When I Was the Greatest

Noodles is Ali’s close friend and Needles’s younger brother. Noodles’s quick temper is his most defining characteristic, so much so that he is “known for flipping out” (31). Ironically, Noodles throws tantrums that are more embarrassing than any outbursts from his brother’s Tourette’s, which the neighborhood wary of him. Malloy was so concerned about it that he refused to teach Noodles to box out of fear of the damage he could do with the skills. Noodles’s anger often comes with loud bravado. Although it is mostly just an inconvenience and embarrassment, like at the knitting store and at Black’s apartment, it characterizes him as an unlikeable foil to Ali’s patient and reserved personality. Rather than resent Noodles for his difficult behavior, Ali recognizes his personal turmoil, noting that “Noodles drifted off all the time. He never said what he was thinking about, and I never asked him because part of me was scared of what he’d say” (33).

Although much of his anger is directed toward Needles, Noodles is protective of him and shows affection toward him at times. Ali says, “even though Noodles seemed to always give his brother a hard time, he wasn’t too cool about letting other people do the same thing” (31). This represents Noodles’s internal struggle to reconcile his resentment for Needles’s syndrome with his love and sympathy for his vulnerable brother.

Noodles loves comics and drawing and sometimes creates more “current” versions of his favorite characters by adding “tattoos and jewelry and stuff like that” (200). He makes the characters look like people from their neighborhood, creating the representation boys like him seldom find in mainstream stories about comic book heroes. Comics also help Noodles with introspection in the fallout from MoMo’s party. He identifies with the “main dude [who] is always like some guy who really wants to do good but always messes up” (199). He explains to Ali that, like complicated comic book heroes, he feels misunderstood.

Drawing also helps Noodles express his feelings. To woo Tasha, he creates a portrait of her—one of his bests works—to show how much she means to him. A less impressive drawing of SpongeBob SquarePants, which he makes for Jazz at their first meeting, helps them build a lasting connection. It is not the best quality, but Jazz keeps it taped to her wall. His most impactful drawing is the one he makes for Needles after they reconcile. He invents a superhero called Knit Man whom Needles and Ali both find ridiculous. Corny as it is, the sentiment expressed is sincere because Noodles tries to show Needles that he accepts him for who he is.

There is a strong case to be made for Noodles as the supporting protagonist of When I Was the Greatest because many of the themes and plot points revolve around him and because he undergoes the most significant growth and change. The fallout from the party sets Noodles on a journey of introspection that leads him to make realistic incremental changes, like learning a measure of acceptance and letting go of some of his resentment. When Noodles is left alone after Needles stops speaking to him, he realizes the value of a relationship he had been neglecting and how much more he stands to lose. His perspective shifts: Rather than seeing Needles as having “ruined” his life, he now recognizes that his brother is an important part of it.

At nearly 17 years old, Needles is the oldest of the trio of friends. Needles is a sympathetic character largely due to his Tourette’s syndrome and the disruption it causes in his life. He is reserved by nature, the antithesis of his loud and often brash brother, with whom he has a complicated relationship. Ali describes Needles performing acts of kindness in the neighborhood, like helping older women carry their bags. It is as if by doing “sweet things that were normal” (19) Needles is working to make up for his Tourette’s. There is nothing to make up for, though, as most people in the neighborhood are understanding of his disorder and handle him with a tender touch.

Needles’s Tourette’s storyline provides an opportunity to question how people with physical and mental differences are treated by those around them, especially in Black communities. With the message “you’re one of our own […] when you live on our block” (19), Reynolds chooses to write a story that emphasizes the ways Needles is just like everyone else rather than the ways he is not.

Tourette’s syndrome looms so large in Needles’s life that there are few other points of characterization, making him a relatively flat character. A key one, however, is his bedroom. Where the shared spaces of the apartment are devoid of the photos and mementos that would remind Noodles and his mother of their previous life, Needles’s room is an oasis of those memories and comforts. His attachment to these items shows a deep and enduring connection to the life he had before. Ali also says, “Needles’s room was neat. Every shoe, every shirt, every little thing was in its place” (134). By keeping his room meticulously tidy, he can exert a measure of control on at least one aspect of his life. This control is important because it combats the feeling of helplessness brought on by his irrepressible tics and by the way his family treats him. Showing this part of Needles’s personality is a nod to coping mechanisms similarly deployed by persons with mental illnesses and neurological disorders.

In the beginning of When I Was the Greatest, Needles spends several months isolated from the neighborhood. Throughout the story—notably through Kim and Doris’s nurturing and Ali’s displays of brotherly affection—he gains a level of acceptance and support from the community that he never did from his parents. This does not magically change his life, but it does signify some development.

Jazz is the 11-year-old sister of Ali and the joker of the family. Her banter and jibes are responsible for many of the nicknames in the story, but behind even her sharpest barbs is a wellspring of affection. Jazz mimics a lot of her mother’s behavior, learning to cook and developing a robust attachment to soapy daytime television. She also finds satisfaction in taking on a mothering role in her relationship with Ali that is not dissimilar to the protective fatherly role he has with her. In each other, they find some what they lack in their parents’ absence from their day-to-day existence.

