Great Circle

Hadley Baxter is a film star who is attempting to make sense of the life of Marian Graves. To the best of her knowledge, Marian died in a plane crash many decades before. She shares many similarities with Marian: She was raised by her uncle after being orphaned at a young age, and she struggles to deal with a male-dominated society that wants to exploit and corrupt her at every turn. Whereas Marian wanted to be a pilot and found direction in her life by taking to the skies, Hadley happened across acting at an early age, even though she never truly dedicated her life to the profession. When she is given the opportunity to play Marian, however, she suddenly applies the dedication and sense of will that Marian exhibited to her own life.

Hadley dreams of winning awards for her portrayal, but her slow discovery of the reality of Marian’s life teaches her what is profoundly important. Hadley uncovers Marian’s secret identity and keeps it to herself. She realizes that the constant struggle of life provides meaning and validation; just as Marian abandoned her goal of circumnavigating both poles, Hadley abandons her dream of winning awards. In the end, the most important realization in her life is that she must find happiness on her own terms, rather than having those terms set by others. Hadley accepts her romantic and professional struggles as being part of her journey, and—just as Marian abandoned flying to take on a simple but satisfying life—Hadley embraces a future in which she is in control, rather than co-stars, partners, studio heads, or the film industry. 

Jamie Graves is Marian’s twin brother. Over the course of the novel, he becomes a celebrated artist before dying when his boat is struck by a torpedo during the war. Jamie’s art comes from his attempts to reconcile his distaste of humanity with his love of living things. Jamie cares deeply for animals and nature, leading him to become a vegetarian in an era where such a decision was considered abnormal. His attempts to understand and care for the world make him interested in trying to replicate his fascinations through painting, but he acknowledges the limitations of art. He knows that he will never be able to express the true wonder of a tree or an animal using just paints and canvas.

Jamie’s struggles with art and society feed into the novel’s deeper themes of social isolation and the impossibility of replicating life authentically. When he is sent to war, he is forced to reconcile his struggles. He eats meat because there are no other rations, and he paints people and machines to express the true spirit of war, far removed from the natural scenes he favored during peacetime. Jamie’s art comes to express the destructive qualities of humankind; his preferred subjects and his personal struggles are subsumed into the violent struggles between nations as war dominates everything.

Barclay Macqueen is a criminal, a rapist, a businessman, and the villain of the first half of Great Circle. After seeing a young Marian in a brothel, he decides that he loves her. From that moment forward, he acts as her benefactor, providing her with everything she wants in the hope that she will fall in love with him. He pays for her flying lessons, he deals with her uncle’s debts, and he plies her with gifts—all to make her love him as he loves her. None of these gifts is freely given, and so none is truly a gift. This manipulative quality symbolizes his concept of love in general and thoroughly characterizes his relationship with Marian.

Macqueen makes a fortune from bootlegging alcohol during the prohibition era, so he already operates with a questionable set of morals. His decision to dedicate his life to seducing a girl who is barely 14 years old is an extension of this flawed morality, though he convinces himself that he is honorable by waiting until Marian is older until he physically touches her. Macqueen is relentless in his pursuit of Marian, and his marriage with her is grounded wholly in his manipulation: By providing her with the money and the opportunities that she never had, Macqueen forces the forthright and determined Marian into a situation where she feels that she has no other choice but to marry him. Macqueen marries Marian and gets what he has wanted for years, but he discovers that marriage is not exactly what he expected.

Macqueen’s main punishment is to see the collapse of everything he loves. His marriage to Marian is a sham built on guilt and obligation rather than love. He searches for ways to make Marian love him, eventually deciding that their problems will be solved by a child. When Marian is reluctant to get pregnant, he rapes her. Macqueen abandons what flawed morality he had in a desperate attempt to repair a marriage that was always doomed to fail. Marian runs from him, and he is sent to prison. When released, he is killed in a surprise attack. Though many people suspect Macqueen’s friends and business partners, the novel implies that Caleb was the real killer. Macqueen loses everything he ever loved and is killed by the only man with whom Marian stayed throughout her entire life.

Caleb Bitterroot is one of the only people whom Marian ever loves. As a wayward youngster, he becomes friends with the Graves twins. His mother is a sex worker, and, wanting to distract himself from his combative homelife, he seeks comfort by visiting the Graves family. His friendship with Marian eventually becomes romantic, though they are both aware that the similarities which draw them together also preclude a lasting relationship.

