Junie

Junie is the daughter of Edward Ricks, whose relationship with a much older college professor became part of the chain of confusion that led Burke Devore to kill her mother, Mrs. Ricks. Recalled by Burke after his own family has been shaken by trouble, Junie matters not only as part of his past violence but as a person he had once reduced to a contemptuous judgment and now struggles to reconsider.

Identity and Background

Junie was Edward Ricks's daughter and attended a college where she became involved with a professor much older than herself. Burke identifies that man as Lewis Ringer. The evidence gives little account of Junie's life beyond this relationship, but establishes that it became entangled with the circumstances surrounding the deaths of her parents.

Relationship and Conflict

Burke remembers Junie's involvement with Lewis Ringer as having caused confusion that led him to kill Mrs. Ricks as well. At the time, he considered himself superior to the Ricks family and contrasted Junie with his own daughter. He cast Junie as an ordinary, sly, vixenish young woman, a judgment that treated her character as settled and left little room to consider the pressures or vulnerabilities behind her choices.

Retrospective Reassessment

After reflecting on what has happened to his own family, Burke reopens that judgment. He wonders whether Junie was also a victim, and speculates that if Edward Ricks had not lost his job, she might not have taken up with Lewis Ringer, whom Burke regards as an unacceptable substitute father. These thoughts remain questions, not established explanations of Junie's actions. Their significance lies in Burke's belated recognition that the people he once judged from a position of superiority may also have been shaped by forces he now sees operating in his own life.