Reginald Bull Character Analysis in The Plague of Doves

Reginald Bull is the organizer of the town-site expedition to survey what will eventually become Pluto. Bull hires Henri and Lafayette Peace as guides and English Bill as a cook, while he convinces Joseph Coutts and Emil Buckendorf (among others) to come along as additional surveyors. Though Bull is initially confident, eager to profit from the town-site trip, he struggles with missing his girlfriend, a cousin of the Peace brothers. Bull is the first surveyor to lose hope, deciding to turn around and return home even though to do so means certain death. While the rest of the men survive the arduous journey, Bull dies of starvation in Joseph Coutts’s arms. Later, Joseph Coutts will go on to meet and marry Bill’s former girlfriend (who becomes Judge Coutts’s grandmother).

Reginald Bull Character Timeline in The Plague of Doves

The timeline below shows where the character Reginald Bull appears in The Plague of Doves. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...see a future with the homely Dorea, so when he meets a man named Reginald Bull, who’s planning to go on a town-site expedition on the Dakota-Minnesota border, Joseph is eager... (full context)

In addition to Bull and Henri and Lafayette Peace, Joseph Coutts is joined on his trip by Emil Buckendorf... (full context)

...The other men, too, begin to fantasize about the women they have left behind, particularly Bull, who almost dropped out of the trip because of a love affair. (full context)

...gives all the men stomach problems. One night, the men are in such distress that Bull breaks out the medicine his lover gave him, a kind of laudanum. For the first... (full context)

...from a wolf, and Bill grows eager to help the Peace brothers however he can. Bull, however, feels increasingly hopeless. Eventually, he decides he will walk back to his hometown. Shortly... (full context)

...the dog catches a squirrel, two catfish, and even a snapping turtle. By the time Bull makes his way back to the camp, starved almost to death, the other men are... (full context)

A few months later, Joseph Coutts finds Bull’s old girlfriend, a relative of the Peace family, and tells her how much Bull loved... (full context)