Artie Lewin

Artie Lewin is an aspiring actor whose stage talent and professional-school acceptance suggest a future beyond his high-school social circle, but that future is constrained by his father’s refusal to let him pursue it. His relationship with Erica Small ends shortly before he attempts suicide, an event that leaves both Erica and Michael Wagner blaming themselves and leads to Artie’s transfer to psychiatric care.

Introduction and First Impressions

Artie first enters Katherine Danziger’s account as Michael’s companion at a gathering at the Danziger home. Katherine has invited Erica, whom she considers unusually adept at getting along with people and making a social connection; after meeting Artie, she judges him a fitting match for Erica, noting his good build, speckled eyes, and particularly good teeth, a feature she knows Erica likes.

That initial appraisal is social and outward-facing, but Artie soon becomes more than a promising pairing. His later appearance onstage gives Katherine a reason to revise her impression of him: the boy she had filed away as a game enthusiast proves capable of commanding an audience.

Acting and Ambition

In the Summit High School production of Butterflies Are Free, Artie plays a blind young man trying to make his way independently. Katherine watches from the fourth row with Michael and Erica, and is struck by how assured Artie seems onstage. She considers his performance professional in quality, and says that it makes her forget her familiar image of him as a game freak. The contrast between his ordinary social identity and his stage confidence establishes acting as a genuine strength, not merely an interest.

Artie’s ambition becomes explicit when Erica tells Katherine and him that he has been accepted at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Katherine responds warmly, treating the acceptance as a step toward a professional future. Artie immediately qualifies the good news: his father will not let him attend. The obstacle is therefore not a lack of talent or admission, but the restriction imposed at home; the opportunity exists, while his ability to take it up remains outside his control.

Relationship with Erica and the Breakup

Artie and Erica are a couple by the time she tells him that she still likes him as a person but that their romantic relationship is over. She says this to him on a Wednesday afternoon after he has been waiting in his car outside her home. She also tells him she does not want him coming around anymore. Her account to Katherine makes clear that she intends the separation to be final, even though she continues to care about him as a person.

Erica later regrets the way she ended things, wishing she had waited rather than delivered the decision as she did. That regret becomes part of the aftermath of Artie’s crisis, but the narrative does not present his own account of the breakup or establish a single cause for what follows. The difference between Erica’s continued personal regard and her decision to end the relationship is important: affection remains, but it does not undo her boundary or the finality she communicates to him.

Suicide Attempt and Aftermath

On Thursday morning, Michael’s birthday, Artie attempts to hang himself from the shower-curtain rod in his bathroom. The rod breaks, and he falls into the tub, sustaining a concussion and cuts and bruises. After being stitched up at Overlook Hospital, he is transferred to Carrier Clinic, a private psychiatric hospital near Princeton. The failed attempt has immediate physical consequences and brings him into professional psychiatric care.

The crisis also turns the attention of those around Artie toward what they believe they might have done differently. Michael says he knew Artie wanted to talk during their drive home on Saturday night but, absorbed in his own problems, pretended to sleep. Erica connects her guilt to the breakup conversation and wishes she had waited. Both blame themselves; Katherine offers a different response, suggesting that the crisis may at least bring Artie the professional help he has needed. The account supplies these competing reactions but does not disclose Artie’s own thoughts or explain his attempt from his perspective. His final place in the available narrative is therefore defined by both the severity of his crisis and the unresolved distance between the people who care about him and what he himself experienced.