Homer Simpson

**Homer Jay Simpson, Sr.** (born May 12, 1956), is the protagonist of the show and the spouse of Marge Simpson and the father of Bart Simpson, Lisa Simpson, and Maggie Simpson. Homer is overweight, lazy, and often ignorant to the world around him. Although Homer has many flaws he has shown great caring, love, and even bravery to those he cares about. He served as the main protagonist of the TV series and the 2007 film.

Homer works as a low level safety inspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant in Sector 7G, although he is often incompetent and mostly sleeps on duty and eats the donuts that are provided. He spends a great deal of his time at Moe's Tavern with his lifelong friends Barney, Carl, Lenny, and bartender Moe. At his home, he can often be found sitting on the couch mindlessly watching TV while snacking on food and drinking Duff. Homer is also the only son of Abe and Mona. When Homer gets provoked, he strangles Bart for pressuring him.

Homer may just be a normal man but he has had many great achievements and experiences in his life. He has won a Grammy, an Academy Award, a Pulitzer Prize, been to space, and has saved Springfield more than once. He also may have some form of superhuman endurance as he has been seriously injured many times but survived.

He is named after Matt Groening's father Homer Groening. In a series of interviews in 1990, Groening reportedly stated that he named the character after the Homer Simpson in The Day of the Locust, a 1939 novel by Nathanael West, according to Planet Simpson, but neither explanation is considered definitive.

## Biography

Homer Jay Simpson was born on May 12, 1956. He was raised on the Simpson farm by his parents until they were forced to move out due to Homer spooking the cows by jumping out of a bale of hay and scaring them into giving sour milk, causing the bank to foreclose it. At some point during his childhood, Abe (who was in his early forties at the time of Homer's birth) seemed to feed beer to Homer Simpson, but he quit drinking beer until he was older upon Barney's suggestion after he caused a multi-car pileup in his play-school car. When Homer was between nine and twelve years of age, Mona went into hiding following a run-in with the law. However, before she started protesting, she took Homer and her husband to the Woodstock Music Festival, where Homer ended up briefly adopting the Hippie lifestyle (and Abe Simpson attempted to send him off to the Vietnam War as punishment for wanting to be a hippie, but obviously failed, given Homer's age at the time).

At age 12, Homer along with Lenny, Carl and Moe Szyslak went over to a deep gorge for a nice swim, but the water was drained. When investigating why the lake was reduced to a muddy pit, he stumbled upon a decomposing corpse inside the pipe, greatly traumatizing/bullying him and leading to his 'occasional' overeating.

Homer attended Springfield High School and fell in love with Marge Bouvier. After high school, Homer and Marge bought an apartment at Springfield Place. During this time, Marge gets a letter accepting her into college. To pay for her tuition, Abe gives Homer a job at Simpson Lazer Tag as well as this, along with Lou, Lenny and Carl, Homer is part of a barbershop quartet. When Marge becomes infatuated by her professor, Homer changes the band's name to Sadgasm and they invent grunge music. Marge realizes that she really loves Homer, and she goes back to him. At some point between finishing high school and marrying Marge, Homer briefly served in the US Army, but never saw combat. Due to a clerical error, he was discharged two weeks early and years later after a disastrous dinner party with his old sergeant, Homer was forced to complete his tour of duty. When the couple were in their mid-20s, Marge became pregnant with Bart (after discovering this, Homer tore out half of his hair). At this time Homer was working at Sir Putt-A-Lot's Merrie Olde Fun Centre, turning the crank that spins the windmill. The two got married in Shotgun Pete's 24 Hour Wedding Chapel, a small wedding chapel across the state line. They spent their wedding reception alone at a truck stop, before ending up at the Bouvier House, where they lived at the time. After failing to get a job at the newly built Nuclear Power Plant, Homer left Marge to find a job by which he could support his family. He went to work at a taco restaurant called the Gulp 'n' Blow, until Marge found him and convinced him to return home with her. As a result, Homer confronted Mr. Burns and secured a job at the Plant. Two years after Bart was born, Marge became pregnant with Lisa (after discovering this, Homer tore out the remains of his hair, leaving out only three mere strands on his head), shortly before the couple bought their first house. Homer's second leap to stardom was his success as the lead singer and songwriter for the barbershop quartet The Be Sharps, even winning a Grammy (he later complains that a Grammy isn't worth winning). During his time with the group, Homer was frequently absent from home, which put stress on his marriage. After the group broke up due to creative differences, Homer went back to Springfield to continue his old life.

