Mr. Dolphus Raymond

TL;DR: A white landowner from a wealthy old Maycomb family who lives with a Black woman and has mixed-race children. The town treats him as a drunk because it can accept that frame for his life; the brown paper bag at his elbow turns out to hold Coca-Cola, not whiskey. The book's most pointed small lecture about the lies we will accept in exchange for being left alone.

Spoiler level: spoiler-light. Discusses his on-stage scene in Chapter 19, which is also the only scene where he speaks at length.

Snapshot

Dolphus Raymond appears in the back third of Chapter 16 and again in Chapter 19, sitting on the dirt under a courthouse-square live oak with the Black families who have come to town for the trial — a white man in a clean white linen suit on the ground with people Maycomb has decided he should not be sitting with. On Chapter 19, on the courthouse lawn after Dill has been led outside in tears, Dolphus passes Dill the brown paper bag he is always seen with, lets him drink from the straw, and explains.

Role in the story

Dolphus is a minor character with a major lecture. He is the book's first explicit illustration of what a town will accept in lieu of the truth — and of what a person will agree to look like in order to live the way he wants. His off-the-cuff explanation to Dill and Scout on the courthouse lawn is one of the book's clearest moral statements about adult performance.

Personality in plain English

Quietly amused, quietly bitter, very honest with children. The drunkenness is a performance for the benefit of a town that needs an excuse. He knows exactly what he is doing and exactly why; he is the rare adult in Maycomb who has thought it through and made peace with the trade. His on-lawn conversation with Dill is generous, plain-spoken, and weary — the conversation of a man who has decided that explaining it once to a small boy is worth more than explaining it again to anyone else.

What he wants

To live with the woman he loves and the children they have, in the only county he has ever known, without having to pretend it is not happening. The bag of Coca-Cola is the price of that life.

What he fears

Less than Maycomb expects of him. He does not fear the town's opinion in the way other characters do; he has already lost it. He has done the calculation and decided the performance is cheaper than the alternative.

Key relationships

• Dill — the small boy he hands the bag to on the courthouse lawn, and to whom he delivers the speech that becomes the book's most useful adult-to-child confidence.
• Scout — listens to the same conversation and absorbs as much of it as a seven-year-old can.
• The Black families on the courthouse lawn — among whom he sits openly during the trial.
• The unnamed Black woman with whom he lives — and their mixed-race children. Off-page; never named.

Visual identity

A middle-aged white man, "of wealthy old" Maycomb stock. Tall and lean. Faintly aristocratic. Long lean face, high cheekbones, intelligent forehead with the hair lifted back from it. Straight well-defined silvering brows. Straight narrow-bridged nose with a slight aquiline curve. Lean jaw, narrow chin with a faint cleft. Thin lips with an ironic curve at the corners; a small smile easily provoked. Pale gray eyes lined at the corners from sun and amusement; a small mole at the outer corner of the left eye. Weathered fair skin, sun-touched red across the cheekbones; carefully shaved. Silver-brown hair, longer than fashionable, side-parted, slightly windblown. Uniform: a crisp white linen three-piece suit — white jacket, white waistcoat, white trousers — over a white shirt and a thin dark tie; brown leather oxfords; a battered straw planter's-style hat in his lap; a clean white handkerchief in the breast pocket; a thin gold pocket-watch chain across the vest. A brown paper bag with a striped paper straw at his elbow — the bag the town assumes contains whiskey.

Aliases

The following names and references in the book all point to this character. Use any of these as link anchors back to this page.

• Mr. Dolphus Raymond (canonical — the most common form)
• Dolphus Raymond

Discussion questions

• Dolphus tells Dill: "I try to give 'em a reason, you see. It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason." Is the book endorsing his solution or quietly testing it?
• He pulls Dill aside specifically — not Scout — for the conversation. Why Dill?
• The book holds Mr. Raymond and the Ewells in roughly the same county, with diametrically opposite living arrangements with the people on the other side of Maycomb's color line. Why does Lee place both of them in the trial chapters?
• Dolphus appears in two scenes and never returns. What would the book lose without him?
• The bag of Coca-Cola is the chapter's literal joke. What is the moral the book is wrapping around it?