Character Description

The first time we get a real indication of Cloyd's character is during the time when Sonny and he first meet face to face.  He is hardworking; it never really goes into how he was able to get where he is in the days of the book however he worked his way up and now owns he own apartment building and seems to be quite wealthy compared to other people in the book.  He also has Sonny do his share of the work around the apartment. 

"I knew something like this was coming, though, because I already overheard him telling my mom one afternoon how I had to learn responsibility, how I had to earn my right to stay here." (63) 

Whenever a kid hears this from a parent they always think how ridiculous it is and that they are already responsible, only to find out later that their parents were right.  From this we can see that Cloyd  is at least trying to instill some good qualities into Sonny. 

It is too bad but the good qualities end with that and seeing as how this book is told from the perspective of a teenager who dislikes him, that is the obvious case. From Sonny's perspective(and likely anyone else who meets him)  Cloyd is racist, unappreciative, and condescending, among other distasteful character traits. 

Cloyd speaking of African Americans, "I owns this apartment building, you think I can't let who I want to live here?  That I can't figure out how to not let who I don’t want to live here?"(53).

From just this statement I believe it is pretty obvious that Cloyd is in fact a racist. He is not willing to allow any African Americans to take up residence in his apartment complex.  He goes on to imply that they are lazy, do not pay their bills, he also implies that the African American are making problems for people.          

He is incredibly rude and disrespectful.  At one point Sonny heard him talking on the phone; "I love to eat them tacos, and now I even got myself married to a pretty little Mexican gal."(51)  If that is not disrespectful then I do not know what is.  Of course this is not the only instance of Cloyd being disrespectful, they are scattered all throughout the first hundred pages.

He is also an incredible perfectionist, which in some cases could be considered to be a good quality however he gets angry at Sonny and Sylvia over very simple matters.  For instance, He get angry over the number of toilet paper squares they each use.  He seems to think that three sheets is more than enough. 

Cloyd, while not the absolute worst guy in the world, is a racist, does not care for anyone but himself and thinks he is superior to everyone as well, and is just a hard guy to get along with and like, and it seems as though that is why Sonny dislikes his to such a degree, and I could understand.