Question

Character sketch of 3 men in a boat

Answer 1

The three friends portrayed in Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome are humorous, funny, eccentric, and comical beyond limits. Their humorous exaggeration of the commonplace, routine activities is so amusing that no one can remain without laughing at their blunders. Each out of the pack of three appears to be funnier and more eccentric (Harris of course is the most eccentric). Though different in ideology, they had many things in common, such as love for travelling, bachelorhood, and comicality.

Jerome is the narrator of the novel 'Three Men in a Boat'. He is single, middle-class man living in London. He is fond of history and literature, and spends much of his time day-dreaming about the days when knights roamed the countryside of England. This day-dreaming sometimes gets him into trouble when he does not pay attention to what he is doing.

His sense of observation is quite sharp. He has a wonderful knack of describing incidents in humorous ways. He misses no opportunity to make readers laugh with his intelligent and indirect humour. He does this through his anecdotes. His description of his imagined illnesses is quite humorous! Jerome prefers country peace and serenity to city's noisy and restless life. He believes river should remain open to everyone. He condemns those who put up 'no trespassing' signs or try to restrict the use of the river. At times he gets philosophical and gives the readers some valuable gems of wisdom. for example his advice on how a man should journey through life is worth heeding.


George was not much of a worker, not to mention his commitment to doing work. According to Harris, he had never seen him doing any work at the bank where he worked. Every time he went there, he saw him sitting behind a glass trying to look as if he was doing something. This shows he was a shirker who just looked busy and did nothing!

In chapter 9 when the narrator and Harris asked George to tow the boat, he was not much interested in it. He gave the excuse of being tired as he had had a hard time in the City. He offered to make tea for them instead of towing. But Harris and the narrator insisted on him to tow the boat.


Harris is the funniest character in the story 'Three Men in a Boat'. His extreme ideas about certain things in life are quite funny and ridiculous. Singing is one of them. He  has a conceited misconception about his singing abilities. Harris's friends who have heard him sing believe he must not be allowed to sing. Once Harris got an opportunity to sing at a party. Everyone was quite excited to hear him sing. He surprised everyone by saying he would sing a comic song! As Harris began singing, he paid least botheration to follow the singing conventions such as correct phrasing, vocalization, maintaining proper scale and pitch of voice. While singing, he would stop in the middle of the song, and start arguing with the pianist. He would restart the song and keep on repeating just the first three lines until he forgot the song and again stop singing. Then he would start again, this time standing in front of the piano and ask the gathering to sing with him in chorus. The gathering would start singing, nobody knowing what to sing. Then the pianist would complain about Harris's song and scale. Harris would change the pianist. Thus Harris would make such a donkey of himself trying to sing a comic song!