Both Caleb and Marian are fiercely independent and find themselves confined and constricted by relationships and marriage. Rather than being together forever, Caleb and Marian intermittently return to one another over the years. This form of relationship is so strong that Caleb is the only person who Marian tells about her new identity in New Zealand. He keeps her secret and continues loving her until the end of his life. Caleb and Marian die thousands of miles apart, but their love for one another endures beyond the confines of their tumultuous lives.

Trout Marx is Marian’s first flying instructor. Whereas most male pilots refuse to entertain the idea of a woman flying a plane, Trout happily embraces his role of mentor to a young female aviator. His role as Marian’s flying instructor is not merely benevolent: Macqueen pays him to transport illicit alcohol over the border between Canada and the United States as well as to be Marian’s teacher.

Though he is paid handsomely for his willingness to teach Marian, Trout goes beyond what is expected of him. He teaches Marian far more than she needs, about life as well as flying. He gives her advice that she uses throughout her life, and he seems genuinely affectionate toward his young student. Trout’s death is one of the defining moments in Marian’s life. While she has known plenty of people, pilots and otherwise, who have died, few of them had such an impact on her life as Trout. As her flying teacher, Trout taught her that the determination and force of will she exhibited from an early age could be directed in a useful way. The lessons and the impressions Trout left behind shape Marian’s character, teaching her to direct her personality toward seemingly impossible goals because she is strong enough to achieve what she wants, even when the world is working against her.

Ruth is a lesbian who is forced to present herself as a heterosexual. Despite her sexuality and the challenges it poses to her, Ruth is a brash and confident person who exhibits a fearless attitude in all walks of life. She becomes a pilot in the war and deals with dangerous situations on a daily basis, while also allowing herself to love a woman even though her attempts to do so always end sorrowfully.

Ruth and Marian fall in love, though Marian ultimately rejects Ruth in favor of Caleb in the wake of Jamie’s death. Ruth dies a short time later; her dangerous line of work and her perilous love life are entangled in the same tragedy. The months that Ruth and Marian spent together were among the happiest in Marian’s life, and Marian’s inability to say goodbye or apologize to Ruth made an impression on her character. Marian is affected by so many deaths in her life, but the loss of Ruth is one of the most profound. Losing Ruth is a rebuttal of Marian’s character, teaching her to seize the moment and be honest with herself.

Eddie is the one person whom Marian trusts to accompany her on the flight around the world, though her reasons for trusting him are built on a shared tragedy. Eddie is a gay man whose marriage to Ruth was a front so that they two of them could be accepted by society. Like Ruth, he felt compelled to hide his sexuality throughout his life. His marriage to Ruth was based on genuine affection, so the moment when Marian rejected Ruth in the wake of Jamie’s death impacted Eddie as well. With Ruth dying a short time later, Marian feels Eddie is the only person who can understand her relationship to Ruth and the complications it entails. He helps Marian to resolve her feelings of guilt toward Ruth, and his decision to accompany Marian on the flight illustrates the strength of their bond, forged in the shared tragedy of Ruth’s death. Both Marian and Eddie were among the only people who understood Ruth.

Eddie’s decision to accompany Marian is also based on his distaste for American society. After returning from the war, Eddie realizes that the society will never accept his sexuality. The man he loved marries a woman, while he is beaten and ostracized for his attraction to men. Eddie accepts Marian’s invitation and then decides to stay in Antarctica because he cannot envisage a future in which he is permitted to be himself. His pessimistic view of the society of the United States suggests that he will never be happy, so he embraces death. The irony of Eddie’s life is that his happiest, most honest moments came when he was a prisoner of war. After years in a Nazi prison camp, Eddie realized that he felt trapped in the United States and unable to be himself.

Addison Graves is the father of Jamie and Marian. His life is a muted tragedy, stumbling between early heroism, a failed marriage, and a public disgrace. He is promoted to the position of ship’s captain because he once saved the life of the son of a rich shipping magnate. Lloyd Feiffer appreciated Addison, so made him captain of his own ship. As a captain, Addison found peace. The ordered world of the ship provided him with a closed, simplified world in which he had total control. Whereas the society back home on land was strange, uncontrollable, and confusing, life as a captain on a ship allowed Addison to bring order to his life.

However, he sacrificed this order when he married Annabel. He never came to terms with her depression, failing to understand her mental health struggles and failing to provide any meaningful help. His one solution was to take her to England; the journey to England nearly resulted in his death and did result in her suicide. Added to this, Addison’s decision to save himself and his children led to him being publicly disgraced and jailed. He vanishes from the novel out of shame. He exits the life of his children on purpose, not wanting them to be associated with his shame and his failure. Addison could never quite make sense of the world, so his final decision was to remove himself from it and vanish.