Clovis Fossey Character Analysis in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Clovis Fossey is a farmer on Guernsey and one of the original members of the Literary Society. He was at first uninterested in poetry or literature, but decided to give poetry a try when he was trying to court the Widow Hubert: he noticed that she accepted the advances of another man who quoted poetry to her. Eben lent Clovis a book of Wilfred Owen's poems. Owen's poetry did allow Clovis to successfully court and marry the Widow Hubert, and it also introduces him to poetry about World War One as a whole. Clovis fought in the war and finds most poems written about it to be truthful and moving. He's incensed when Amelia lends him The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892-1935, and he reads that the editor deliberately chose to exclude poems about World War One on the grounds that they were about "passive suffering." He acts with Booker in several local theater productions.

Clovis Fossey Quotes in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society quotes below are all either spoken by Clovis Fossey or refer to Clovis Fossey. 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:

). Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Dial edition of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society published in 2008.

Passive Suffering? Passive Suffering! I nearly seized up. What ailed the man? Lieutenant Owen, he wrote a line, "What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns." What's passive about that, I'd like to know. That's exactly how they do die. I saw it with my own eyes, and I say to hell with Mr. Yeats.

Related Characters: (speaker), ,

Page Number and Citation: 73

Explanation and Analysis:

Clovis Fossey Character Timeline in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The timeline below shows where the character Clovis Fossey appears in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...supplies like food, medicine, and shoes, all wrapped in old newspapers. Dawsey and his friend Clovis save the papers and read them, as the Germans cut off all contact with the... (full context)

Family, Parenting, and Legitimacy Theme Icon

Clovis Fossey writes to Juliet. He says that at first, he didn't want to go to... (full context)

Clovis includes a postscript about a book that Amelia lent him, The Oxford Book of Modern... (full context)

...mentions that she's received two letters from Miss Adelaide Addison and others from Isola and Clovis. Because of those letters, her article is coming along well. Juliet shifts topics and says... (full context)

...she's glad that Juliet had the Starks when she was a child, and says that Clovis Fossey wants to read her winning essay about chickens. Isola says she also hates chickens... (full context)

...tells Juliet that the Society is going to the theater to see John Booker and Clovis Fossey in Julius Caesar. (full context)