Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Living… on the open plains in the Texas Panhandle in the early 1900s. He used to live in Chicago, but he had to leave after a tragic incident involving a steel mill foreman he worked for. He now lives with his two younger sisters, Abby and Linda. Actually, Abby is his lover; he just tells everyone she's his sister because people wouldn't approve of them living together without being married.
Profession… farmer. He's one of many workers to come to Chuck's farm for the wheat harvest because the pay is good. As one local said, "It's like a visitation of locusts, reckless young fellows, handsome, profane, licentious, given to drink, powerful but inconstant workmen, quarrelsome and difficult to manage at all times." He fits right in.
Relationship Status… great with Abby. She is all he’s got. He says everything else in his life is just garbage.
Challenge… being frustrated that he’s so poor. But hopefully that will all change soon. He has a plan for Abby to marry Chuck, who is a wealthy landowner with only a year to live. After he dies, they can finally get what they have dreamed about – a Chinese butler.
Personality… caring but manipulative. Abby describes him best when she describes Bill as having half-angel and half-devil in him.
Get to Know him in...
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In 1910, a Chicago steel worker accidentally kills his supervisor and flees to the Texas panhandle with his girlfriend and little sister to work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer. A love triangle, a swarm of locusts, a hellish fire—Malick captures it all with dreamlike authenticity, creating at once a timeless American idyll and a gritty evocation of turn-of-the-century labor.
