Tin Man

Michael is one of Ellis’s love interests, and through his journal entries, he becomes a narrator for parts of the story as he relates his own experiences. Michael meets Ellis when the two are boys. As an orphan, Michael struggles with his mother’s departure and his father’s death. He needs the validation of others and finds this support in Ellis’s mother, Dora, who allows him to be his authentic self. As a boy, Michael becomes devoted to Dora, seeing her as a mother figure and spending as much time as he can with her. The young Michael depends on her presence for friendship and acceptance, clinging to her as if to save himself from falling off an invisible cliff. This image captures Michael’s aching need for a parental figure, and Dora fills the void left by both his mother and father. Even as an adult, Michael needs the acceptance and support of others, and when he estranges himself from Ellis and Annie, he struggles to find himself again.

After G, his former boyfriend, dies of AIDS, Michael goes to France and works to find himself again. He proves to be a dynamic character when he spends enough time alone that he can sift the truths of himself from the influences of others. As he establishes his own routine, he feels an internal shift that mimics the changes that Dora felt when she first won the Van Gogh painting. Looking out at the field of sunflowers, Michael reflects, “I’ve grown calm. I rise early with the sun, open the shutters and rest my arms on the ledge and let my eyes gaze out onto that shimmering sea of yellow. I sit outside […] I watch the sunflowers lift up their heads and learn to decipher their whisper” (180). In this moment, he finds meaning and purpose, just as Dora did when she looked at the sunflowers in the Van Gogh painting and found the inner strength to assert her own independence. Just as Dora once did, Michael now finds a new strength in the sunflowers and approaches his life with a calm resolve.

Annie is the love interest and wife of Ellis and a close friend to Michael. She is fully supportive of Ellis’s relationship with Michael and acts as a positive influence, encouraging them to spend time together. Annie knows both men very well and cultivates strong relationships with them. In fact, Annie is often depicted as being the odd one out, but she has an innate understanding of the two men she loves, and she honors their need for “time together,” “especially after [she and Ellis are] married. She was the one who sensed things had changed, the one who knew Michael was keeping secrets from them” (70). Annie sees that the relationship between Ellis and Michael is important to both men, and she helps them to find a greater sense of emotional completion by giving them her blessing to be themselves and cultivate their relationship. Despite Ellis’s lifelong connection to Michael, Annie is the one who realizes that something is wrong and seeks to correct it, demonstrating that she is devoted to learning about both men as individuals and acting to support them.

The greatest demonstration of Annie’s role as a supportive partner comes with her admission that she knows the truth of Ellis and Michael’s relationship. What makes Annie unique is that she does not flinch or shy away from the truth. Instead, she accepts it and wants to be a part of it. She admits to Michael that she knows the two men love each other, and she is not upset about this fact. All she asks is to be a part of the bond in her own way. As she tells them, she “just wanted to know, […] to be part of [them],” and she acknowledges that “first love” is “untouchable to those who played no part in it. But it’s the measure of all that follows” (164). In this astute observation, Annie captures Michael and Ellis’s feelings exactly, pointing out that their affection for each other influences the rest of their lives. Annie understands that in Ellis’s mind, she is Michael’s shadow because she is the second love, but she is not hurt by this fact. Instead, she embraces the reality of her unique relationship with both men, hoping to become a vital part of their love for one another.

Mabel is Michael’s grandmother. She serves as a guiding presence for the young Michael and Ellis, often standing in as a mother figure for them after they both lose their mothers at an early age. She runs her own shop and is fiercely protective of the boys she loves and cares for. After Dora’s death, Ellis and his father struggle to coexist, and Mabel provides a safe haven for Ellis, showing him how to stand up to overbearing men. Rather than being intimidated by Ellis’s abusive father, Leonard, Mabel enters the house with confidence and orders him to leave. The urgency with which she arrives to rescue Ellis shows that she cares for him just as deeply as Dora ever did.

After Dora dies, Mabel is also the primary parental figure in Ellis’s life, and she supports him and accepts him for who he is, providing him with a vital respite from the anti-gay bias and abuse that he receives from his father. Although Michael does not officially tell Mabel that he is gay, she also honors his authentic self. After Ellis and Annie’s wedding, Mabel commiserates with Michael, revealing that she knows of his relationship with Ellis and understands the loss he has suffered in Ellis’s marriage to Annie. As Michael notes, “She slipped her hand into mine. Waiting for me to crack. That’s how I knew she knew. Had always known. As if she, too, had seen another version of our future orbiting around us. Before its fall to earth on that real and perfect day” (199). Mabel sees Michael for who he is and understands the severity of his loss. By supporting Michael, she fulfills the role of a supportive parent.

Dora is Ellis’s mother, and she also serves as a mother figure to Michael while she is alive. She constantly encourages both Michael and Ellis to be unafraid of their affection for each other despite the prejudices of the world around them. She represents the hope of living an authentic life, and her love of Van Gogh’s sunflowers stems from her understanding that the image represents the very “life she wanted: Freedom. Possibility. Beauty” (2-3). When Dora first sees this painting, she is a teenager who is struggling to find her place in the world, and the picture elicits a sense of longing for freedom that she never fulfills because she marries Leonard Judd. When she later encounters the image again, it comes to represent an escape from the limitations of the life that she chose. These complex emotions are mirrored in Ellis and Michael’s respective journeys into adulthood, as they both struggle to identify their true selves and live authentic lives that allow them to honor the possibility of their love.

