American Pastoral

Who is Bill and Jesse Orcutt from American Pastoral and what is their importance?

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Bill and Jesse Orcutt from American Pastoral are next door neighbors to Swede and Dawn. Bill is extremely wealthy and inherited his wealth from his family. He looks down on 'self-made' millionaires. He continually ridicules Swede, but after a football game begrudgingly decides he might be 'ok'. He is an architect but decides in a mid-life crisis that he's also an artist. He also is having an affiar with Dawn. When Swede sees Dawn and Bill making love in the kitchen of the new home that Bill is building, he realizes that Dawn is moving on.

Jesse Orcutt was once a vibrant and lovely person but years of abuse at Bill's hands and an alcohol problem have erased that. She is constantly drunk, even in public. She ends up stabbing Lou Levov when she is in a drunken stupor and he is trying to feed her a bit of bread to calm her stomach.