The novel A River Ran out of Eden by James Vance Marshall introduces two characters, Jim Lee and Howard Hamilton Crawford who are both alike but have sides to them that are totally different making them very dissimilar.
Jim Lee is a married man with two children, Eric and Jess. The family live alone on a beautiful and remote island with no strangers to bother them or ruin their happiness. That is until a sealer and salmon poacher, Howard Hamilton Crawford, is washed up on the shore during a storm whilst in search of the golden seal.
Crawford is very determined, as he never gave up his fight to reach Jim Lee's home, the barabara, during the storm and continued on to the "chinks" of light,.
"If you don't get to that God-damned light you"ll die; think of the waste of that." This also shows how egotistic Crawford is. With him thinking about all the things, he has done in his life and he is feeling very proud of himself and does not want to waste all of these achievements.
Jim, is a very caring person and thinks of no one but his family. But when Crawford arrives on the island, he can't help but be nice. Tania, Jim's wife, is suspicious of Crawford before he even entered their house,.
"It's the devil!" Implying that Crawford is an evil crook and is after something. Jim can't see that Crawford isn't as nice as he makes out,.
"He"d think nothing of killing you," said Tania "come off it." This shows that Jim is caring because he can't believe that Crawford could do something like that.
Eric, Jim's son, knew where the golden seal was and told his father. Jim promised to Eric that he would not kill or hurt the golden seal,.
"Sure I"ll cross my heart." Jim only wants the seal for his reputation, .
"It wasn't so much the 2 000 dollars that fired his imagination." But on the other hand, Crawford also promised not to kill the golden seal after bribing Eric into telling him about the seals whereabouts,.
