Bill McChesney

Bill McChesney begins the story as a 26-year-old wunderkind playwright, in New York City. A graduate of Harvard, Bill is described in the story’s opening as “a fresh-faced young Irishman exuding aggressiveness and self-confidence,” though this confidence is seen to be an overcompensation for underlying insecurity, as Bill is shown, for example, to be overly defensive about the way he was treated as an outsider at Harvard. Despite this blustering insecurity, though, there is an underlying nobility to his character described as a “rough, generous justice” (450).

The first four years of Bill’s career in New York are a meteoric rise into success and fortune. However, Bill drinks too much, stays out too late, smokes cigarettes incessantly, and tends to get in fights with his friends and coworkers. When his lifestyle begins to affect the quality of his work and he has offended too many people...