Anthony Patch
The main protagonist of the novel is Anthony Patch. He is a representative of the Lost Generation of the Jazz Age, but not in any positive connotation. A would-be heir to a fortune with presumptions of a sensitive atheistic mind capable of artistic expression when his inheritance will afford such a life, Patch is really nothing but a total void lacking ambition, direction and all the necessary requirements to actually live out his dreams of being a writer. The voluminous flow of liquor also proves instrumental in Patch not being able to actually enjoy the Jazz Age when it finally begins.
Gloria Gilbert Patch
Part of Anthony’s “plan” for his future is enjoying his inheritance with a beautiful woman on his arm. Gloria Gilbert at least allows for half that plan to come to fruition, but a taste for alcohol at least the equal of her husband soon taints even that accomplishment. She foresees the rise of the Flapper at the emblem of the Roaring Twenties but in external terms only; she looks the part, but lacks all the qualities of rebellion that made these women a force for social change.
Richard Caramel
Cousin to Gloria and BFF to Anthony, Dick Caramel is much of what the patient heir could never be: mainly, an actual writer. While Anthony wastes his life, Dick quickly becomes a Harvard graduate whose first novel might one day become part of the curricula. Ironically, therein lies his own damnation: after that great start, his career devolves into churning out commercially viable potboilers just to keep paying the bills.
Maury Noble
College buddy of Anthony and Richard whose life heads in yet another different direction. Unquestionably blessed with the greatest mind of the three, he is shown to be too smart to buy into the sense of optimism that America is poised on the verge of greatness. His foray into the world of business makes him every bit as wealthy as it does cynical. And so his trek into the world ultimately brings him right back to the same place as Anthony and Richard: having gained hard wisdom at the price of his last shred of innocence.
Joseph Bloeckman
Bloeckman is the character who is truly placed in oppositional relief to Anthony. Being Jewish is just one of the marks against him which Anthony never had to face and despite these drawbacks, his rise to success as a movie producer (with a change of name to Joseph Back) is the primary counterpoint to the wasted existence of the heir to the Patch fortune. His success is more a revelation of his superiority over Anthony on the issue of purpose, drive and ambition than it is intellect and the chasm between the two becomes the novel’s moral. Part and parcel of that novel is both men pursue Gloria, but Bloeckman loses to his less worthy rival.
Adam Patch
Adam Patch returned home to New York from the battlefields of the Civil War to become a wolf on Wall Street, accumulate a fortune in millions, lose his rather useless divorced dandy of a son at age 26 and transform into one of New York society’s greatest bores as a philanthropist looking to redeem the world from its overabundant population of lazy dilettantes. The preservation of the fortune drives his grandson Anthony to keep putting off plans for coming up with a purpose for his life; the preservation of his grandfather’s ill-will toward the lazy dilettantes of the world transforms Anthony’s patience into something significantly less than a virtue.
Edward Shuttleworth
Shuttleworth is described as having been a reprobate generally whose specific transgressions of morality including indulging in gambling and saloon keeping, but all that changed when he fell under the spell of Adam Patch’s reform movement. The change did him good: he became Patch’s personal secretary. The change did him better than good: he became the primary benefactor of the old man’s decision to disinherit his lazy alcoholic grandson. The change did not matter: Anthony Patch had access to the one thing which eluded his grandfather’s ambitious secretary: the weight that the Patch name carried in the halls of the New York judicial system.
