Character analysis
Reuben Scott
in Joe Turner's Come and Gone by August Wilson
Reuben Scott is a young boy living next door to Seth and Bertha Holly’s boardinghouse in August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, which takes place in Pittsburgh in 1911. While his stage time is limited, Reuben plays an important role both dramatically and thematically: he connects the living with the spiritual elements woven throughout the play. His key storyline revolves around his deceased friend Eugene, who asked Reuben to release his pigeons after he died. However, Reuben, feeling scared and hesitant, decided to keep the pigeons instead, breaking his promise to Eugene. This betrayal weighs heavily on him, leading to an encounter with Eugene’s ghost, who appears and insists that the pigeons must be freed. Reuben’s straightforward recounting of these supernatural experiences—without any adult doubt—supports the play’s message that the spirit world is both real and always present.
During Zonia Loomis's short stay at the boardinghouse, Reuben also forms a gentle and innocent friendship with her. Their moments together—playing, sharing secrets, and even stealing a kiss—bring some of the play's most lyrical and uplifting scenes, contrasting with the deep traumas faced by the adult characters. Reuben symbolizes a generation that remains close enough to ancestral spiritual truths to embrace them without fear, reflecting Wilson’s theme that memory, duty, and the supernatural are intertwined in the African American experience. His journey shifts from guilt and avoidance to a sincere confrontation with his feelings, ultimately leading to his release.
Who is Reuben Scott?
Reuben Scott, a neighbourhood boy of about ten or eleven, lives next door to Seth and Bertha Holly's Pittsburgh boardinghouse during the summer of 1911. August Wilson allocates him limited stage time compared to the adult boarders, yet his role remains significant. He occupies the boundary between the living and spirit worlds with a clarity that the adults have largely lost. His subplot, centered on a broken promise to a deceased friend, quietly reflects the play's focus on unfinished spiritual business. Wilson presents Reuben without irony or condescension; the boy's perceptions are portrayed as valid, his moral dilemma as sincere, and his eventual release as a genuine form of redemption.
What is Reuben Scott's arc and motivation?
Reuben's arc centers on a singular breach of faith. His friend Eugene died, having made Reuben promise to free his pigeons. Reuben retains the birds—driven by grief, attachment, or a simple fear of what such an act would signify. This failure brings about guilt, which creates a space for Eugene's ghost to emerge. When Eugene appears and reiterates his demand, the supernatural occurrence is presented as real rather than nightmarish or fantastical; the play emphasizes its authenticity. Reuben's motivation transitions from avoidance to confrontation: he must acknowledge his obligation to the deceased and act accordingly. Freeing the pigeons represents his version of the larger task that Herald Loomis must undertake—both must honor a debt to the past to progress into the present.
What are Reuben Scott's key moments?
The most intense moment in Reuben's storyline occurs when he recounts the appearance of Eugene's ghost, delivered in the straightforward tone of someone reporting observed fact rather than imagined events. Wilson's stage directions and dialogue clarify that Reuben is not performing for Zonia's benefit; he is testifying. This scene, set in the boardinghouse yard, is vital as it establishes the spirit world as an undeniable aspect of the play, validating Bynum's visions and preparing the audience for Loomis's profound supernatural encounter inside.
Equally significant are Reuben's interactions with Zonia Loomis—their conversations in the yard, their exchanges of small confidences, and the parting kiss before Zonia departs with her father. These moments are lyrical and tender against the backdrop of the troubled adult plot. The straightforward goodbye illustrates Reuben's ability for emotional honesty, a quality that several adult characters struggle to embody throughout the play.
What are Reuben Scott's most important relationships?
Zonia Loomis represents Reuben's most enduring relationship, with its brevity enhancing its meaning. Their friendship forms quickly due to proximity and childhood sincerity, and it concludes abruptly when Herald Loomis reclaims his daughter. The farewell kiss conveys genuine affection; Wilson uses their connection to suggest that the younger generation still possesses the capacity for uncomplicated relationships, which trauma has complicated for their parents.
Bynum Walker serves as Reuben's implicit spiritual counterpart among the adults. Bynum connects people to their songs and perceives the spirit world as naturally as others interpret a face. Reuben's casual acceptance of Eugene's ghost aligns him temperamentally with Bynum, suggesting a continuity of African spiritual perception that bypasses the skeptical, practical generation represented by Seth.
Seth Holly starkly contrasts with Reuben: his rational approach and emphasis on the concrete make him essentially oblivious to the emotional wavelengths that Reuben and Bynum navigate. The literal positioning of Reuben's home next door to Seth's boardinghouse spatially embodies this tension—youth and openness alongside hardened realism.
Bertha Holly's nurturing creates a safe domestic environment for the friendship between Reuben and Zonia. Her lack of skepticism regarding the children's world, combined with her steady supportive presence, contributes to the feeling that the boardinghouse yard embodies a space of potential rather than danger.
How is Reuben Scott connected to the other characters?
- Zonia Loomis
Reuben's most sustained relationship in the play. The two children form a quick, genuine friendship during Zonia's stay at the boardinghouse. They play together, confide in each other, and share a parting kiss before Zonia leaves with her father. Their bond provides the play's most innocent and hopeful emotional register, suggesting the possibility of connection and renewal for the next generation.
- Bynum Walker
Bynum is the adult character most attuned to the spirit world, and his presence in the boardinghouse implicitly validates Reuben's supernatural experiences. Reuben's matter-of-fact account of Eugene's ghost mirrors Bynum's own ease with spiritual forces, suggesting a generational continuity in the capacity to receive and honor ancestral messages.
