52 pages • 1 hour read
Sloan WilsonThe Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1955A 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
Tom Rath
Tom Rath is the protagonist of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. The novel charts his passage through the corporate world, as represented by his wearing of the titular suit. At the beginning of the novel, Tom wants more. He has done everything expected of him in life, yet he feels dissatisfied. He served his country in World War II, returned home, married his fiancée, fathered children, and worked hard every day in his unremarkable job, only to find himself caught in a trap of Suburbanization and Alienation which he finds existentially distasteful. Tom dislikes his position in life. He wants more, especially when compared to the relatively wealthy conditions of his youth. Tom grew up surrounded by wealth which his parents and grandparents squandered. Now, he does not benefit materially from their wealth but he must compare his childhood with the experience he is providing for his own children. He feels poor, inadequate, frustrated, and unable to express these feelings because society reinforces the belief that he already has everything he could possibly need. Tom has done everything right. He has lived by society’s expectations. Yet he cannot explain why he derives no satisfaction from life.
Tom’s problems in the present can be attributed to his experience in the past. His experience as a paratrooper brought him face to face with death, and he killed 17 men including, accidentally, one of his friends. This daily experience with death led to an existential crisis in Tom. When stationed in Rome, he felt as though he was waiting to die. Never expecting to return to Betsy, he had a brief affair with Maria and fathered a child. He was then sent to the Pacific and never saw Maria nor the child ever again. Tom is haunted by his past. He feels guilt for the men he killed and he feels guilty for abandoning Maria and their son. Tom longs for the past in Rome. He does not necessarily long for Maria, but for the honesty of this moment in his life. He lived relentlessly in the present, unconcerned about the past or the future because he felt he would die very soon. When he returns to America, he has no one to talk to about this. He cannot tell Betsy about his affair, nor does he want to admit the extent to which trauma has affected his psyche. Tom represses his guilt and shame, and this repression manifests as dissatisfaction with life.
Tom takes up a new job, but his experiences with Ralph Hopkins show him that to succeed in the corporate world, he must sacrifice his happiness and dedicate himself completely to his job. After learning about the tragic reality of Hopkins’s personal life, and witnessing the sacrifices that must be made, Tom accepts that his wife was right. He adopts Betsy’s suggestion that he be honest with everyone. He turns down the prospect of climbing the corporate ladder under Hopkins, opting instead for a job that will allow him to see his family. He also confesses everything to Betsy. Eventually, Betsy forgives him and endorses his plan to send money abroad to Maria and her son. Tom tackles his trauma through self-sacrifice. He reduces his career prospects, materially limiting himself in favor of an emotional reward. He threatens his marriage by confessing but, by confessing, he validates Betsy’s worldview and dedicates himself to her. Tom still has his trauma, but Betsy and his family can now support him.
Betsy Rath
To outside observers, Betsy Rath is the model 1950s housewife. She supported Tom when he went off to war, was waiting for him when he returned, and tirelessly dedicates herself to raising their small family while he goes off to work every day. Betsy strives to conform to social expectations, whether she is urging her husband to attend church with the family or cooking breakfast for her husband and children while sick. Betsy works very hard and conforms to social expectations, so she cannot understand why she is not happy. Her dissatisfaction is initially expressed through her opinions about the family home: She criticizes the house relentlessly, framing it as the cause of her problems rather than as a symptom. She arranges for the house to be sold as soon as possible and ignores Tom as he pleads with her to slow down. Betsy wants to get out of the house which, to her, represents the alienation of suburban living, even if she cannot fully vocalize why she is unhappy with her life.
Betsy struggles with her alienation because she always advocates for honesty. When Tom talks to her about his job, she is shocked that he might lie or deceive people to further his career. She urges him to be more direct and honest, criticizing the performative professionalism that Tom and others seem to practice. At home, however, she does not want to even suggest that their marriage is not working. To suggest to her husband that she is unhappy with anything other than the house would be to tacitly admit that her foundational assumptions about the world are misguided. She has completely bought the principles of the American society of the 1950s. To criticize her life would be to suggest that there is something wrong with social conformity, which Betsy cannot do. Later, however, she admits to Tom that she has been unhappy ever since he returned from the war. She feels they are trapped in a loveless marriage and insists that there must be more to life than social expectations. She craves the emotional validation of a loving marriage, not just the performative adornments such as a house, children, and a professional husband. Betsy learns how to adopt her own honesty as a point of principle.
