Character Clues
Character Analysis
Speech and Dialogue
In his foreword to "The Black Prince," Bradley Pearson describes himself as being a "conventional," "nervous," and "puritanical" man (Bradley Pearson's Foreword: par. 14). He could have added "verbose" as well, despite the fact that he tends to represent himself as someone who has "always been a devotee of silence," and who "hate[s], in any context, an intemperate flux of words" (Bradley Pearson's Foreword: par. 13).
Judge for yourself how silent he is when he gets going on Shakespeare's Hamlet:
Hamlet is nearer to the wind than Shakespeare ever sailed, even in the sonnets. Did Shakespeare hate his father? Of course. Was he in love with his mother? Of course. But that is only the beginning of what he is telling us about himself. How does he dare to do it? How can it not bring down on his head a punishment which is as much more exquisite than that of ordinary writers as the god whom he worships is above the god whom they worship? He has performed a supreme creative feat, a work endlessly reflecting upon itself, not discursively but in its very substance, a Chinese box of words as high as the tower of Babel, a meditation upon the bottomless trickery of consciousness and the redemptive role of words in the loves of those without identity, that is human beings. (1.23.171)
Yeah, this goes on for another couple hundred words or so.
Now, in all fairness to Bradley, it's true that the other people in his life tend to speak more freely and intemperately than he does, and it's only when he's writing letters or expounding on the genius of Shakespeare that he really lets loose in person. Keep in mind, though, that the whole of "The Black Prince" is the product of Bradley's hand, and it's also the pinnacle of his attempt to reveal himself (just like good old Shakespeare) in language.
With this in mind, "The Black Prince" shows us that Bradley is a man who wants desperately to communicate the lofty thoughts and ideals he holds dear—and to create a masterpiece of self-expression that wouldn't be ashamed to stand next to Hamlet on a bookshelf.
Bradley's writing is his way of speaking, and, in the end, he sure does a lot of it.
Thoughts and Opinions
Just as "The Black Prince" represents the pinnacle of Bradley Pearson's attempt to reveal the truth about himself, the book also gives him an opportunity to give his thoughts and opinions at length. As he does, we readers get to know Bradley as a man who takes himself very seriously, and who—if he can be believed—holds himself to extraordinarily high standards as both an artist and a human being.
Just take a look at the following passage, in which he muses on the difference between good people (like him) and bad people (we won't name names):
There are no spare unrecorded encapsulated moments in which we can behave 'anyhow' and then expect to resume life where we left off. The wicked regard time as discontinuous, the wicked dull their sense of natural causality. The good feel being as a total dense mesh of tiny interconnections. My lightest whim can affect the whole future. Because I smoke a cigarette and smile over an unworthy thought another man may die in torment. (1.15.2)
The trouble with using Bradley's thoughts and opinions to tell us where he stands is that we can never be sure if he's representing himself truthfully.
Ah, well. You win some, you lose some.
Social Status
Although Bradley Pearson held down a bureaucratic, white-collar job as Inspector of Taxes throughout most of his working life, he represents himself in "The Black Prince" as having a somewhat bohemian lifestyle—at least in comparison to the life being lived by Arnold Baffin. Just look at his description of his apartment in North Soho:
I lived then and had long lived in a ground-floor flat in a small shabby pretty court of terrace houses in North Soho, not far from the Post Office Tower, an area of perpetual seedy brouhaha. I preferred this genteel metropolitan poverty to the styleless suburban affluence favoured by the Baffins. (1.1.3)
Bradley really couldn't be spelling things out more clearly here. In his view, his "genteel metropolitan poverty" is in keeping with his style and substance as an artist (the stereotype of the impoverished artist is coming through loud and clear), whereas Arnold Baffin's affluence is just as perfectly expressive of his stylelessness and lack of substance as a writer.
Now, according to Rachel Baffin, Bradley was deeply ashamed of his lower-middle-class upbringing and corresponding lack of culture and education. Whether or not that's true, Bradley's narrative certainly spins things differently. He doesn't have good things to say about his childhood, it's true, but he definitely seems to appreciate the relative humbleness of his social status during the events that his story describes.