Analysis Of The Character 'Henry Kitteridge In Elizabeth Strout's Pharmacy'

There are many elements of fiction that all have to tie together to successfully pull readers into the world that the author is trying to create. Very few writers are able to do this, and even fewer are able to do it with the same poetic beauty as Elizabeth Strout. Though it may seem effortless for such a talented novelist, Elizabeth Strout worked incredibly hard to capture the imaginations of readers across the world, and even harder to win the Pulitzer Prize. While there are many things I could praise Elizabeth Strout for, I truly believe her ability to make characters feel real stands out among the rest. The first character in “Pharmacy” that sticks out to me is Henry Kitteridge. One of the reasons that Henry is such a fantastic character is because he has experienced traumatic events before, like many, if not all, of us have been through at least once. As we are first introduced to Henry he is described as suffering “the quiet trepidations of a man who had witnessed twice in childhood the nervous breakdowns of a mother who had otherwise cared for him with stridency” (Strout 4). This is effective because it serves as an explanation as to why he tries to quickly solve issues with customers who looked

Even though the story “Pharmacy” takes place from Henry Kitteridge’s perspective, there is a lot of personality that shines through in Olive’s character. She starts this story being mild-mannered and only making subtle remarks about different things that were happening. However, by the middle of the story Olive is shouting “all I do is cook and clean and pick up after people. People just waiting for me to serve them, with their faces hanging out” (Strout 13). Olive ends up in constant fights with both Henry and her son, Christopher. Seeing these relationships degrade made me feel as though I were watching this happen to real