Mrs. Spear

Mrs. Spear is the Honors English teacher at the Las Vegas high school Theo Decker attends after moving from New York. She is described as a limp, long-boned woman who always wears brown sandals and earthtone colors, and who looks as if she is suffering from major depression. Her classroom is the setting for a contentious discussion of Thoreau's Walden, where students—particularly an obnoxious boy with gelled hair and a loudmouth girl—argue that Thoreau's philosophy is antisocial and impractical, claiming that if everyone dropped out, there would be no hospitals or roads. Mrs. Spear attempts to defend Thoreau, noting that he was the first environmentalist, but her efforts are met with derision from the class.

Role in Theo's Introduction to Boris

It is in Mrs. Spear's class that Theo first notices Boris Pavlikovsky. Boris, a burnout-looking boy with lank dark hair and a foreign accent, sits across the aisle from Theo. When the gelled-hair boy declares that Thoreau's experiment in living is no different from a caveman's, Boris mutters "Twat" just loud enough for those around to hear, and then, when Mrs. Spear asks if someone has something to say, Boris retorts, "Like Thoreau gave a toss about roads." This moment of shared contempt for the class's conventional thinking sparks Theo's interest in Boris, leading to their first conversation after school and the beginning of their deep friendship. Mrs. Spear, though she attempts to steer the discussion back to the text, is largely ineffectual in controlling the class's hostility toward Thoreau and toward Boris's contrarian stance.