Lucky

John is a morally complex character; from the beginning of the text, it is clear that he cares for Lucky but also prevents her from having a better life and took her illegally. He adopted Lucky from St. Monica’s, claiming that she was his own daughter. However, his wife, Gloria, was unable to have children. She leaves him after he adopts Lucky.

John has many qualities of an antihero because of his alluring nature and moral quandaries. Many “[w]omen thought he was handsome, like a movie star” (27), and he smells like “vanilla cigarillos” (47). His good looks help his cons, but he never falls in love with someone who is his mark, despite pretending to be in love.

John has a variety of skills related to grifting that he teaches Lucky. For instance, she learns how to disguise numbers as part of a recipe. When Lucky meets Gloria, she says that both Lucky and John can “shortchange a person so fast you almost didn’t know if you saw it” (181).Stapley hence represents a father-daughter relationship that obscures social convention: He raises her and teaches her skills, but these skills are criminal.

Lucky frequently compares John with her boyfriend, Cary. Both men use aliases. For instance, John goes by Virgil when he scams Darla. Both men use their grifting skills on Lucky. Sometimes, Lucky realizes that “her father was reading her in the same fashion he read his marks” (60). Both men temporarily stop committing crimes at Lucky’s request. For a while, John works a legal job as a waiter. These comparisons suggest the difficulty of escaping a pattern set by parents, highlighting Familial and Romantic Influences.

John meets Priscilla, Cary’s mother, who convinces John to participate in illegal activities. Priscilla’s scam lands him in prison; John became her scapegoat when the scam was discovered. When Lucky visits John in San Quentin, he starts to have problems with his memory. He continues to have cognitive issues after Reyes gets John released from prison. By the end, therefore, John evokes pathos.

Lucky describes the way John changes over the course of the novel. She wonders if he will be a “doddering old man, or his calculating, smart old self” at any given moment (216). At the end of the novel, in St. Monica’s, Lucky sees a “side of him she hadn’t seen before” (211). Lighting candles shows John’s religious side. Once John’s lies about Lucky’s mother are revealed, John apologizes. Their ongoing relationship will be on Lucky’s terms. However, it is implied that she will forgive him and continue to be part of his life.

Priscilla is an untrustworthy thief, as evidenced by pinning her crimes on John. Reyes says, “[Y]ou can trust anyone more than you can trust Priscilla” (169). She is a static character who remains an antagonist throughout the novel. In addition to breaking up Lucky’s family, Priscilla steals her lottery ticket and threatens her. At the end of the novel, Lucky helps the FBI catch Priscilla and plans to testify against her.

Cary Matheson is Priscilla’s son and Lucky’s romantic interest. Lucky meets Cary after John starts working for Priscilla in Sausalito. Like John and Lucky, Cary uses aliases, including calling himself Alex when he and Lucky start talking. Their flirtations include discussing their favorite books—Cary likes The Great Gatsby, a novel that invokes commentary on wealth and the American Dream, suggesting that Cary has aspirations but also meditates on their potential hopelessness.

When Lucky finishes college and stops her criminal activities, Cary lives with her and takes care of the domestic duties. He hides the fact that he is still working for his mother. His continued lying to Lucky makes him a static character throughout the text.

Lucky frequently reflects on how Cary “reminded her of her father” (140). Cary’s methods of persuasion include a “slow turning of the tables on her” (131), like John. The inciting incident of the novel is when Cary seems to abandon Lucky and fly to Dominica without her. He is portrayed as an antagonist for many of the chapters set in 2008. However, at the end of the novel, Lucky learns that Priscilla had Cary beaten up and that he missed the flight due to being incapacitated, which suggests some vulnerability in him.

Reyes, who is almost always referred to by her last name, works with Priscilla and John on their charity scam. Lucky doesn’t get to know Reyes during her teenage years in Sausalito. In 2008, Reyes works for the “Third-Strikers Foundation” (83), a nonprofit aimed at releasing people from incarceration. Lucky, initially, doesn’t believe that Reyes has changed. However, Reyes helps John get out of prison, and she helps Lucky when Gloria robs her. These actions convince Lucky that Reyes has changed. Reyes shows Lucky that it is possible to leave a life of crime and work in a rewarding, legal career. Reyes is hence Priscilla’s foil.

Another character who leaves a life of crime to help people is Sister Margaret Jean. In the Prologue, she discovers the infant Lucky on the steps of St. Monica’s cathedral. Keeping watch that night was her last duty in order to become a nun. Before this night, Margaret Jean considers hiding out in the nunnery as a way to avoid her enemies: “she was expected to be a saint. And she wasn’t one” (1). The moment when John claims Lucky, and Margaret Jean blesses them, is when she began to take her vows seriously.

Margaret Jean returns at the beginning of Part 2, when Lucky is 26. She is a “new incarnation of herself, as helper, as redeemer, as someone different from the woman she had been before” (193). The narrative conveys that she has been helping Lucky’s biological mother, Valerie, in tracking down Lucky. She also funds Valerie’s law school tuition, using the money she made as a grifter as part of her redemption, just as Lucky plans to do. Margaret Jean’s transformation mirrors Reyes’s secular transformation. Lucky aspires to transform her life like Reyes and Margaret Jean.

Darla and Stephanie are a mother and daughter duo after Stephanie’s father dies. They inherit “lots of money” after his death (19). This causes John to view them as marks and insists that Lucky help him scam them when she is 10 years old. Stephanie, also referred to as Steph, is a person Lucky “was supposed to see as a mark but who she wanted to actually be able to call a friend” (18). After John and Lucky take money from Darla and Stephanie, claiming that it is for Lucky’s (nonexistent) illness, John and Lucky disappear. On Lucky’s 11th birthday, she misses the mother and daughter duo; Darla and Stephanie are the foil to Lucky and John and represent the life that Lucky wishes she had. John suggests that they return and stay with Steph and Darla as Virgil and Andi. This arrangement lasts until Darla starts to demand that Lucky sees her doctor to check up on the supposedly cured disease. John and Lucky stay only until Christmas after that.

When 26-year-old Lucky visits John in prison, he suggests that she ask Steph and Darla for help with her lottery ticket. He insists that they were “like family, once” (87). Using fake social media accounts, Lucky learns that Steph, who is now Stephanie Dixon-Carr, has become a realtor in Seattle; the home that she shows is juxtaposed with the fact that many characters in the novel experience homelessness, highlighting Darla’s privilege. Lucky pretends to be a potential buyer at an open house and is impressed with Stephanie. However, Stephanie doesn’t recognize Lucky, as Lucky planned. Lucky hopes to use some of her lottery winnings to pay back what Darla spent on her.

When she is very young, John tells Lucky that she is Gloria’s daughter and continues to repeat that lie throughout her life. Gloria is John’s estranged wife. When he begins to have issues with his memory, John reveals that Gloria is at Devereaux Camp. Lucky goes to the camp, sees Gloria, and thinks, “That is my mother” (178). In other words, she falls victim to one of John’s lies. However, she is wary of Gloria and decides that she “needed to work with Gloria a little so she could figure out whether she could trust her with the lottery ticket” (184). Gloria hence becomes a marker of Lucky’s character development, since Lucky has learned to be more discerning.

Lucky helps Gloria scam other people at the camp for a while. Then, Gloria gets Lucky drunk on a high proof moonshine. While drunk, Lucky tells Gloria about the winning ticket. After she passes out, Gloria steals the ticket, which represents another of many falls in hope throughout the text. Gloria remains a somewhat static character in that she is consistently enigmatic and criminal.