Bob Ford
Jim’s teenage best friend, who does not give their encounter the lasting meaning Jim assigns it.
To keep his adolescent encounter with Jim from defining his adult masculine and heterosexual identity.
The book
At a glance
- Virginia
- Merchant seaman
- Married
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeBob is Jim’s slightly older Virginia friend and the object of his long fixation.
He regards their teenage intimacy as temporary rather than as an adult identity or promise.
He later marries and builds the conventional life Jim refuses to accept.
How the book draws them
- Physically easyHis athletic friendliness helps Jim imagine complete compatibility.
- PragmaticHe leaves for the merchant marine instead of building a future around the cabin.
- Conventionally ambitiousHe moves toward marriage and heterosexual adulthood.
- DefensiveHe reacts with fear and anger when Jim names the past as continuing desire.
- Different memoryThe same event means far less to him than it does to Jim.
- Not fully knownThe novel gives readers Bob mainly through Jim’s obsessive interpretation.
The final hotel encounter becomes violent.
Bob dies in the 1948 version and survives sexual assault in the 1965 revision.
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