Howard.

I hate Howard. Everything he does just makes him more and more into a sad, aging, confused, clueless man. He should be old enough to realize that it is not right to cheat on his wife with their mutual friend, let alone do it again with a girl who is the same age as his daughter. He should be old enough to realize that his wife is not the same woman that he married 30 years ago and that he must address the fact that the dynamic of their relationship changed. He should also, most importantly, be old enough to realize that mistakes cannot always be forgiven and things can't always work out the way he wants them to be just because he wishes it to be so.

However, his pathetic nature does spark a little sympathy for me. The final scene where the room melts away and Kiki is the only thing on his mind gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, he learned something from his mistakes and will be able to grow into the man and father and (maybe) husband that he should be. But the only part where this cluelessness breaks my heart is when he deals with his children. His love, however strange, is obviously there; he is fascinated with them as they continue to grow before his eyes, bewildered by the fact that they are independent, real people now that no longer need him for anything, except for the occasional twenty dollar bill. I feel like this sense of lost control could account for his inability to control his own actions. I love the passage where he wants to express some sort of intellectual knowledge to his son:

"He was having an odd paternal rush, a blood surge that was also about blood and was presently humming through Howard's expansive intelligence to find words that would more effectively express something like don't walk in front of cars take care and be good and dont hurt or be hurt and dont' live in a way that makes you feel dead and don't betray anybody or yourself and take care of what matters and please don't and please remember and make sure" "

This honestly really does make my heart break, because I wonder about my own parents and how they feel about the fact that I am growing up. I mean, I know it's a weird sensation for me to be able to go days at a time without talking to them, the fact that I went from being so reliant on them for everything, basically, to virtually being able to exist fully without them. I want Howard to know that even though this is true, his children love their weird, awkward British geeky dad. I feel like he doesn't know that, he sees their growing up as growing away from loving them and he is trying so hard to hold onto them, but he can't. I hope my parents know that they have taught me well, and in that, they have also taught me how to effectively love them. I wish Howard could have realized that in the novel, too.