Mack

Mack serves as the novel's primary antagonist, but Applegate avoids depicting him as a one-dimensional villain. He is pragmatic and self-deceiving, genuinely believing that his small gestures — like giving Ivan a TV and crayons — represent real care. His cruelty is ordinary; it emanates from someone who has convinced himself that providing food and minor comforts equates to looking after another creature's well-being.

Mack raised Ivan from infancy, providing him with a television and art supplies in what he perceives as a loving upbringing. However, he has kept Ivan confined in a small enclosure for decades, treating him as a commercial asset. While Mack believes their relationship is warm, Ivan's increasing moral awareness of his own exploitation silently criticizes everything Mack refuses to acknowledge about himself.

Mack purchases Ruby to address the declining ticket sales at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall — she is a revenue strategy rather than a responsibility he willingly takes on. When Ruby struggles with her performance routines, Mack uses a claw-hook to force her compliance, revealing the coercion hidden beneath his paternalistic language. This incident serves as the novel's clearest illustration of his tendency to treat animals as inventory.

Mack depends on Stella's trained performances but neglects her visibly worsening foot injury, failing to take adequate action even as her condition deteriorates. Her death from that untreated injury exemplifies Mack's priority of managing appearances over acknowledging reality. Stella's fate directly drives Ivan to promise to protect Ruby, making Mack's negligence a crucial plot element.

Mack does not undergo a genuine moral awakening; he represents stagnation rather than growth. Public scrutiny, sparked when Julia shares Ivan's artwork, compels zoo authorities to intervene and rehome the animals. This decision arises from external pressure rather than a voluntary choice, leaving Mack at the novel's end much like he began: a man focused primarily on economic survival.

Julia, the daughter of Mack's janitor George, never directly confronts Mack, yet her compassionate perspective disrupts his world. By sharing Ivan's artwork, she initiates public scrutiny that dismantles Mack's carefully crafted image of benevolence and ultimately forces him to relinquish the animals. Her innocence achieves what no direct challenge to Mack's authority could.

George works for Mack as the mall's janitor and follows his employer's orders, but he demonstrates genuine empathy toward the animals — a quality that Mack mimics through superficial gestures but never truly embodies. Their contrast is intentional: Applegate uses George's quiet, authentic care to highlight what is absent in Mack's self-proclaimed affection for the creatures he owns and profits from.

Mack symbolizes the human tendency to commodify animals while disguising that exploitation as care and ownership. Applegate employs him to argue that treating living beings as commercial assets constitutes a form of violence, even when the owner considers himself benevolent — and that self-deception may pose the greatest danger, as it eliminates the chance for accountability or change.