Tin Man

Ellis is the protagonist of Tin Man and the primary point-of-view character. At the start of the novel, he is presented as a man in his forties who is struggling to come to terms with the deaths of his wife, Annie, and his best friend and lover, Michael. Although it has been a few years since they were both killed in a car accident, he feels weighed down by a deep depression that pervades his everyday life. This depression impacts his emotions and his physical being, feeling like “a weight” that “that started in his chest and made his eyelids heavy” and a “shutting down that weakened his hands and made it hard to breathe” (26). By describing Ellis’s depression as a physical sensation, the author emphasizes his visceral sense of loss, showing that he feels weighed down by the absence of his loved ones and struggles to perform basic daily habits. Ellis does not know what to do with these emotions, and he can only perceive a bleak future devoid of the love that he once enjoyed.

Despite his early struggles, his discovery of Michael’s journals put Ellis on a more positive trajectory. When he quits his job at the car factory and learns more about what Michael went through, he finally gains a measure of