When in his 30s, Homer prepared a budget so that he could work at his dream job, a pin monkey at the Bowlarama Bowling Alley, owned by Barney's uncle Al Gumble. The budget included buying regular toilet paper and that only one of the kids could go to college. Unfortunately for Homer, Marge became pregnant with Maggie around this time, shortly after he started his new job, and not being able to support his family, he went back to the Nuclear Plant. Since then Homer has started many jobs, including being a professional astronaut for NASA, but has ended up back where he began at the Nuclear Plant. He has nearly caused the destruction of Springfield a couple of times, after a nuclear meltdown at the plant and polluting Lake Springfield with his pet pig's (and his own) waste.

### Childhood Summary

Homer's childhood was a tragic one. He lost his mother at a young age and his father never took notice to Homer. This caused Homer to be very insecure about himself and underachieving things thinking he lacked the skills to do so which left him behind in school and life in general.

### Jobs

“*(To his safety rally) Friends, you have come to depend on me as your safety watchdog so you won't scrape yourself or stub your toes or blow yourselves up. But you can't depend on me all your life. You have to learn that there's a little Homer Simpson in all of us, and I'm going to have to live without your respect and awe. The only reason I'm telling you this is I'm going to be leaving you, but don't worry. I have just been appointed the new safety inspector at this very plant with a big, fat raise!*”
―Homer Simpson[src]   In Homer Scissorhands, he worked as a hairdresser, but then he got tired of it and returned to his old job at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant.
When first joining the Power Plant, Homer had a nameless job handling plutonium. He was fired by Sherri and Terri's father, who was his supervisor, for creating a deadly gas leak. He was later rehired to safety inspector for Sector 7G, after complaining about the safety of the plant itself. Ironically, the accidents that occur at the plant have doubled every year since Homer was made safety inspector.

Homer rarely attends his job, and yet hardly gets fired, and always has his job waiting when he plans to get rehired and has impulsively quit occasionally to pursue other careers, although he always ends up losing or quitting these jobs. On one occasion, Homer has misinterpreted a threat about losing his job as a hint that he can take the following day off.

Homer also applied for a job as Santa, to make up for his missed Christmas bonus at the power plant.

### Appearance

Homer's appearance is that of an overweight balding man. He has a perpetual five-o'clock shadow that will reappear virtually in seconds if he ever shaves, and at one point just popped back in fast complete with a 'pop' sound effect. Despite his overweight status, and hate for exercise, he has on occasion shown surprising physical prowess and agility for a man of his body type, such as when training for Whacking Day and he hits several pop-up Snakes with kicks and even back-flipping. His baldness is contributed by several factors. Upon finding out whenever Marge was pregnant, he would tear out a substantial amount of his hair. Another contribution is working at the nuclear plant for so many years that the exposure to radioactivity has caused most of his hair to fall out. Another frequent topic on Homer's obesity is his large posterior which is often joked about by Bart. His eyes are black and he is 6 feet tall (183 cm). He wears a white polo shirt, blue jeans, white underpants and gray loafers.

