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Harold Stein is both Jude St. Francis’s adoptive father and a father figure to Jude’s friends. In this role, Harold is influenced by the loss of his own son Jacob, differentiating him from the stoic Mr. Ragnarsson and the imperious Mr. Irvine. Through Jacob’s death, Harold learned to temper his expectations and allow his son to discover happiness on his own terms. In Jude’s case, this means allowing the young man to pursue a private legal career rather than public service and refraining from asking questions about Jude’s past or private life. Harold is also a legal professor who believes that contracts are the basis of civil society, a belief that informs his interactions with the four friends. Even when they are angry with one another, Harold believes they owe one another the duty of friendship, and, mostly through patient listening, he encourages them to reach out to one another. Finally, Harold contributes to the novel’s structure through diary entries he writes to Willem in which he reflects upon the characters’ pasts and imagines alternate futures for them. In this role, he serves as the witness and legacy bearer to the “little life” they had.
