Joe Harman frequently receives less analytical attention than Jean Paget in classroom discussion and student essays, largely because the novel's narrative structure centers Jean's perspective and decisions more directly. This is somewhat unfortunate from a teaching standpoint, since Joe's own arc, from his wartime actions and punishment to his eventual reunion with Jean and his role in the Willstown rebuilding effort, offers genuinely rich material for character analysis that many students overlook simply because the novel does not foreground it as insistently as Jean's story. Designing an assignment that specifically directs student attention to Joe gives teachers an opportunity to surface analytical material that a general character essay prompt might otherwise leave unexplored.

A productive starting point for this analysis is examining the specific choice Joe makes during the war that leads to his punishment, and asking students to evaluate the competing motivations that might explain his decision, rather than accepting a single, simple explanation at face value. Students can be asked to weigh evidence suggesting his action was motivated primarily by personal affection for Jean against evidence suggesting a broader sense of justice or defiance toward wrongful treatment, recognizing that both motivations may be simultaneously present and worth discussing rather than resolved into a single tidy answer. This kind of multi-motivation analysis is a genuinely sophisticated literary skill, and Joe's character offers clear, specific textual evidence to support this kind of nuanced reading rather than requiring students to speculate without grounding.

It is also worth having students examine how Joe's character changes, or does not change, across the significant time gap between the wartime events and his reunion with Jean, since the novel presents him as someone who has continued working and rebuilding his own life in the interim without the reader having direct access to that process. Asking students to consider what the novel chooses to show versus withhold about Joe's development during this gap, and what effect that narrative choice has on the reader's understanding of his character, connects character analysis to the broader narrative structure discussion relevant elsewhere in the novel. This kind of question also helps students notice that character development in literature is not always shown directly on the page but can be implied or reconstructed by the reader based on available evidence.

Essay Prompts That Center Joe's Perspective

A strong essay prompt focused on Joe might ask students to argue whether his character functions primarily as a romantic figure supporting Jean's story or as a fully realized character with his own independent arc worth analyzing on its own terms. This kind of evaluative prompt requires students to seriously consider the narrative's structural choices regarding whose story is being told and whose development receives direct attention, which is a genuinely sophisticated literary question. Requiring students to support their position with specific evidence from Joe's own scenes and decisions, rather than only his role in relation to Jean, ensures the essay treats him as a genuine subject of analysis rather than only as a supporting element in someone else's story.

• Ask students to weigh multiple plausible motivations behind Joe's key wartime decision
• Examine what the novel chooses to show versus withhold about his offscreen development
• Evaluate whether Joe functions as a fully realized character or primarily a supporting figure
• Require evidence drawn from Joe's own scenes, not only his relationship to Jean
• Compare Joe's resilience and rebuilding to Jean's as a distinct, parallel arc

Comparing Joe and Jean as Parallel Arcs

A comparative approach, asking students to analyze Joe and Jean's respective arcs of resilience and rebuilding as parallel rather than simply intersecting stories, can produce genuinely interesting essays that move beyond a simple romance-focused reading of their relationship. Both characters experience significant hardship, endure separation, and eventually engage in rebuilding efforts, Joe in his own ranching and business pursuits and Jean in Willstown specifically, and comparing the specific texture of these parallel journeys gives students material for a genuinely balanced comparative essay rather than one that inevitably centers Jean as the primary subject with Joe as a secondary consideration. This kind of parallel structure analysis also naturally opens into a discussion of how the novel eventually brings these two independent arcs together, which can support a strong concluding section of the essay.

Teachers should be prepared for students to initially resist treating Joe as equally worthy of analysis to Jean, since classroom conversation and even the novel's marketing often centers Jean as the primary protagonist, making it feel counterintuitive to some students to dedicate significant analytical attention to a character they perceive as secondary. Explicitly naming this tendency and explaining why it is worth pushing against, for the sake of building a more complete understanding of the novel's full cast of characters, can help students approach the assignment with genuine openness rather than treating it as an artificial or less important task compared to writing about Jean directly.

Grading Essays Focused on Joe Harman

When grading these essays, it is worth watching for whether students genuinely engage with Joe as an independent subject of analysis or whether the essay drifts back toward centering Jean despite the assignment's specific focus, which is a common pattern given how the novel's overall structure naturally orients readers toward Jean's perspective. An essay that begins with strong, Joe-focused analysis but gradually shifts to discussing Jean's reactions to Joe rather than Joe's own choices and development has not fully maintained the assignment's intended focus, and this pattern is worth naming explicitly in feedback if it appears. This is a subtle drift that can be easy to miss during grading if a teacher is not specifically watching for it, which makes it worth flagging as a particular pattern to check for with this specific assignment.

Feedback on strong essays in this category should specifically acknowledge and reinforce moments where a student successfully treats Joe as a fully realized subject of analysis, since this is a genuinely difficult skill given the novel's narrative structure and worth explicitly recognizing when students achieve it well. Pointing to a specific paragraph where a student analyzes Joe's independent decision-making, separate from his relationship to Jean, as an example of strong, sustained focus helps reinforce this skill for the student's future writing. Teachers who consistently reward this kind of sustained, independent character focus tend to find that students become more comfortable analyzing secondary characters seriously across other texts throughout the year, which is a genuinely valuable and transferable literary analysis skill.