## Personality

“*(To Lisa) Now, you lost someone special and it hurt. I never lost anyone special to me. Everyone special to me is under this roof. It's true. Now, you'll have lots of special people in your life. There's probably a place they hang out and the food is good, and guys like me are serving drinks. Maybe I can't explain all this, but I can fix your dollhouse. At least I'm good at monkey work. You know, monkey? You know what I mean? I can hold these nails in place with my tail.*”
―Homer Simpson[src]
“*Marge, I have always carried myself with a certain quiet dignity. Tonight, you robbed me of it.*”
―Homer Simpson[src]
“*Look, Marge. You don't know what it's like. I'm the one out there putting his ass on the line. And I'm not out of order. You're out of order! The whole freakin' system is out of order. You want the truth? You want the truth? You can't handle the truth! 'Cause when you reach over and put your hand into a pile of goo that was your best friend's face, you'll know what to do! Forget it, Marge. It's Chinatown!*”
―Homer Simpson[src]
“*How dare you talk about Ned Flanders like that. He's a wonderful, kind, caring man. Maybe even more so than me. There have been times when I lost patience with him, even lashed out at him, but this man has turned every cheek on his body. If everyone here were like Ned Flanders, there'd be no need for Heaven. We'd already be there.*”
―Homer Simpson[src]
    Homer is a pure moron who can go back and forth from being downright horrible to be extremely caring and loving man. Homer's personality is one of frequent immaturity, frequent stupidity, dim witness, selfishness, laziness, and explosive anger; one might say it is that of the "Average Joe". He also suffers from a short attention span which complements his intense but short-lived passion for hobbies, enterprises and various causes. Despite his family flaws, he is a loving father and husband, even if he can be ignorant or oblivious to families feelings and ideas. When he thinks he has let anyone he loves down, it really does effect him, and in the end, will do anything for them. Another contribute to his "Working Joe" persona was that he has also shown to be sensitive about his masculinity; being initially upset over Marge becoming a police officer as he though it made her "the man of the house", as well as refusing to call a contractor when Marge wanted her kitchen remodeled as to not emasculate his pride.

Homer is prone to emotional outbursts; he gets very envious of his neighbors, the Flanders family, and is easily enraged at his son, Bart, and strangles the boy in an exaggerated manner. His trademark phrase to strangling Bart, "Why you little...!" and on one occasion, "Why you little bastard!" He also spanks Bart sometimes and, in one case, Lisa. One time, he was too busy to spank them, so he told them to go to their rooms and spank themselves. He does not show compunction about this, and is not attempting to hide his actions from people outside the family, even showing disregard for his son's well being in other ways, such as leaving Bart alone at a port, or allowing Bart to go court for skateboarding naked on his dare when all he would have to do is attend a one hour parenting class signifying not only his disregard for Bart but his extreme laziness.

Homer also possesses an extreme dislike for his sisters-in-law, Patty and Selma Bouvier. This is because they often talk down on him for the kind of man he is, selfish and dimwitted. He also openly calls them ugly. He uses labels such as "The Grusome Twosome", "Fatty and Smellma" and "Two Sobbing Trolls". He also gave his children the impression that Patty and Selma are horrible and nasty witches, which is the reason why the kids don't like spending time with their aunts. The sisters in turn, hate Homer as much he hates them. Patty and Homer have a very vile, antagonistic relationship but his relationship with Selma has rarely softened up over the years.

While Homer has repeatedly upset people and caused all sorts of mayhem in Springfield, these events are usually caused by either his explosive temper or lack of foresight. Except for expressing annoyance at Ned Flanders, Homer's actions are usually unintentional. Most of his explosive anger is targeted on Bart, because of something stupid or bad he had said or done. Despite their disadvantages, these common outbursts saved Homer from dying of a pentup rage-induced heart attack.

While Homer's stupid antics often upset his family, he has also performed acts that reveal him to be a surprisingly loving father and husband, such as selling his cherished ride on the Duff Blimp and using the money to enter Lisa in a beauty pageant so she could feel better about herself, giving up his chance at wealth to allow Maggie to keep a cherished teddy bear; spearheading an attempt to dig Bart out after he had fallen down a well, even though he hates doing physical labor and arranging a surprise second wedding with Marge to make up for their lousy first ceremony, even going so far as to hire one of The Doobie Brothers as part of the wedding band and getting a divorce from Marge, essentially making their second wedding a "real" one.

