79 pages • 2 hours read
Hannah TintiThe Good Thief: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Ren
A 12-year-old boy missing a left hand, Ren (Reginald Edward Nab) begins the novel as an orphan and ends it with a biological father. Ren has "no memory of a beginning" (4), only being at Saint Anthony's, the orphanage someone left him at as an infant. To "make up for" (15) being passed over by so many potential adopters because of his amputation, Ren steals small things he can hide easily, including "socks and shoelaces[…]buttons, keys, and crucifixes" (15). Ren is a quiet boy, preferring to spend time reading and daydreaming. After being adopted by Benjamin Nab, a career thief whom Ren later learns is his biological father, Ren leaves behind his quiet, impoverished life at the orphanage for an adventurous, though equally impoverished, life of crime on the road. Benjamin refers to Ren as "already one of us" (75), alluding to both the fact of Ren's penchant for theft and his biological relationship to Benjamin.
After settling into the strange new reality of his life with Benjamin and Tom, Ren becomes a valuable resource for them. His amputation garners sympathy from people who give him money and Ren serves as a lookout when Benjamin and Tom do their graverobbing work. Thrust into a very adult world, Ren must learn quickly how to fend for himself. After learning of his parents' true identity, Ren doesn't feel "stronger or more courageous" (257); however, in the novel's last third, Ren evades murder at the hands of a gang of henchmen, escapes the clutches of his evil uncle, and helps save the lives of his friends.
Benjamin Nab
When Benjamin Nab, cunning career criminal, first enters The Good Thief, he strides into Saint Anthony's yard in boots and a long dark coat. He has glasses and "straw-colored hair tied with a ribbon" (27). Ren notes that Benjamin's pale complexion and slight build make him look more like a student than a farmer. Benjamin also pauses in his gait and leans to one side, as though "his leg pained him" (27), though this is quickly revealed to be an act, one of many cons dropped as soon as Benjamin no longer needs it. Benjamin Nab also has a "broad, bright, beaming smile" (28) that he uses to charm people, like Father John. Benjamin has made his living by lying, weaving tales about his life as "a cook on a merchant ship" (43) and spending "a few years hunting buffalo and living in tents" (34) with Native Americans. After so many years of deceiving people, Benjamin seems to feel no remorse for his actions.
Although Benjamin appears to be selfish, by the novel's end, he reveals that he's capable of putting others before himself. When Benjamin disappears from the crew, Tom, Benjamin's long-time accomplice, says Benjamin has left him "a dozen times" (282) but he "always comes back" (282). In this case, Benjamin has been imprisoned by McGinty, Ren's uncle. All the while, Benjamin schemes a way to get back at McGinty. Benjamin asks McGinty if he can draw up a will and asks McGinty to sign it as a witness, knowing, as a career confidence man, that "McGinty would not read the paper before signing" (320). What McGinty really signs is a new will of his own that bequeaths all of his assets to his nephew, Ren. Through this trickery, Benjamin ensures that Ren will be taken care of for the rest of his life.
Tom
Benjamin's long-time friend and accomplice, Tom is a relatively kind-hearted, though crotchety, drunk who "used to be a teacher" (57). An educated criminal, Tom frequently quotes Shakespeare and knows Latin. When Ren wonders why Tom regularly drinks himself into a stupor, Tom tells Ren it's "a damned shame to lose your fellows" (90). Tom then tells Ren about how he lost his best friend in a feud over being in love with the same girl. Tom's friend shot himself in the head after Tom confronted him with the news he'd been having an affair with his friend's wife. The guilt of this suicide made Tom end his career as a teacher and begin a life of crime.
Though Tom drinks incessantly and has frequent benders, he has moments of odd charitability. He rescued Benjamin, who had deserted the army, taking him under his wing to make a life of crime with him. On a drinking bender, Tom adopts Brom and Ichy, so Ren can have his "fellows" (208) and they can "be a family at last" (208). After Benjamin arranges for Ren's inheritance, Tom sobers up and spends days "organizing Ren's legal papers[…]and going through McGinty's business records" (324).
Silas McGinty
Silas McGinty, Ren's maternal uncle, runs a huge mousetrap factory in North Umbrage. He employs only young women, called “mousetrap girls,” and a gang of henchmen who each wear unique hats, called “hat boys.” McGinty runs North Umbrage, where all of the men have been trapped and killed in a mining accident. McGinty is a heavy man, carrying "most of his weight in his stomach" (234), who often wears "a yellow suit" (234). He loves candy, preferring peppermint sticks, and speaks with a thick accent, which Tinti renders phonetically.
After McGinty's sister, Margaret, became pregnant by an unnamed man, McGinty became obsessed with learning the man's identity. He even goes so far as to amputate Margaret’s infant son's hand, in order to try to get Margaret to name the father. Having found his nephew, Ren, McGinty locks him in a storeroom, where he tries to bribe Ren into naming his father. Benjamin, Ren's father, later dupes McGinty into leaving his factory to Ren and conspires to murder McGinty.