Ultimately, Betsy gets what she wants. Tom comes to realize that she is right and that he should be more direct and honest at work. He also decides to take this approach with Betsy, telling her about his affair and his secret son. Betsy’s victory threatens to break apart her marriage, but they must pass through crisis to reach the emotional honesty they need. In this moment, the patriarchal nature of 1950s America is revealed. Betsy drives away from the house but, in doing so, reveals the paucity of options available to her in a society where everything is controlled by men. Divorce, separation, and the threat of supporting herself seem impossible due to the constraints placed on women’s lives in this era. When she is picked up by the police, only a conversation with her husband can convince the male officers to allow her to leave. Betsy decides to work within the confinements of her existence rather than seeking radical change. Her life, much like her marriage, is not perfect, but she will learn to live with the imperfections. She is making the sacrifice necessary to make the marriage work. Her victory comes in teaching her husband the importance of honesty in communication, even at the cost of her own happiness. Recognizing her limited options as a woman in a patriarchal society, Betsy accepts this sacrifice, believing that it will lead to a better future.
Ralph Hopkins
Ralph Hopkins is the wealthy corporate executive who hires Tom. Before Tom even meets Hopkins, he is keenly aware of Hopkins’s reputation as a tireless worker. This is proved correct: Tom soon discovers that Hopkins works longer hours than anyone else and has an astounding number of projects underway. In this way, Hopkins functions as the embodiment of the corporate ideal. As the most successful executive in the novel, his hard work and sincerity are evidence of what Tom must become if he is to achieve what Hopkins has achieved. Beyond hard work, Hopkins has earned his reputation with insight, dedication, and innovation in his field. Hopkins also earns Tom’s respect through his sincere desire to help. When he is drafting the speech, Tom notes that Ogden and Hopkins have given him the same amount of criticism and feedback. The difference, he realizes, is that Hopkins has done so in a more encouraging manner. Hopkins provides Tom with a model for more than corporate success. He shows Tom how to function as a leader and as a person.
Outside the workplace, however, Hopkins’s life functions as more of a cautionary tale. He has achieved huge success in the corporate world, yet he receives very little recognition from the broader society. Very few people outside of the corporate sphere recognize his achievements, which is why he hires Tom to help position him as the head of a mental health campaign. Added to this, Hopkins’s work ethic has demanded many sacrifices. He has become estranged from his wife and has turned his daughter against him. Hopkins lives alone in his apartment in the city, with his life shaped by his business meetings more than any lingering family commitments. He has a wife, he has children, and he has a large mansion in South Bay, but he has given them all up to focus on his work. The closer Tom gets to Hopkins, the more he realizes that the success of Ralph Hopkins is actually a cautionary tale. Given what Hopkins has sacrificed to rise so high in the corporate world, Tom realizes that this kind of success may not be worth its cost.
Caesar Gardella
Caesar Gardella served alongside Tom in World War II. Though Gardella was only a young man at the time, he has remained fixed in Tom’s memory for many years. He served as witness to two of the most significant events in Tom’s life: the affair with Maria and the accidental killing of Tom’s friend Hank Mahoney. These are two of the memories from the war era that Tom most wishes to suppress. He does not want to allow these memories to invade his current life, either by endangering his marriage to Betsy or by forcing him to relive the trauma and guilt of accidentally killing his best friend. When he finally recognizes Caesar Gardella, he is confronted with the possibility of the traumatic past being dragged into the present.
To Tom, Gardella serves as a potential threat through the first and middle parts of the novel. He fears what Gardella represents, unable to recognize Gardella as anything other than a terrifying harbinger of his past who threatens to undermine his present happiness. He is fearful and suspicious of Gardella. When they finally talk, however, Gardella reveals that Tom is very much mistaken. Rather than forcing Tom to relive his traumatic past, rather than trying to extort him for money, Gardella is simply concerned. Through his wife, he has remained in contact with Maria and he is concerned for her and her son. To Tom, he represented fear and paranoia. The true Gardella, however, demonstrates the kind of care and duty that Tom abandoned with regard to his son. Gardella does bring guilt into Tom’s life, but in a different way. His concern, his forgiveness, and understanding regarding Hank, and his quiet insistence encourage Tom to do the right thing with regards to Maria. Through Gardella, Tom confronts his old demons but—mediated by Gardella’s morality—he does so in a manner that helps him to resolve the trauma of his past without the need to relive it.