Despite his hatred of manual labor, Homer does a surprising amount of DIY work around his home. He built a jungle gym, a costume of Florida for Lisa, a birdhouse and spice rack for Marge (however, these are shabby at best and two of them actually fell apart). He also remodeled his kitchen when Marge felt insecure about hers after meeting the neighbor's deluxe one however this was more because he felt emasculated when Marge tried to phone a contractor.

Homer's stupidity and ignorance make him clueless to sensitive matters as well as when he is being insulted or his life is in danger. An example is when he came close to drinking a beaker of sulfuric acid but was spared after his colleague, Frank Grimes knocked the acid out of his hand. Instead of being shocked, Homer only responded with jovial delight and laughter. He was also completely oblivious to Grimes' hostility towards him, only being aware that the two of them were enemies after the latter made it painstakingly clear. Homer was an atheist and a homophobe. He adheres to no religion and only goes to church because Marge constantly forces him to. In Homer the Heretic, he quits church altogether but later chooses to go as he was saved from an inferno, which is in his eyes a miracle. In the climax of the same episode he is seen falling asleep during Reverend Lovejoy's sermon. He also paid no respect to Jesus' resting place after being granted a trip to Bethlehem by Ned Flanders; however, he did come to believe himself a messiah after suffering a hallucination from days in the desert while searching for Ned (who actually just got a glass of tepid water).

Homer tends to derive amusement from the misfortune of others. He is a chronic thief and borderline kleptomaniac which ranges from petty to grand theft, stealing everything from TV trays to power tools and air conditioners, even an entire room of the Flanders House from Ned Flanders. He has also stolen golf balls from the local driving range, office supplies (including computers) from work, and beer mugs from Moe's Tavern.

Homer has a vacuous mind, but he is still able to retain a great amount of knowledge about very specific subjects. He often shows short bursts of astonishing insight, memory, creativity and fluency with many languages! Homer is also extremely confident; no matter how little skill or knowledge he has about anything he tries to do, he has no doubt that he will be successful. However, his brief periods of intelligence are overshadowed by much longer and more consistent periods of ignorance, forgetfulness and stupidity. Homer has a low IQ due to many factors. Some of which include: his alcohol problem, exposure to radioactive waste, repetitive cranial trauma, and the crayon lodged in the frontal lobe of his brain. He also implied that he would have been at least a bit smarter and more athletic, if not by a substantial amount, if his father had tried to give him encouragement rather than beat him down. Another large factor of Homer's unintelligent is his inheritance of the "Simpson Gene" which causes all male members of the Simpson family to become more and more unintelligent as they grow older. It is also implied Homer repeated second grade, most probably due to the Simpson Gene kicking in.

But what is probably the biggest cause of his simple-mindedness was an incident that happened when he was six years old and goofing around by shoving a 16 pack of crayons up his nose. When he had shoved all of them up his nasal passage he sneezed the crayons out. Not all of them however. Unbeknownst to him, one of the crayons got lodged in in the right lobe of his brain. Homer would not learn this fact until adulthood when he was forced to take a job as a human guinea pig to support his family where the crayon was found in a 3D x-ray of his brain (shortly after Dr. Hibbert admits that every time he ever viewed an x-ray of his brain he would always unknowingly block the crayon with his thumb which is why it was never found before). The doctors tell Homer that they could possibly try to remove the crayon via surgery and it would either greatly increase his intelligence or kill him. After slight consideration, Homer chooses to take the risk. The operation ended up being a great success and with the increased blood flow in his brain, Homer's intelligence skyrocketed.

His intelligence was said to jump up fifty points when he had the crayon removed, bringing him to an IQ of 105, slightly above that of an average person (though he showed far above average intelligence), but he went back to his old self when he had it reinserted, presumably lowering his IQ back down to its original 55. This IQ score is, however, likely a joke or oversight on the producers' part, as someone with an IQ of 55 would be unable to look after themselves and would be classified as severely mentally handicapped. Also from the level of intelligence he showed it's much more likely that his IQ was boosted to 135-155. Despite his handicap, Homer does have a degree of long term, calculated planning of what might happen, such as when, shortly before taking his "forget-me-shot" from Moe Szyslak, requested for their anniversary party to have a Moon Jump, due to realizing exactly what will happen afterwards.

