Ray Characters

This Study Guide consists of approximately 4 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Ray.

Ray Characters

This Study Guide consists of approximately 4 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Ray.
This section contains 280 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page)
Buy the Ray Short Guide

The novel is filtered through the consciousness of Ray who, by the time he tells this story, has landed in the hospital. Ray's imagination sweeps across time and place. After describing his role in the Confederate army, Ray says, "I live in so many centuries. Everybody is still alive." His imagination is both the probable reason for Ray's madness (if it is madness) and great solace to him. Death is a reality that Ray, as a doctor, a lover, a veteran, and a man, cannot simply accept. The deaths of thou closest to him — his Navy buddies killed in Vietnam and Sister Hooch — are losses Ray tries to overcome by viewing the past as simultaneous with the present.

There is much about Ray that is admirable, but his heroism is hardly unequivocal. Ray is an unlikely combination of weakness and strength, prejudice and tolerance, infidelity and...

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This section contains 280 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page)
Buy the Ray Short Guide
Copyrights
Gale
Ray from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.