Nicholas and Ralph are foils to one another and are close to exact opposites. Nicholas is virtuous, honest, and generous, while Ralph is immoral, dishonest, and miserly. Nicholas’s assertion to Smike that Ralph is his enemy puts the stakes of the novel into clearer focus. By explicitly pitting the two characters against one another, the novel asks who will win in a contest between the two, and what will that say about which approach to life is more worth pursuing, Nicholas’s or Ralph’s?