While Homer's lack of intelligence and short attention span normally just results in him looking like a fool, it also sometimes causes him to unintentionally bring harm to the people around him. One example is when he dumps a piece of industrial garbage in the garbage can at Krusty Burger, fallowed by a lit match which he used to light a victory cigar. The combination of the two caused a fire on the supply lines for the fast food chains of spring field and caused chain reaction destroying all the restaurants in the process.

Also, it also makes him less aware of how what he says might affect people emotionally, like for a note quiz where he asked Ned Flanders about his sexual life, forgetting that his wife had passed away six months prior. His ignorance at one point even cost his family their home since he didn't understand how a home equity lone worked, putting them massively in debt and making it so they could no longer afford their mortgage. Though luckily, the house was purchased by Ned, who allowed them to rent the living space.

Homer has at times debated against his brain. Occasionally, a specific body part such as his face, stomach or liver is also shown debating with his brain. In one notable scene, Homer's mind actually leaves his body out of boredom, causing him to collapse. Homer is also inclined to retreat into fantasy, such as daydreaming of Germany as "the land of chocolate".

Homer's attitudes toward women, romance, and sex are occasionally shown. While Homer's marriage with Marge is occasionally strained, it seems generally happy. Despite this, Homer is often tempted with other women, and usually shows no qualms with gawking at (and drooling over) attractive women. Homer almost had an affair with Mindy Simmons, but ended up not wanting to. He has made the occasional remark denoting his attraction to other women (including his neighbor's wife), even in front of Marge on an occasion, but always shows his devotion to Marge in the end.

In earlier seasons (such as Season 1), Homer's personality was different. Homer was an angry, grumpy, ignorant man who got embarrassed by his family (instead of the other way around) but generally loved them. He also was prone to angry outbursts, such as yelling at Bart and Lisa, strangling Bart (which has continued in later seasons), and giving Krusty the Clown the middle finger in court after Homer had assumed it was him who robbed the Kwik-E-Mart.

Homer has since developed into a less intelligent nicer person in later seasons. Homer's "angry personality" still sometimes surfaces up, usually whenever getting pressured by Bart.

### Religious Beliefs

“*God I gotta ask you something; what's the meaning of life?
Homer I can't tell you that...
Common...
You'll find out when you die!
I can't wait that long...
You can't wait six months?..*”
―Homer asking God about point of following his religion Despite attending church every Sunday, Homer is not very religious, and it is likely that he only attends church because he knows that Marge would be hurt and shocked if he did not. He does not seem to practice Christian morals and frequently sleeps in church, much to the annoyance of Reverend Lovejoy. He also admitted that in addition to sleeping in church, he also mentally undresses the female churchgoers. He often mispronounces the name of the Christ, calling Him "Jebus". In "The Simpsons Movie", before entering church, he says, "Relax, those pious morons are too busy talking to their phony-baloney God."
When asked by Bart what religion Homer belongs to, he replies, "You know, the one with all the well-meaning rules that don't work out in real life. Uh… Christianity".

Despite this, he is a Christian and willingly attends church after Ned, Apu and Krusty saved him from a house fire. He was also inadvertently baptised by Ned, initially reacting violently before speaking in a religious manner, and returning to his normal self thereafter when questioned by Ned. Homer also tried to become a good Christian in "Tis the Fifteenth Season".

However, in "The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed", Homer thinks that he is the Messiah due to Jerusalem syndrome.

Homer had actually met God face to face several times and has even gotten permission from him in a dream to skip church.

### Alter-Egos

Homer became a superhero named Pie Man when the Rich Texan makes Lisa cry. He chucks pies in the faces of evildoers or people who deserve to be pied, uses the basement as a Pie Cave and his car as the Piemobile. Bart is his sidekick as Cupcake Kid. He also tried to don a graffiti alias as "***El Homo***", which was meant to be a Mexican take on his name, but erased it when he realized the alias was Spanish for homosexual.