INTJ 8w9 Characters

Ralph is an industrious schemer who makes most of his money in the stock market by reading trends and seeing how he could use people to his advantage. No sooner that his brother lies cold and dead in the ground than does he figure out how to get rid of Nicholas, so he can use his niece, Kate, to influence his investors and potentially marry her off to one of them—he doesn’t care how this affects her reputation, because it serves his ultimate end. He senses Nicholas’ connection to Madeline and wants to use it against him as well; and we learn in a flashback, he married a younger woman for her money, but forced her to keep it a secret so her father would not disinherit her. He is forever thinking ahead and planning for financial windfalls; in his eyes, everything you do out to turn a profit. When Kate is upset at her treatment at the hands of his philandering rake acquaintances, he tells her they are not “my friends… I have no friends,” and says they are a financial investment; without their approval, she could not live as she means to. He also doesn’t suffer from any lack of callousness; he says the world knows what kind of a man he is, and “I do not grow poorer,” implying that it hasn’t hurt his business at all. His introverted feeling shows in how callously he treats anyone he does not care about (although he has some sympathy for Kate, who reminds him of the wife who abandoned him), and of the sudden shock he experiences when he learns of his son’s survival, mistreatment, and death. He cannot stand knowing the truth and takes his own life, rather than yield to his pain. His inferior Se shows in how reckless he becomes in his single-minded intention to destroy his nephew—he says he will put his ruin ahead of his own business, and indeed, that’s what happens. He also plies his investors with drink, to lower their inhibitions, without ever drinking a drop himself.

Enneagram: 8w9

Ralph says that people who attempt to be good are ‘always weak,’ and he despises his nephew for his goodness and for moralizing at him. He becomes so resentful and full of hatred toward Nicholas that he says he would ‘destroy his fortune’ just to destroy the boy entirely—and he does neglect his money for that very purpose, as he looks for ways to wrack revenge upon him in repulsion for his perceived goodness and moral fortitude. He shamelessly uses his family for his financial gain, strategizing how to use them to turn a profit, and then is so shaken by the discovery of his financial losses and the death of his crippled son that he hangs himself—unable and unwilling to face dying a penniless old man, thus taking his fate into his own hands. His 9 wing moves between intentional numbness and carelessness, and being occasionally touched by the emotions of others—he is affected by Kate when she asks him in tears why he did not protect her (he should protect her), and reminded of the tenderness he shared with his wife—a wound he does not care to reopen.