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Lucy Magnus
Kayo Obermark is a University of Chicago student who lives in Owens’s boarding house, in the room between Mimi’s and Augie’s. Augie describes him as “gloomy” and notes how he likes to hole up in his room to read and study, during which times he urinates in a bottle rather than wasting his time going to the bathroom. Augie reveres Kayo as a kind of genius and appreciates his careful assessments of the world. Kayo helps to care for Mimi in the wake of her botched abortion attempt. Later, he becomes a teacher, and he runs into Augie again when Augie is pursuing a degree in education at the University of Chicago.
Kayo Obermark Quotes in The Adventures of Augie March
The The Adventures of Augie March quotes below are all either spoken by Kayo Obermark or refer to Kayo Obermark. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 12 Quotes
I thought I might mail Simon the key and let him come after his damned car himself. This angry idea was momentary, however. I drank coffee and looked out into the brilliant first morning of the year. There was a Greek church in the next street of which the onion dome stood in the snow-polished and purified blue, cross and crown together, the united powers of earth and heaven, snow in all the clefts, a snow like the sand of sugar. I passed over the church too and rested only on the great profound blue. The days have not changed, though the times have. The sailors who first saw America, that sweet sight, where the belly of the ocean had brought them, didn’t see more beautiful color than this.
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Kayo Obermark Character Timeline in The Adventures of Augie March
The timeline below shows where the character Kayo Obermark appears in The Adventures of Augie March. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 12
...to the drugstore for a cup of coffee (and to evade the potential eavesdropping of Kayo Obermark, the occupant of the attic’s third room). Mimi tells Augie that she’s uninterested in...
(full context)
...the injection wear off without causing her to bleed. Worried about her well-being, he asks Kayo to keep an eye on her the next morning when he goes to work at...
(full context)
Chapter 13
...off from the coal yard, Augie drifts back to stealing books. He occasionally goes with Kayo to lectures at the University, but he’s lost his taste for higher education. This is...
(full context)
Chapter 22
...starts student-teaching, he discovers a real passion for the work. It just so happens that Kayo Obermark teaches at the school to which Augie is assigned, and the two become friendly...
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At the time, Augie has a nice-looking Buick that is nevertheless a lemon. When Obermark’s brother-in-law takes a shine to the vehicle and makes an offer, Augie accepts it. No...
(full context)
