Character Analysis – Joe Manetti

Even a great story wouldn’t have a place to go without an outstanding lead character. In the story “Always a Motive”, by Dan Ross, Joe Manetti is a great example of a phenomenal lead. Joe himself could carry this whole story with his believable personality and effective personality. He has a sad person that builds up the deep mood and adds impact to the story as a whole.
Joe Manetti is a round, static character within the story, “Always a Motive”. He is described many times as having jet black, curly hair, pale skin and being dressed shabbily. A good look is given into his personality through his actions and many responses to the inspector’s questions. When Joe answers, “I had plenty of gas and I don’t eat much these days.” His tormented state is plainly seen as a not only a recent change, but a major change in his personality. His calm and quiet is also displayed through the entire interrogation, but no more than the moment after he is told he is free to go. In the story it says, “The young man with the pale face and black, curly hair showed no special sigh of relief.” This nonchalant attitude to something of such magnitude shows that he has given up. He has no reason to be relieved of his proven innocence because there is no reason for him to want be free in the first place, because of his life situation.
A personality like Joe Mannetti’s doesn’t just poof into existence. It would be difficult to believe how well he was taking the interrogation and the possibility of a trial without some sort of personal struggle. That is made clear early on in the interrogation by Joe talking about his wife, “But my wife left me. She’s somewhere on the West Coast.” And when Joe answered a question about his son, “He was killed by a truck. Street accident when I was out on town on a job.” Obviously, these two recent events in Joe’s life shaped the personality seen within the story. By the way he says the two things, “Joe nodded,” and “He answered in a monotone,” these two are very casual ways of saying something, not a manner in which such tragic events would be said. This shows how Joe is trying to detach himself from those events. That makes his action extremely believable. Joe’s need to get away from his life situation makes him drive. He tries to ignore it, but he gets emotional breaks in his head where he needs to get out of the place where he has so many memories of everything that has gone wrong. He even says something along those lines within the story, “I get spells when I can’t stand it in my place. I take the car and I drive. Anywhere! I just drive until I feel better.” His life situation is what causes these emotional snaps.
The way Joe’s situation comes across in the story is fantastic. Creating a person who has lost their kid and significant other recently is a difficult feat to undertake. One has to choose the direction of the character, whether it be anger or depression. The way Dan Ross wrote Joe Manetti in a depressive state came off perfectly; it is easy to feel Joe’s pain, the mark of a well written character. The portrayal of this depressed man is at its best at the very end of the story when he explains why he didn’t return the Miller boy directly to the police, “I wanted to see the face of a father who had lost his kid and then got it back.” This is the one moment where everything that has been read through the entire story comes together and the thought process behind everything Joe does is really about his son.
The way that Joe is written is the entire essence of the story. Everything he says and does changes every little detail. His son’s death made him take the Miller boy to the parents, not the police, placing Joe in the precarious situation in the first place. Without Joe’s contributions, the story would be nonexistent, not only because he is the main character of the story, but because of the massive impact the way he behaves has on the overall message of the story. Theoretically, if Joe’s character had been taken away and replaced by a different, perhaps a more emotional character, the end result wouldn’t have the same meaning. Joe’s quiet and calm personality shows the depressed, dejected side of the world. Someone more emotional would be seen as someone who still had the fire to keep going, but Joe has clearly given up, “The young man with the pale face and black, curly hair showed no special sigh of relief.” Hearing the news that he won’t be tried for possible jail time should have created some stir within him, but it didn’t because he feels as though he has nothing to live for.
Overall, Joe Manetti is a fantastic, believable and extremely well written lead character. The story, “Always a Motive” by Dan Ross would be nothing without his tragic personality to push the way into the true heart of the story. A character like Joe Manetti is extremely difficult to write and get to come across right; Dan Ross created the perfect, believably depressed character without so many words.