Trust

Benjamin Rask is the investing savant in Vanner’s novel Bonds who is based on Andrew Bevel. Although one of two protagonists, Rask is a relatively static character. The trajectory of his character is a circle, not an arc; he ends the same person he starts as. This lack of change shows that Rask is largely unaffected by people, even his wife. Though Rask loses his entire family before he’s 20, his dispassion and asociability seem to be his natural disposition, not defenses against loss.

The distant third-person narration leaves Rask’s mind a mystery to the reader. Combined with his almost inhuman dispassion, this gives the sense that Rask is an emotionless person whose sole drive is profit. Rask is less a character than the personification of this bare, almost primordial drive for profit: “All he did was work and sleep, often in the same place. Cared not for entertainment. Spoke only when necessary. No friends. No distractions” (124). His utter lack of appetite outside of work frames him as a machine operating apart from human life. The only time he speaks (in the sole line of dialogue in Bonds) is to say “I” (53).