- Herald Loomis
Reuben witnesses Herald Loomis's intense, frightening presence at the boardinghouse. Like the adult characters, Reuben senses Loomis's spiritual weight, and Loomis's journey toward self-reclamation runs parallel to Reuben's own smaller arc of fulfilling a broken promise and achieving release.
- Seth Holly
Seth is the pragmatic, grounded landlord next door to Reuben's home. Seth represents the skeptical, earthbound perspective that contrasts with Reuben's openness to the supernatural, highlighting the generational and temperamental divide in how characters relate to spiritual experience.
- Bertha Holly
Bertha's nurturing warmth extends to the children around the boardinghouse. Her steady, welcoming presence provides the safe domestic backdrop against which Reuben and Zonia's friendship blossoms.
Questions readers ask about Reuben Scott
What promise does Reuben Scott break, and why does it matter?
Reuben breaks his promise to his deceased friend Eugene by keeping Eugene's pigeons instead of releasing them after Eugene died. This breach of faith is the moral center of Reuben's storyline: the unresolved obligation draws Eugene's ghost back to demand the pigeons be freed, mirroring the play's larger argument that debts to the dead must be honored before the living can move forward.
Does Reuben Scott actually see a ghost in the play?
Yes — Reuben recounts Eugene's ghost appearing and insisting the pigeons be released, and Wilson presents the encounter as straightforwardly real, not imagined. Reuben delivers the account in the tone of someone reporting observed fact, which reinforces the play's message that the spirit world is an undeniable, ever-present reality rather than a childhood fantasy.
What is Reuben Scott's relationship with Zonia Loomis?
Reuben and Zonia form a quick, genuine friendship during her brief stay at the boardinghouse, playing together, sharing confidences, and exchanging a parting kiss before she leaves with her father. Their bond provides the play's most innocent and lyrical emotional register, suggesting that the younger generation retains a capacity for uncomplicated connection that trauma has largely stripped from the adults around them.
How does Reuben Scott's arc parallel Herald Loomis's arc?
Both characters move from spiritual blockage to a form of liberation by the play's end. Reuben must acknowledge and fulfill his broken promise to Eugene before he can be released from guilt; Loomis must confront the spiritual wound inflicted by Joe Turner before he can reclaim himself. Wilson uses their parallel journeys to show that honoring a debt to the past — regardless of age or scale — is the necessary path to freedom.
Why does Reuben Scott understand the spirit world so easily when adults like Seth Holly do not?
Wilson presents Reuben's closeness to the spirit world as a function of generational and temperamental openness: children have not yet adopted the hardened pragmatism that figures like Seth rely on to navigate daily life. Reuben's matter-of-fact acceptance of Eugene's ghost aligns him with Bynum Walker, the play's adult spiritual anchor, implying a continuity of African ancestral perception that rational, earthbound thinking tends to erode over time.
What do the pigeons symbolize in Reuben Scott's storyline?
The pigeons symbolize the obligation the living owe the dead, as well as the broader themes of freedom and transition between life and death. As long as Reuben keeps them caged, he is spiritually stuck — just as Herald Loomis is trapped by Joe Turner's legacy. Releasing the birds enacts Reuben's redemption and serves as a small, concrete image of the liberation the entire play is working toward.
How does Reuben Scott's relationship with Bynum Walker illuminate his role in the play?
Reuben and Bynum are never explicitly paired as mentor and student, yet their temperamental kinship is significant. Both accept the spirit world as naturally as others accept the physical one, and both function as witnesses to forces larger than themselves. Wilson uses this parallel to suggest that the capacity to receive ancestral messages is not unique to Bynum's generation — it persists in children who have not yet been taught to doubt it.
Does Reuben Scott's friendship with Zonia offer genuine hope, or is it too fleeting to mean much?
Wilson frames the friendship as genuinely hopeful even while emphasizing its brevity. The children's straightforward affection — their play, confidences, and parting kiss — contrasts with the deep traumas shaping every adult in the play, suggesting that renewal remains possible for the next generation. Yet Zonia's abrupt departure limits the bond's future, leaving the optimism real but deliberately fragile.
Use this in your essay
Broken promises and spiritual debt: Examine how Reuben's failure to free Eugene's pigeons symbolizes the play's broader argument that unresolved debts to the dead hinder the living. Compare his situation with Herald Loomis's entrapment under Joe Turner.
Children as spiritual witnesses: Wilson grants Reuben direct access to supernatural experiences that adult characters like Seth have dismissed. What does this imply about cultural memory, generational loss, and the interplay between innocence and ancestral knowledge within the play?
The pigeon as symbol: Trace the journey of the pigeons from Eugene's ownership to Reuben's care and their eventual release. How does Wilson utilize this imagery to illustrate themes of freedom, obligation, and the transition between life and death?
Parallel arcs of release: Both Reuben and Herald Loomis transition from spiritual blockage to forms of liberation by the play's conclusion. Conduct a comparative analysis of how Wilson delineates these arcs across age, scope, and dramatic tone.
Hope and futurity: The play is steeped in historical trauma—slavery, the Middle Passage, Joe Turner's forced labor. Discuss whether Reuben and Zonia's friendship offers a genuine note of hope for African American futures, or whether the fleeting and fragile nature of their bond significantly tempers that optimism.