Prince of Tides

Savannah is Tom’s twin and Luke’s younger sister. Ethereal, brave, and fiercely intelligent, Savannah is a well-known poet with a mental health history that includes suicide ideation and attempts. Her poems feature the beautiful imagery of her southern childhood and transform its darkest secrets into symbols. When the novel begins, Savannah is in a psychiatric facility, having attempted suicide again. Her psychosis is presented as extreme; she has visual hallucinations often and experiences periods of dissociation and catatonia. Savannah may appear fragile because of her mental health issues, but she is actually courageous, outspoken, and a fierce defender of her values. As a child, she often stands up for her liberal beliefs, such as racial tolerance, even when her twin Tom prefers to stay silent to conform. Savannah makes a home for herself furthest from the family, thus striking out independently. Even her history of suicide is presented as an act of resistance by Tom when he says: “My mother had raised a daughter who could be silent but could not lie” (489). Savannah slashes her wrists for the first time after Lila instructs her children to stay silent about their horrific sexual assault.

Savannah’s mental health deteriorates when she is banned from telling her truth. This occurs even before the assault, such as when Henry disallows her from mourning her stillborn siblings or Lila destroys her journal. The more the Wingos resort to secrets, lies, and deception, the more oppressive the South grows for Savannah. Additionally, she feels the stress of being a woman in a patriarchal, conservative society. Lila and Henry treat her differently from her brothers. The mother expects her to be marriage-material, and the father expects her to be sweet and soft. Therefore, Savannah engineers an escape to New York. However, bound by the habit of secrecy, Savannah too cannot tell the truth fully in her writings. It is only after Tom tells her story to Susan and makes her accept her childhood trauma and Luke’s death that Savannah can recover, albeit slowly. She represents the voice of truth, genius, and creativity in the text.

Luke is Lila and Henry’s oldest child and the titular Prince of Tides. Although the narrative ostensibly features Tom and Savannah at its center, by the story’s end, Luke emerges as the glue holding the Wingos together. Physically powerful and action-driven, Luke is portrayed as different from his more intellectual younger siblings. Unlike Savannah, who forges a career in New York, or Tom, who starts a separate family unit with Sallie, Luke is content with being in Colleton as a shrimper, much like Henry. This may make it seem like Luke is stuck in time, but it also shows Luke has nothing to prove to the outside world. Organically integrated with the world of nature and farming in which he grew up, Luke is happy to take root in Colleton. Luke is the protective mantle for his younger siblings against their father’s physical abuse. He also rescues them from a terrible sexual attack and possibly being murdered.

In the narrative, Luke is often identified with Caesar, the family’s pet tiger, and other forces of nature. However, Tom acknowledges that a person like Luke is an outlier in the contemporary world, trying to defend Colleton against the forces of so-called development. Although Luke may be ethically right—no one should lay waste to nature to build a nuclear arms factory—he lands on the wrong side of the law by opposing the government. The separation between ethics and law, nature and technology, and humans and nature implies Luke cannot last in a riven world. Therefore, Luke dies for his principles, triggering Tom’s breakdown and worsening Savannah’s psychosis. By the end of the narrative, Tom and Savannah mourn Luke’s death fully, remembering him for his strength and protection. Luke represents the natural human at odds with the materialistic, consumerist culture.

The matriarch of the Wingo family is presented as so rich and complex a character she is difficult to grasp fully. Of course, Lila’s portrayal is filtered through Tom’s eyes, so Tom’s version of her is what the reader gets. As Susan notes, in Tom’s version, Lila is a quasi-mythical woman he both reverses and dislikes. But the narrative contains other clues from Tom’s narration, such as Savannah’s opinions about her mother, to flesh out Lila’s character more roundly. Lila’s very name has echoes of Delilah, a Biblical woman of extraordinary beauty who fooled the legendary hero Samson, and Lilith, an ambiguous character and mother of demons in some Jewish folklore. Her name also fits her habit of telling fabulous lies, such as that she is descended from southern aristocracy.

Lila is strikingly beautiful, imaginative, and intelligent. She is also aspirational and materialistic. These traits, coupled with her circumstances, lead to questionable decisions. Lila regrets marrying Henry, the father of her children, since he turns out to be extremely domineering and physically abusive, as well as someone she considers a failure in life. Tormented by Henry’s relentless abuse and dismissal, Lila turns to her children for comfort, often manipulating them emotionally. She is not above beating up the children herself, especially when they refuse to comply with her ideals of social acceptability. However, she also encourages the children to be creative and inspires in them a lasting love of nature. Lila’s greatest crime against her children is forcing them to repress their trauma, whether it be the secret that their father beats them up or the fact of Otis’s attack on them. The pressure of keeping such terrible secrets damages Luke, Tom, and Savannah in different ways. In the end, Lila, like Tom, is the consummate survivor. She waits till her children are grown-up before leaving Henry and marrying Reese, the richest man in Colleton, and finally finding a place in Colleton's high society. In the end, she finally admits to Tom that she and her children were raped by Otis and his accomplices, thus releasing the toxic shame to which she has clung and beginning the process of cleansing. Lila represents the creative and destructive dual aspect of nature, as well as a woman trying to survive in a highly patriarchal society.

