Pay It Forward

Trevor is a middle school boy who is “’very honest and direct’” (46), which sometimes causes him problems. He does not seem to have very many friends at school and sometimes gets bullied. While not highly intelligent he always seems to have a good attitude and tries very hard at anything that he does. He is very kind to other people and always going the extra mile to help. Trevor has a sweet disposition and an optimistic worldview, which is surprising given his rather tumultuous home life with a mother who is a recovering alcoholic and an absentee father.

Trevor latches on to Reuben’s assignment, coming up with Pay It Forward, an idea that he believes has the potential for exponential world change. In this way, Trevor represents a younger, more idealistic version of Reuben, who also wants the world to be changed but does not believe that it can happen. Trevor is completely unconcerned with appearances. He mostly carries out his plans in secret, not caring what people think of him. In this way, he is the opposite of Reuben, who obsesses over how people view him. Trevor also does not judge other people by their mistakes but rather sees their potential, with the exception of his father, Ricky, who he does not like and wishes would leave him and his mother alone forever. Trevor is deeply hurt when others disappoint him, such as when Jerry ends up back in jail.

Trevor’s most admirable trait is his perseverance, an almost ignorant stubbornness to see his ideas through. Despite many setbacks, Trevor never gives up on Pay It Forward, which undoubtedly leads to the idea’s success. This perseverance also leads to Trevor’s downfall, as he ends up getting stabbed when he tries to prevent Gordie from getting beaten up. Although Trevor’s dogmatic optimism allows him to effect world change, it also results in his death, demonstrating the danger innocent altruism can possess.

Trevor’s mother, Arlene is a recovering alcoholic who is beautiful but has poor taste in men. She and Trevor’s father, Ricky, started a relationship while Ricky was still married, and he frequently leaves her and treats her badly. As a result, Arlene has raised Trevor by herself and believes that Trevor is the one good thing Arlene has ever done. Arlene has very little formal education and has to work two jobs to make ends meet. One of these jobs is at a bar, where she gets consistently harassed by drunken male customers. She is a good mother to Trevor and puts his well-being before everything else. She is incredibly protective of him and largely distrustful of other people.

Arlene’s rage, perhaps her most defining characteristic, arrives from the attempt to protect both herself and Trevor from emotional pain. For Arlene, anger is a default, a guard against other people’s opinions, especially Reuben’s condescension:“She was angry again, and Reuben wondered if she had ever settled down in between. He didn’t even have to open his mouth this time, because her anger was all prearranged and complete, needing only to be delivered. Reuben admired that in her” (59).

Despite this penchant for angry outbursts, Arlene is downtrodden as a result of the continuous abandonment from the men in her life, especially Ricky. Reuben is able to see past Arlene’s anger to “something fragile, relegated to the shelf for fear of breakage in handling” (61). Arlene’s emotional fragility often leads her to drink and suffer abuse at the hands of uncaring men.

However, Arlene grows in strength as the novel progresses. She begins to open up to other people, including Reuben, and is able to talk about her hopes, and fears, instead of drowning them in alcohol. Even though Arlene accepts Ricky back when he reappears, she later kicks him out when she realizes that he hasn’t changed, and that she has. Her relationship with Reuben allows her to act with more agency in her interpersonal relationships. She eventually stands up to Ricky by taking his car, entirely removing his hold over her life. 

Chris is an investigative reporter from New York who learns about the Pay It Forward Movement through a police contact. He spends much of his time and money tracking down the progenitor of the movement, going deeply into debt, losing his girlfriend, and relapsing into alcoholism. Oddly enough, he is not chasing fame associated with a good story but rather is willing to tank his reputation to find the truth. Chris is a very good judge of character; or rather, he is a very good judge of bad character. He immediately knows that Sidney is lying about creating the movement, although he also doesn’t recognize Trevor to be the creator of Pay It Forward when he meets him.

Chris’s character represents the positive outcomes that can arise out of flaws. Chris is incredibly obsessive, losing himself, his relationship, and his economic well-being in pursuit of the story. However, it is due to his obsessive nature that he is finally able to put the pieces of Pay It Forward together. In the Prologue, the audience learns that Chris acts as a kind of narrator or compiler for the novel. Without Chris’s obsessive behavior and documentation, the novel’s structure would not possess the form that it does, as Chris is directly responsible for compiling at least half of the text through his various interviews, documentaries, biographies, and excerpts from Trevor’s diary.

Ricky is Trevor’s biological father, and absent for much of the story. At the beginning of the novel, he has disappeared from Arlene and Trevor’s lives. In his place is a broken Ford truck, which Arlene then has to make down-payments on but cannot not use: “Only Ricky could screw up a truck that bad and walk away. At least, it would stand to reason that he had walked away, seeing that the truck was found and Ricky was not” (24).

Ricky has had a troubled past; there are implications that he was beaten as a child, and Ricky uses women and alcohol in order to cope with emotional trauma. He began cheating on his wife, Cheryl, with Arlene, fathered Trevor, and now oscillates between Arlene and Cheryl, as well as any other women who will have him. Along with being a misogynist, Ricky is also racist and gets very angry when he learns that Arlene has slept with Reuben. He is a terrible father to Trevor, and Ricky does not allow Trevor to call him Dad in public. Trevor, in turn, hates Ricky, and thinks of (and eventually calls) Reuben his dad.

Ricky is more of a ghost than a present character within the novel. Rather, it is the emotionally-traumatic tremors of his presence that affect the narrative’s trajectory. Ricky embodies conflict within the narrative. He is always a source of trouble for the novel’s characters, especially concerning the relationship between Reuben and Arlene. In the Epilogue, Reuben and Arlene finally manage to cut all ties with Ricky, who has become both jobless and homeless.