Delaney

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Delaney is the novel's main protagonist — a liberal humanist and environmentalist who belongs to organisations like the Sierra Club, Save the Children, and the Democratic Party
He is a New York native who moved to Southern California two years before the story begins, and now writes a nature column about local wildlife from his perspective as a recent arrival
He has family money from an inheritance, and because Kyra earns a good income as a realtor, he is essentially a stay-at-home parent — taking care of the household and his stepson Jordan while writing his column from 9am to 1pm on weekdays
He is on his second marriage — Kyra is his second wife, and Jordan is her son from her first marriage

Delaney presents himself as a moderately open-minded person who genuinely cares about nature, conservation, and fairness
He is a perfectionist who jogs, eats healthily, barely drinks, and doesn't smoke
He takes pride in being progressive — he is appalled by his neighbours' racist views early on and speaks out against them
He feels a deep personal connection to nature and spends much of his free time hiking in the canyon near his home
He sometimes identifies with animals that have been transplanted to the canyon, seeing himself as an outsider too

Despite his claimed open-mindedness, Delaney shows selfishness and a tendency toward racial bias right from the start — when he hits Cándido with his car, his first worry is the car, then his insurance, and only lastly the injured man
He gives Cándido just $20 — enough to ease his own conscience, but nowhere near enough to actually help
His acceptance of Kyra's lifestyle shows a passivity and a desire to belong that makes him easy to influence — a weakness that becomes more and more important as the novel goes on
He wants to be seen as a good person, but consistently fails to act like one when it actually matters

Of all four main characters, Delaney undergoes the most dramatic and carefully detailed change — transforming from a moderately liberal person into a paranoid racist focused on defending his community from what he sees as threats, both from coyotes and from Mexican immigrants
Key turning points include: his car being stolen (which he immediately blames on immigrants), a coyote killing his wife's dogs, and finding what he thinks is an immigrant camp on a hike
He starts using the word "they" to blame all immigrants as a group, rather than thinking about individuals
He sets up night-vision cameras to catch a graffiti vandal, arms himself with a gun, and eventually goes hunting for Cándido — even after discovering that the graffiti was actually done by Jack Jr.
By the end of the novel, he has become essentially the same as the characters he once looked down on — Jack Jardine and the other wealthy, prejudiced men of Arroyo Blanco

On the surface, Delaney values nature, fairness, and equality
Underneath, he values comfort, routine, and fitting in — and these prove far stronger than his stated principles
He wants to be a good liberal, but he is ultimately unwilling to make any real sacrifice or take any real stand to back that up
His deepest goal seems to be preserving his own comfortable, ordered life — and anyone who threatens that order becomes the enemy

Delaney is the central character through whom Boyle explores how racism and xenophobia can grow even in someone who considers themselves open-minded and progressive
He is a warning: that good intentions without genuine courage or self-awareness are worth very little
The fact that Cándido — the man Delaney hit with his car and later hunted with a gun — saves his life at the end is deeply ironic and highlights just how much Delaney misunderstood everything throughout the novel
He represents many well-meaning people who talk about equality but, when tested, retreat into fear and prejudice