Jayber Crow

Jayber is influenced from an early age by strong male presences in the hazy memories of his father and Uncle Othy; the coarse, cold rule of Brother Whitespade; and the fortuitous tutelage of Barber Skinner. When Jayber finds himself alone and lost on the road, Sam Hanks offers him a ride and opens the door of opportunity with a five-dollar bill. If Sam built a foundation of confidence for young Jayber, Burley Coulter helps him construct his home and his identity in the Port William Barbershop. From the moment Jayber spots his familiar face on the river, the two are tied together as kindred spirits. What begins as a mentorship evolves into a lifelong friendship based on a shared love of nature and individuality. Burley becomes Jayber’s guide in his coming of age, filling the role of a father figure and replacing the loss of the great men in Jayber’s early life. Though Burley only appears sporadically throughout the narrative, he is a strong presence in Jayber’s life for decades.

After his time in the orphanage and seminary, Jayber is certain he does not desire a life tied to a desk or an institution. His fierce individualism drives him to forge his path. In Burley, Jayber sees the kind of man he wants to be:

He was the most interesting man I ever knew. He was in some way an adventurer. And something worthy of notice was always going on in his head. I found him to be a surprising man, unpredictable, and at the same time always true to himself and recognizable in what he did (140).

Burley believes in Jayber and invests in him as a person by helping him find and set up the barbershop and later investing in his river camp vision by giving him the use of his home. “[M]y life in Port William and here at the river had been his gift. In a way, I had been living out a vision that he had seen” (334). Aside from physical gifts, the greatest contribution Burley makes in Jayber’s life is giving him his friendship. Burley recognizes when Jayber wants to be alone but is always there to be with him when he knows Jayber needs a companion. His final offering is an unofficial invitation to be part of his family through a relationship with Danny and his wife. After losing his blood relations so early in life, Jayber is forced to adopt others as his kin, and no one represents the beauty of his found family better than Burley Coulter.

Mattie Keith begins in the narrative as an attractive girl who grows up to marry the town basketball star. In Jayber’s heart, she becomes not just the object of his romantic affection but the center of his spiritual suffering and ultimate redemption. Jayber is 24 when he sees her for the first time but declares that life as he knows it is over. He is in love with her immediately. As the child of Athey and Della Keith Mattie also absorbs and adopts their aspirational agrarian ways of life Jayber admires: “The beauty that I am speaking of now was that of a woman who has come into knowledge and into strength and who, knows her hardships, trusts her strength and goes about her work even with a kind of happiness, serene somehow, and secure” (207). From its inception, Jayber’s attraction to Mattie is more about her internal character than her outward physical appearance. As he watches her from afar, knowing she cannot be his, Jayber admires her grace and strength, and though often pained by his unrequited love, he is content to just be near her drawing from her pure, serene life force.

After Liddie’s death and Jayber’s discovery of Troy’s infidelity, Jayber’s view of Mattie changes. Deeming Troy an unfit husband, Jayber anoints himself Mattie’s spiritual husband, choosing a life of celibacy on her behalf. Despite Troy’s adulterous and destructive ways, Mattie remains devoted to him and their family. Jayber sits in awe of her grace and perseverance through a troublesome marriage, the death of two children, and the loss of her parents. Even as Troy squanders her inheritance, she is unmovable. Over time, Jayber’s love evolves into spiritual edification. Through her acceptance of Liddie and Jimmy’s death, Jayber too can make peace with the tragedies, and through her forgiveness of Troy, Jayber can also forgive him. He is spiritually changed by loving her from afar. Their love transcends time and gives Jayber a glimpse of heaven: “She was a living soul and could be loved forever. Like every living creature, she carried in her the presence of eternity” (265). In pursuing Mattie, Jayber ends up pursuing paradise.

Troy, husband to Mattie, becomes the antagonist of Jayber Crow and eventually comes to symbolize the seat of Jayber’s spiritual struggle and all that the protagonist hates in the world. Troy’s one aim was to work with the greatest available power in the biggest possible field, an endeavor completely counterintuitive to the way Jayber lives his life. Careful of his spending, Jayber never buys what he does not need and burns what he cannot use. He is frugal with everything but his love. Conversely, Troy is a wastrel with his property, business dealings, and marriage. “[H]is life was all spending and no gain” (354). In his quest to create a new order out of the farm, he plunges it into disorder. The author repeatedly extols the virtues of a simple, agrarian lifestyle and reveals Troy as a symbol of the predatory modern era violently pushing out the simple, trusted ways of antiquity.

Troy also serves as a stumbling block to Jayber’s spiritual development. “[O]f all the trials I have experienced, he was the hardest” (352). Every time Jayber feels he has made progress in understanding the world and suffering through the faults of others, Troy appears in the barbershop running his mouth about his conquests. Jayber is stymied by his hatred for Troy and, at times, his compulsion to act violently toward him. “I never had liked him, and now I didn’t just not like him; I hated him, and I found it a pleasure” (211). As the narrative progresses, however, Jayber comes to a startling revelation that he and Troy are not that dissimilar. When Jayber sees Troy dancing with another woman, it is as if he is looking in a mirror. From then on, he vows to direct his energy away from hating Troy and into loving Mattie. By the time Troy desecrates the Nest Egg, Jayber has nothing left in his heart for the man but pity and grief. Troy’s final act of destruction facilitates Jayber’s catharsis and leads him to Mattie.