As a secondary character, Jazz functions to support Ali’s main role and contribute to the story’s overarching themes. Her relationship with Ali presents an opportunity for his characterization, as his behavior toward her demonstrates his loving, affectionate nature and a willingness to make sacrifices for his family. Additionally, their relationship functions as a juxtapositional tool against which the irregularities in Noodles and Needles’s dynamic are contrasted. Jazz also serves to provoke guilt in Ali when he sneaks out to the party. Still, each of her appearances comes with a sprinkling of humor that adds levity to this emotionally weighty tale.

While Ali is out with his friends, Jazz spends her summer talking on the phone with her friends, watching television, and making scrapbooks. She uses the scrapbooks as a form of escapism to imagine trips for herself and her family to places around the world that they cannot afford to visit. In the story’s final stages, John’s return to their home delights no one more than Jazz. Finally, her family looks closer to the one she imagines in her scrapbooks.

Reynolds writes a little of himself into Ali and Jazz’s mother Doris, as he was also employed as a social worker whose caseload dealt with mentally ill individuals.

Doris works as a social worker and supplements her income with a second job working at a department store. These jobs keep her extremely busy, but somehow she is still omnipresent in Ali’s life, always monitoring and guiding him and Jazz from a distance. She is a strong disciplinarian but always pairs her sternness with love.

Doris is a fierce defender of the vulnerable and fights against the mistreatment of the disadvantaged. In the first chapter she explains what Tourette’s syndrome is and demystifies it for Ali. She stresses that “once people learn to manage it, they can usually live normal enough lives” (17). The way Doris talks about Tourette’s, making it clear that “there was nothing funny” (17) about it, sets up the juxtaposition with Noodles’s stigmatization of the neurological disorder, exposing the cruelty in him calling it “a stupid syndrome” (140) among other things.

Doris is an immense influence on Ali’s traits of self-sacrifice, love, and kindness. It is her experience with others diagnosed with Tourette’s, and her measured and nonjudgmental perspective, that influences Ali to have a similar approach. Her influence also helps Ali rebuild his friendship with Noodles. Seeing that the boys need a nudge to get started on their reconciliation, she makes them return an empty grocery cart for her. She smirks, knowing she is helping them just like she helps those on her case load.

John, the longtime on-and-off partner of Doris, is Ali and Jazz’s father and a career thief. Ali describes him as a “a regular-looking dude” with a “low haircut, full beard” (85) who has no tattoos and wears earrings. His backstory reads like a cautionary tale of what can happen if you follow the wrong path, and Doris uses him as an example to warn Ali away from trouble. Ali describes him as “messed up too young” (42), saying that his multiple imprisonments for theft and incomplete education have made it difficult for him to get a job. Even so, John was never interested in working a structured nine-to-five job. This reticence for a “legit” job is at odds with his drive to provide for his family and take Doris on a trip.

Although he is absent from the home, John does not fit the stereotype of an absentee father. He provides financially, visits frequently, and stays in communication with his children. His affectionate nature, particularly with Jazz, provides a model for Ali to fashion one of his core traits. John also seems to have a parent’s intuitive timing, showing up at the moments Ali needs him most. Thus, he fulfils many aspects of fatherhood, albeit without the consistency typical of a father who lives with his family. Leaving the home was the result of an impasse rather than a choice; Doris refused to accept his hustling, and John simply could not “get himself together” (42).

The version of John introduced in the early chapters is not the one represented in the concluding chapters. He changes from being a person whom Doris feels she cannot depend on into one who puts everything on the line for his family. When Ali worries about the men looking for him, John promises him, “I’ll take care of it” (169)—and he does. There is no clearer indicator of John’s 180-degree transformation than his decision to work in a storeroom and commit to the nine-to-five grind.

Malloy is a former Vietnam veteran and double amputee who acts as a mentor to Ali and other neighborhood boys. He comes from a long lineage of Brooklynites and lives in a brownstone that has been in his family for a century. Although he resents being drafted to fight in the war, it was a formative experience for him, as he learned a lot from the army—including exceptional skills in boxing. Malloy abuses alcohol, keeping “a permanent bottle of gin on a small, shaky wooden table in the corner” (46) of the gym. His alcohol abuse is a coping mechanism because the war “messed him up” (44). Talking about his time fighting in Vietnam is difficult, but he has no issue recounting the memory of waking to find he had lost both his legs. He gladly tells that story as a parable on the importance of not taking things for granted.

The living room in his brownstone was converted to a gym that he uses to train Ali and a very select few others, but not Noodles because he has “too much anger” (161). He gives these boys trophies simply for participation rather than for fighting and winning, to teach them the value of effort more than the end product of prevailing over another fighter. Sensing Ali’s fear of fighting, Malloy repeatedly encourages him to get into the ring for a fight and take his boxing training beyond sparring—a proposition Ali refuses. When he finally pushes past his fear in the fight at MoMo’s party, Malloy dampens Ali’s ego from getting carried away and helps him unpack his frustrations with Noodles. His dependable presence and sage advice counterbalance the inconsistency of John’s irregular appearances.

Kendall, known around the neighborhood as Black, is cruelly known as a “jackass of all trades, and a master of none” (70), but he is more of a misunderstood polymath. He might not be a master, but according to Ali, his skills are “pretty good,” which makes Black a “decent knockoff guy” (71). Black’s entrepreneurial spirit represents hustler culture and doubles as the legal counterpart to John’s illegal hustling. When Ali sees Black’s impressive furnishings and comfortable home, it challenges Ali to rethink his views on Black and others who similarly hustle for a living. Black and John are acquainted, and he works as part of the unseen network of people who look out for Ali, much like Doris’s neighbors.