Adam

Adam, Tom’s brother, appears in the account of a family gathering where Queenie confronts a racist remark. His response—calling it a joke and pointing to the race of a character in the game—helps turn her appeal for support into a dispute over whether the remark should count as racism.

Identity and Introduction

Adam is identified as Tom’s brother. The available account places him at a family gathering where relatives are playing Clue; it provides no further background about his life or role outside this scene.

The Family Gathering

After Tom’s uncle Stephen makes a racist remark, Queenie looks to Tom, who avoids her gaze and glances awkwardly toward his brother. When Queenie presses Tom to look at her and asks him not to leave the incident unchallenged, Adam scoffs that Stephen was joking and argues that the game’s character is Black. His explanation shifts attention from the racist language to the supposed harmlessness of the context.

Conflict and Narrative Significance

Adam’s intervention makes him part of the gathering’s failure to respond to Queenie’s objection. Rather than acknowledge the harm she is naming, he minimizes the remark; Tom, meanwhile, tells her to leave it. Queenie asks whether they expect her to accept that response and says she will go if they continue pretending she is not there. Adam’s brief appearance thus marks a conflict not only over the uncle’s words but over whose account of the moment the family is willing to recognize.