seeks to conceal. She also possesses a mystical connection to the sweetwater, sensing its moods and power in a way that suggests a primal, intuitive understanding of the hotel’s soul. Ultimately, Hannelore becomes the human catalyst for the story’s climax. She is the moral test that June Hudson cannot ignore, and the decision to save her from an uncertain fate in Germany forces June to sacrifice the hotel in an ultimate act of personal conscience.

Sabine Wolfe, the wife of the German cultural attaché, acts as a foil to June, representing a different kind of woman navigating a world of strict social and political rules. She initially projects an image of regal, controlled elegance, the perfect embodiment of a diplomat’s wife. However, her deep and terrified love for her daughter, Hannelore, gradually pierces this façade. She is trapped between her duty to her husband, her public role representing Nazi Germany, and her maternal instinct to protect her child from the regime’s brutal ideology. This internal conflict, which leads her to secretly seek help from June, mirrors June’s own struggle between professional duty and personal morality. Sabine’s decision to entrust Hannelore to June is a desperate, transcendent act of faith, one that crosses enemy lines and affirms a shared humanity beyond politics.

As the Avallon’s staff captain, Griff Clemons is June Hudson’s steadfast and loyal “left hand” (10). Responsible for all “back of house” operations, he is a figure of quiet competence and integrity who ensures the smooth functioning of the hotel’s hidden machinery. He serves as a trusted confidant for June, offering measured advice and unwavering support. His perspective as a Black man who has worked his way up the rigid hierarchy of a luxury hotel provides a subtle but constant commentary on the theme of Social Mobility and Compromised Identity. His loyalty is absolute; he is complicit in June’s most daring plans, including the final act of hiding Hannelore, demonstrating the trust and respect she inspires in her staff.

Toad Blankenship, the formidable head of housekeeping, embodies the resilience and pragmatism of the Avallon’s service staff. Her character serves as a constant, grounding reminder of the war’s personal cost, as her son was killed at Pearl Harbor. Being forced to oversee the cleaning of rooms for the very people responsible for her son’s death places her at the heart of the hotel’s moral dilemma. Her gruff exterior, self-awareness, and fierce loyalty to June make her a powerful presence in the hotel’s back-of-house world. Her initial refusal to act as an informant for Tucker Minnick, declaring that “we don’t go rummaging through our guests’ things at the Avallon” (72), underscores a deep-seated professional ethos that prioritizes the principles of hospitality even under the most trying circumstances.

A mysterious guest who has lived in Suite 411 for decades without leaving, the designer known only as “411” functions as a recluse, a mentor figure, and a symbol of the hotel’s power to create self-contained realities. She serves as a cynical yet insightful confidante for June, offering sharp, witty advice through the crack in her door. Having removed herself entirely from the outside world, she possesses a uniquely detached and theatrical perspective on life, love, and luxury. Her most notable contribution to the hotel, the glass snails scavenger hunt, is a symbol of the Avallon’s primary function: repackaging an imperfect or unpleasant reality into a beautiful and desirable experience, a principle that guides June’s own management philosophy.

Sebastian Hepp, the Avallon’s exemplary head waiter, is an idealistic figure whose conscience is tested by the realities of war. He is the embodiment of perfect service, moving through the hotel with grace and pragmatic optimism. His decision to help the German journalists obtain maids’ uniforms for their escape attempt is not a political act but one of simple compassion. This act of kindness makes him a criminal in the eyes of the government and places him at the center of a moral crisis for Tucker Minnick. Sebastian ultimately becomes the catalyst for Tucker’s most significant ethical decision, forcing the federal agent to choose between his duty to the Bureau and his personal sense of justice. His fate represents the vulnerability of individual goodness in a world governed by the impersonal and often brutal logic of war.

Chef Maurice Fortescue is the Avallon’s gloomy but brilliant chef, a character who personifies the acute moral and emotional strain placed upon the hotel’s staff. As a Frenchman whose family is living under Nazi occupation, he is tasked with the “grotesque” (29) duty of preparing exquisite meals for the German diplomats. This professional obligation forces him into a state of deep internal conflict, as he must suppress his personal hatred to perform his role in the theater of luxury. His struggle is an example of The Human Cost of Luxury. Though he questions how he can possibly serve the enemy, his ultimate decision to stay, declaring “vive l’Avallon, Hoss” (48), is a testament to his loyalty to June and his trust in her leadership through the crisis.