Henry, the husband of Lila and the father of Luke, Tom, and Savannah, is a violent, abusive man who is nevertheless deeply in love with his wife. Though Tom makes peace with his father before he does with his mother, it is evident that Henry has inflicted great harm upon the siblings. Henry forces Tom to dress and eat a bird he has killed, beats Luke mercilessly, often slaps Savannah when she tries to defend her brothers, and hurts Lila and tells her she is inferior to him since he is a man. Henry’s abuse of his family is all the more extreme because his wife and children are strong individuals whom he wants to break. As Tom notes, Henry “employed a scorched-earth policy in the raising his children and the taming a strong-willed wife” (292).

Henry’s violence is inexcusable to Tom because, unlike Lila, Henry did not have a particularly abusive childhood himself. Though his parents Amos and Tolitha were guilty of neglect, they never yelled at Henry or hit him. Lila’s fear of Henry prevents her from telling about Otis’s stalking and then raping her because she wisely believes he will blame her for the rape. Like Lila, Henry, too, denies that he abused his children when they were young. When Tom confronts him about the abuse, Henry says “not a single word of it is true” (574). The children do have fond memories of Henry, such as his adventurous get-rich-quick schemes that introduce much drama in their lives and his love for nature. Tom fears turning into Henry, which is why he has to forgive him. By forgiving Henry, Tom manages to free himself from the past and move on.

Henry’s mother and the beloved grandmother of the Wingo children, Tolitha is child-like and Bohemian. Her very name is similar to Aramaic for “little girl.” Tolitha retains her free-spirited childlike joy throughout her life, much to the delight of her grandchildren. She provides them with much-needed unconditional love, showing them that love can be free of punishment. Though the Colleton townspeople judge Tolitha for her scandalous ways and habit of living with different men, Savannah admires her courage. She leaves Amos because she cannot stand his newfound overt religiosity and returns to him only after traveling the world. However, Tolitha shares the family flaw of keeping secrets for the sake of appearance. She forces the children to pretend they are her extended family in front of her second husband, Papa John.

Like his wife, Tolitha, Amos represents unconditional love to his grandchildren. On the surface, Amos is no match for his free-spirited, intelligent wife. His religious fanaticism makes him erratic and dramatic, such as when he believes he can talk to God. However, he is a source of joy and stability to his grandchildren. Tom recalls that Amos showed him how to be a man while being kind and gentle. Amos has a special connection with Luke, his oldest grandson. Like Amos, Luke stands up for his convictions, no matter what the world thinks of him.

Sallie (whose last name may be Wingo, but it is not mentioned) is a calm, collected doctor married to Tom. Though she doesn’t appear much in the novel, Sallie is a stable force in Tom’s life, even in her infidelity. Sallie is having an affair because Tom has driven her away from him. In the end, Tom returns to Sallie.

“Lowenstein” as Tom calls her, Susan is Savannah’s psychiatrist and the stand-in for the reader. It is to Susan that Tom narrates his and Savannah’s story. Susan is a strong, clever woman with a deep sense of empathy. She is perceptive and often questions Tom’s hypocrisy and contradictory attitudes, such as his overstated hatred of modern life and New York. Initially appearing haughty in Tom’s eyes, Susan gradually becomes humanized and vulnerable. She falls in love with Tom, especially after observing his gentleness with her and her teenage son, Bernard. Though Susan is a strong, successful woman, she remains trapped in a bad marriage with Herbert, which shows that she is as fallible as any other person in the narrative. It is also symbolic of the power abusive bonds sometimes exert on people.

The handsome and unhappy teenage son of Susan Lowenstein and Herbert Woodruff, Bernard comes into his own as he finds an outlet for his energies in football after coaching from Tom. Tom sees himself in Bernard, who is often bullied by his father. Bernard finds a supportive male mentor in Tom, and Tom hopes that he has been able to show Bernard how to be masculine while being gentle and kind.

The richest man in Colleton and Lila’s second husband, Reese, symbolizes capitalistic greed and cruelty in the novel. Not only does he secretly bully Tom when he is a boy, he systematically grabs all the land in Colleton, eventually aiding its sale to the government. Though Reese and Tom attempt reconciliation in the novel's last third, it is unclear whether Reese is a changed man.