An American Requiem Characters & Character Analysis

An American Requiem Important People

Lieutenant General Joseph F. Carroll

Joseph F. Carroll is the father of James Carroll and James' four brothers. Mary is his wife of fifty-three years. Joseph is born in 1910, the son of "Dike" Carroll a heavy-drinking, seldom-employed janitor in a South Side Chicago ward house. He has five sisters. He enters seminary at age twelve and returns home at twenty-four. Sponsored by the parish, he quits just before promising celibacy and being ordained. Joseph's refusal to take vows disgraces his Catholic, Irish-American family and parish and makes him a "spoiled priest." Joseph does not drink and fail as expected but works in the Chicago stockyards and attends law school at night at Loyola. He graduates summa cum laude but doesn't tell his fellow workers. Joseph marries in 1938, is hired by the FBI and hopes to leave Chicago. His first FBI assignment is ironically back in his old Irish Catholic neighborhood in Chicago.

His...
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