Big Jim Rennie: Character Connection

Don’t you just love larger-than-life characters? The ones who jump off the page and grab you? Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t be indifferent to them.

I would love to know about the characters who just won’t leave you! Most of you will probably post about how much you love (or loathe) each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Write a love poem in elvish for Aragorn. Draw a picture of Harry obliterating Voldemort. The possibilities are endless.

Be sure to post the book’s title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters.

Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday.

Not how I picture Big Jim, but exactly how he feels at first

Big Jim Rennie is a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad” character from Stephen King’s Under the Dome. I hated him within about 3/4 of a page of meeting him.  I could gag just thinking about him.

Big Jim is a used car salesman with political aspirations. He actually is a politician in the tiny town of Chester’s Mill, Maine. He’s an alderman or mayor, or something important like that.

The very basic premise of Under the Dome is that this tiny town is suddenly enclosed in a big, see-through dome. They’re cut off from the rest of the world. As a leader, Big Jim should be organizing his people, tallying his supplies, caring for the sick and wounded. You know, all that stuff that comes along with real leadership. But Big Jim immediately starts figuring his odds. What can he get out of this situation? Better yet, how can he be a bully and throw his weight around? Because that’s what he is at heart. A great, big bully.

Anyway, he is horrible. Did I say that already? He’s great at kissing babies and all the glad-handing that go along with politics, but he is in it for the power, make no mistake about that. He’s dirty, but I don’t even really think it’s about a profit, he just gets off on telling other people what to do.

If you and Big Jim were the last two people left alive in the world, Big Jim would be telling you when, where, and how to fetch his water, and what temperature he wanted it served at. And he would not suffer any disrespect. He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty.

His son is a pretty nasty piece of work too. But there’s some other stuff going on with his story, so you wind up hating Big Jim for the way he treats Junior too. He puts on a show of caring about his only son, but really, he just cares about how Junior reflects on him.

I kept hoping that he would come to an end as terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad as he was.

Who did you connect with this week? Link your post on Mr. Linky, then be sure to go check out the other Character Connections!