Mr. Lockwood:

A sad little man with too much spare time

            Lockwood is the story teller of Wuthering Heights. This is ironic because he does very little speaking and a great deal of listening. He, therefore, is (at least in my mind) the story hearer of Wuthering Heights. The only reason he counts as a teller is because he keeps a diary which we are supposed to be reading. The real story teller is Nelly, whom I think Lockwood has a thing for, and I quote: “Gosh that Nelly is a fine serving wench!” It never really goes any further than that though.

            Basically Lockwood just spends his days listening to Nelly talk about Heathcliff and the other residents of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Every once in awhile he attempts to become important to the story by reminding the reader that he’s still listening to her, but high school students are often too entranced by the melodic styling of Emily Bronte to notice these feeble feats. Once he realizes no one cares about him, Lockwood goes back to sitting quietly, and eventually decides to go to London. The break is much appreciated.

            Lockwood returns to Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights later only to find that… no one missed him. Nelly fills him in that Heathcliff is dead, and Catherine is to be married to yet another cousin. Lockwood writes this down. After this the story more or less is over as far as any student is concerned so my plot summary will end here.

            As far as symbolism and the like, Lockwood falls short in this category. He basically just exists. English majors like to find things to talk about and ways to keep their jobs, so they manage to think up things like “he symbolizes the wet patches of the moor”. It would be neat if Lockwood included foreshadowing or alliteration or some sort of silly sounding short story within his tale, but he is writing in a diary and is probably lazy. He doesn’t get graded on literary devices, so he can get away with being boring.

            To conclude in a single breath: LW rents TG gets bored and pries into other people’s lives via Nelly. Eventually realizing that everyone’s insane, he goes to London, comes back and is filled in on a little more plot which he writes in the diary that we, the readers, are reading. Also, despite being a crucial character, he serves no symbolic purpose. Oh, and he likes Nelly.

            The end