Despite Dora’s own struggles to achieve the life she wants, she constantly encourages Michael and Ellis to live their lives truthfully and avoid being limited by society’s limiting expectations of men’s behavior. She recognizes the pressure placed on the boys to be tough and unemotional, and she speaks honestly with them about how to lead a better life, saying, “Painting flowers as a sign of friendship and welcome. Men and boys should be capable of beautiful things. Never forget that, you two” (46). This philosophical reminder hints at her knowledge of the boys’ affection for each other, even if their relationship does not truly begin until after her death. Although Dora is a static character, her influence and legacy are far- reaching, for she encourages Michael and Ellis to and express their emotions, and her wisdom follows them into their adult lives and helps them to become more confident in themselves.

Leonard Judd is Ellis’s father, and he functions as the main antagonist in the novel, representing the strict, unemotional traits that have been associated with the stereotypical and highly limited mainstream concept of “masculinity.” As such, Leonard tries to instill these same ideals in Ellis, deeply traumatizing him. When Ellis is young, particularly after the death of Dora, Leonard forces him to stop pursuing his passion for art and demands that he work in the car factory instead. This injustice is accompanied by his harsh criticisms of Ellis’s display of emotion. By forbidding such “weaknesses,” as he perceives them, he ingrains in Ellis a sense that he must remain tough (i.e., unemotional). When he shows his contempt for Ellis and Michael’s connection, Leonard proves himself to be a foil to his wife, Dora. Instead of encouraging his son to be himself and express his emotions, he forces Ellis to chart an inauthentic path through life, saddling him with the crippling belief that showing affection toward another man is a sign of weakness. Although Dora is a positive influence on Ellis’s life, Leonard inflicts great damage on his psyche, driving a wedge between the two as they grow to expect different futures.

Despite his rough edges, Leonard proves to be a dynamic character, even if the changes he displays are marginal at best. Through his relationship with Carol, Leonard does come to reveal a guarded glimpse of emotional depth. As Carol wryly tells Ellis, Leonard is “just used to being a bastard. He’s one of them men who discovered later on that he’s got a heart” (84). Leonard is often reserved and harsh with Ellis, but Carol assures Ellis that it has taken Leonard most of his life to discover that he has emotions and that he can express them. Therefore, Leonard himself is ultimately reframed as someone who has suffered under the strictures of toxic masculinity himself, even has he has passed these traits on to his son to a certain degree. Influenced by his own upbringing, Leonard instills within Ellis the notion that he should withhold his emotions rather than risk showing vulnerability.

Carol is Leonard’s mistress, and she later becomes his partner after Dora’s death. Despite the circumstances in which she joins the family, she often tries to act as a mother figure to Ellis. Although Ellis does not fully accept her as such, she consistently supports him during difficult times. When Michael and Annie die, it is Carol rather than Leonard who tries to convince Ellis to open up and talk about his feelings. Her role is therefore similar to that of Dora and Mabel, for she supports and encourages the men around her to express themselves. Carol tries again and again to talk with Ellis, knowing that he needs an outlet, but Ellis refuses. Despite his reticence, Carol stands by him, showing that she is faithful to those she cares about.

G is a temporary love interest for Michael during the time that he is separated from Ellis and Annie. When Michael first sees G, he is instantly reminded of Ellis and pursues the man with the goal of replicating the relationship that he always wanted with Ellis. Even at his first glimpse, Michael is drawn to G because of an array of forceful similarities. As he states, “I was sheltering in the National Gallery one rainy afternoon when I noticed him in the crowd, his resemblance to Ellis staggering—kind eyes, that hair, beard waiting to break out” (115). As time goes on, G fills in the absence left by Ellis. When he dies due to complications with AIDS, Michael mourns not only the loss of G, but also the loss of the life that he always wanted.

Billy is a fellow factory worker with whom Ellis develops a loose friendship. Although his role in the novel is fairly minor, Billy acts as a foil to Ellis, reflecting what the protagonist could have been without the negative influence of his father. Billy shows no awkwardness when Ellis speaks of Annie, and it is clear that he is more comfortable with expressing his emotions than Ellis was at that age. Like Ellis, Billy is attracted to men, but he is confident enough to demonstrate this publicly, with a level of freedom that Ellis could never imagine. When Ellis stumbles upon Billy kissing another man, he sees a familiar shame in Billy’s eyes and refuses to let it kindle, instead greeting his friend warmly. Ellis understands that in this moment, he can either reinforce Billy’s sense of shame, just like his own father did to him, or he can encourage Billy to continue being open and confident in himself. Billy’s openness also provides Ellis with a glimpse of what life could have been like with Michael, had Ellis chosen to renounce his own sense of shame.