Thomas Character Analysis

the narrator of “Someone Else Besides You.” Thomas and his ex-wife, Sam, had gotten divorced because Sam had wanted a child and Thomas was unsure of whether he could be a good father. His own father, Mr. P., had been very tough on his children growing up and Thomas worries about turning out like him. Yet after Thomas has lost Sam, he spends a majority of the story trying to combat his resulting isolation. When Thomas’s mother died shortly after his divorce, he had asked his father if he wanted to move in with him, which his father had agreed to. Thomas also calls Sam many times a day in order to hear her voice. Mr. P. realizes what Thomas doesn’t seem to see: that Sam made Thomas a whole man. Mr. P. devises a plot to try to win Sam back, but when they see that she is pregnant, Thomas is shocked. Seeing her, he realizes what he had lost and is haunted by the child and the future that he might have had with Sam. This spurs him to tell her that he wants to be the father of her child, revealing his desire to regain that intimacy with her.