Jonah Bay

Character Analysis

Who on earth is Jonah Bay? If we're asking that when we have access to his internal thoughts and stuff, can you imagine how frustrating it must be for his friends? Jonah is totally secretive and mysterious, and keeps his past and feelings to himself for most of the book. So what do we know about him?

• Jonah is Susannah Bay's son, and "for a long time his famous mother would be Jonah's primary identifying characteristic" (1.21).
• He is drugged as a child by a musician to get some silly tunes.
• Jonah is gay but fears the excitement of sex, except with Robert, when it's a "tense, highly careful experience that invariably led to great pleasure" (12.65).
• He goes to MIT and studies mechanical engineering, so he's apparently pretty darn smart.
• He is incredibly lonely, which makes it easy for the Moonies to nab him.
• He's open-minded enough to date someone with HIV, but not open-hearted enough to be willing to commit himself to them.

Okay… so… we still feel like we don't know who he is. Anyone else get the sense that Jonah's like the Lone Ranger of this book? His biggest draw is his mystery. He's that friend in every group that's beautiful, aloof, and inwardly tortured. And since his life really isn't a main focus in this book, we get a whole lot less of it than we do for other people. Half the time we're not even sure what he's up to when he's not with the two major couples, and sometimes we get the sense he's only there so the two couples have someone to interact with that isn't each other all the time.