Joe Hamilton

Joe Hamilton was the fourth son and the youngest child of Samuel and Liza Hamilton, a mooning boy greatly beloved and protected by the whole family. He early discovered that a smiling helplessness was his best protection from work. His brothers were tough hard workers, all of them. It was easier to do Joe's work than to make him do it. His mother and father thought him a poet because he wasn't any good at anything else, and they so impressed him with this that he wrote glib verses to prove it. Joe was physically lazy, and probably mentally lazy too. He daydreamed out his life, and his mother loved him more than the others because she thought he was helpless. Actually he was the least helpless, because he got exactly what he wanted with a minimum of effort. Joe was the darling of the family.

Life and Trajectory

In feudal times an ineptness with sword and spear headed a young man for the church: in the Hamilton family Joe's inability properly to function at farm and forge headed him for a higher education. He was not sickly or weak but he did not lift very well; he rode horses badly and detested them. The whole family laughed with affection when they thought of Joe trying to learn to plow; his tortuous first furrow wound about like a flatland stream, and his second furrow touched his first only once and then to cross it and wander off. Gradually he eliminated himself from every farm duty. His mother explained that his mind was in the clouds, as though this were some singular virtue. When Joe had failed at every job, his father in despair put him to herding sixty sheep. This was the least difficult job of all and the one classically requiring no skill. All he had to do was to stay with the sheep. And Joe lost them—lost sixty sheep and couldn't find them where they were huddled in the shade in a dry gulch. According to the family story, Samuel called the family together, girls and boys, and made them promise to take care of Joe after he was gone, for if they did not Joe would surely starve.

Key Actions and Objectives

Joe was sent to college because he was no damn good at anything else. He went east and helped to invent a new profession called advertising. Joe's very faults were virtues in this field. He found that he could communicate his material daydreaming—and, properly applied, that is all advertising is. Joe became a big man in a new field. He wrote letters home in rhymed verse and made as smart an attack on all the accepted verities as was healthful. Samuel wrote to Joe, saying, "I would be disappointed if you had not become an atheist, and I read pleasantly that you have, in your age and wisdom, accepted agnosticism the way you'd take a cookie on a full stomach. But I would ask you with all my understanding heart not to try to convert your mother. Your last letter only made her think you are not well."

Relationships and Conflict

Joe was the darling of the family, protected by his mother who thought him helpless and by his father who made the family promise to take care of him. His brothers and sisters, particularly Tom, were tough hard workers, and Joe's laziness contrasted sharply with their industriousness. Samuel, while loving Joe, saw through his son's act, recognizing that Joe's helplessness was a strategy to avoid work. Joe's relationship with his father was marked by Samuel's sardonic understanding; Samuel wrote to Joe about his atheism with affectionate mockery, warning him not to try to convert his mother.

Change and Ending

Joe Hamilton transformed from a lazy, dreamy boy who could not perform any farm duty into a successful advertising man in New York. His very faults—his daydreaming, his inability to focus on practical tasks—became virtues in the new field of advertising, where he could communicate his material daydreaming. He became a big man in a new profession, turning his childhood weakness into a career. His success in advertising represented a complete reversal of his early life, where he was considered useless and in need of protection.

Narrative Role and Evaluation

Joe Hamilton serves as a foil to his more industrious siblings, particularly Tom, and illustrates the Hamilton family's diversity of character. His story demonstrates how a person's apparent weaknesses can become strengths in the right context, and how the family's perception of him as helpless was both accurate and inaccurate—he was helpless at farm work but found his niche in the modern world of advertising. Joe's trajectory from a boy who lost sixty sheep to a successful advertising executive in New York embodies the theme of transformation and the unexpected paths that talent can take.