CHARACTER
The Story of Edgar Sawtelleby David Wroblewski

Glen Papineau

Glen Papineau

Quick Facts

Who They Are

At first glance, Glen Papineau is the sturdy face of local law and order: a huge, reliable sheriff who knows everyone in town. But beneath the uniform is a son defined by filial loyalty and insecurity. When his father dies, Glen’s grief unmoors him, and Claude cleverly steers that grief toward Edgar. Glen’s tragedy is not that he’s cruel, but that his need for control—and for “finesse”—makes him susceptible to a narrative that promises order: a culprit, a confession, a cause. He becomes the enforcer of a story that isn’t true.

Personality & Traits

Glen’s personality is a tug-of-war between how he’s seen and how he wants to be seen. Mocked as “Ox” since childhood, he insists he’s a man of subtlety, not brute force. The novel keeps staging that irony: the larger he looms, the less he perceives.

  • Officious yet insecure: He performs authority dutifully after Gar’s death, but his hatred of “Ox” and his pride in “finesse” betray how much public perception governs him. Even his wrestling memories serve as self-mythology: brains over brawn—at least in his mind.
  • Vulnerable to grief: After his father’s death, he splits his sorrow into a “day feeling” of heaviness and a “night feeling” of existential dread. That emotional exhaustion primes him to seize any explanation that gives his pain a target.
  • Susceptible to manipulation: Claude doesn’t bully Glen; he consoles him, then insinuates. By reframing an accident as Edgar’s fault, Claude offers Glen both motive (vengeance) and method (ether), converting grief into action.
  • Obsessive: Once fixated on Edgar, Glen rehearses his interrogation alone in his squad car, fantasizing about hearing Edgar’s first spoken words as a confession. The obsession isn’t just with guilt; it’s with voice, control, and the performance of truth.
  • Physical presence vs. finesse: Described as “an enormous broad man” with hands like “dinner plates,” he embodies strength—yet his self-image depends on delicacy. The novel keeps exposing the gap between those two selves.

Character Journey

Glen begins as a competent if unremarkable sheriff, tasked with navigating a family’s trauma after Gar’s death. His father’s sudden fall fractures that steadiness. Enter Claude, who turns a son’s loss into a mission by suggesting Edgar’s culpability. Glen’s role slides from protector to pursuer: he transfers the authority of the state into the service of a private vendetta, convinced that forcing a confession will restore meaning. In the barn, his plan—abduction, ether, a demanded “truth”—collides with Edgar’s desperate self-defense. Blinded by quicklime and panic, Glen stumbles into literal darkness that mirrors his figurative blindness, and the fire that follows consumes the false narrative he’s been enforcing, along with the lives entangled in it.

Key Relationships

Doctor Papineau: Glen’s identity is anchored to his father. The intensity of his mourning—its physical lethargy by day and existential vertigo by night—shows the depth of that bond. Because he cannot accept the randomness of an accident, he needs a cause and therefore a culprit; that hunger becomes Claude’s lever.

Claude Sawtelle: Claude steps into the vacuum of Glen’s loss as a comforting presence, then plants suspicion about Edgar. He supplies both the rationale (Edgar as aggressor) and the means (ether), making Glen feel purposeful rather than adrift. The trust Glen places in Claude is the hinge on which his downfall turns.

Edgar Sawtelle: Initially, Glen treats Edgar as a traumatized boy struggling to communicate. After Claude’s insinuations, Edgar becomes the repository of Glen’s grief and rage—the one person who can “speak” the truth Glen demands. Glen’s obsession with hearing Edgar marks a cruel irony: he reduces Edgar’s muteness to a problem to solve, not a condition to respect.

Trudy Sawtelle: Glen’s interactions with Trudy are tense and procedural. She refuses to be managed, insisting that communications go through her, not the veterinarian, and in doing so, she punctures Glen’s preferred dynamic of deference to his authority. Their exchanges underline how ill-suited his style is to the family’s boundaries and grief.

Defining Moments

Glen’s path is marked by moments where duty slides into fixation and then into violence. Each step narrows his perspective until he can no longer see anything else—literally.

  • The Interview after Gar’s death: His halting, awkward questioning reveals both his official competence and his discomfort with Edgar’s muteness. Why it matters: It foreshadows how communication barriers will frustrate him and set the stage for his later fixation on extracting speech.
  • The tavern conversation with Claude: Claude implies Edgar’s responsibility for Doctor Papineau’s fall, recasting tragedy as crime. Why it matters: This is the pivot from grief to blame; Glen trades uncertainty for a seductive, false certainty.
  • Rehearsals in the squad car: Glen scripts the coming confrontation, fixating on hearing Edgar confess. Why it matters: The rehearsals show that he isn’t pursuing truth so much as a performance of truth that will soothe him.
  • The final barn confrontation: Armed with ether, Glen tries to force a confession; Edgar’s defensive throw of quicklime blinds him and chaos ignites. Why it matters: Glen’s blindness embodies the moral blindness that brought him there—authority commandeered by pain, ending in irreversible harm.

Essential Quotes

“What the hell happened up there, Edgar? I’m asking because I’m his son and I have a right to know.”

  • Glen grounds his authority not in his badge but in his sonship, revealing how personal grief has overtaken professional protocol. The question isn’t neutral; it presumes that Edgar is withholding something Glen deserves, transforming inquiry into pressure.

He had a nickname, he knew, something hung on him since childhood. Ox. He hated it when people called him that... What those idiots up in Ashland didn’t understand was that “Ox” Papineau valued finesse over strength. Even in his wrestling days... finesse always won out over simple strength.

  • This self-portrait exposes the rift between Glen’s body and his self-concept. The more he insists on finesse, the more the narrative shows him acting bluntly—culminating in a plan (ether, abduction) that is anything but delicate.

“Am I burning? he cried. Oh God! Have I caught fire?”

  • In the barn’s panic, fear turns visceral. The line captures both immediate physical terror and the larger image of a man consumed by the flames of a story he shouldn’t have been in—his actions feeding the very catastrophe he fears.

“Why won’t anyone help me?” he cried. “Doesn’t anyone understand I can’t see?”

  • Glen’s literal blindness is the novel’s sharpest moral image. He cannot see because he would not see: Claude’s deceit, Edgar’s innocence, and the way grief distorted his judgment. The plea for help lands as tragic irony—aid can’t restore what his choices have already destroyed.