The Running Man

Tom Leyton

When Joseph first meets Tom Leyton he is terrified. The first thing he notices is Tom's eyes and he describes these as 'the ghostly remains of a fire that had been swallowed by the night and gone cold'. As Joseph feels extremely awkward, the first impression of Tom Leyton's appearance is quick and from that he describes Tom as wearing loose and dark clothing with large hands and solid forearms and a reddish face framed by sandy hair and a beard.

 

Tom Leyton is quite strongly linked with silkworms, a quite important motif of the novel. As Tom Leyton explains to Joseph how the silkworms are raised, he explains how they have 'become his metaphor for life' as they mirror what life is really like.  ‘They are born, they live and they die. Their life has no purpose, no meaning. And they go on with their pointless existence in blissful ignorance until someone tosses them in a rubbish bin.’ Through Tom Leyton's comparison to the silkworms and humans including himself we see how he sees his life- as a meaningless and endless cycle

 

Tom Leyton is a character with a very dark personality. At the beginning of the novel, he is dark, brooding and pessimistic- not believing in miracles or hope because of his bad experiences in the Vietnam War. Slowly though, as Joseph befriends Tom, he becomes a little more talkative, a little less pensive and starts to believe in certain types of miracles, trying to show Joseph that miracles do exist by stringing silkworm cocoons on the mulberry tree and telling Joseph as he lies dying under the tree that Joseph is his  miracle.

 

Tom Leyton is a very judged and misunderstood character in the novel as he hides away in his house with his sister. This causes people, Mrs Mossop in particular, to make up or twist stories that they had heard about him into lies and gossip, with many of them judging Tom Leyton before they had even met him, speculating about his brief teaching career and now hidden life.