47 pages • 1 hour read
Chelsea G. SummersA Certain Hunger
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Dorothy Daniels
Dorothy is the novel’s first-person narrator, who frequently addresses the reader. Although her story is sensationalistic, and she describes herself as both a sociopath and a psychopath, Dorothy is a reliable narrator: She doesn’t spare the details of her crimes or perspectives. Indeed, part of the chill of her character is the frank manner in which she discusses her appetites. Dorothy conveys an emotional distance from most of the events of her life. For instance, she describes the experience of being raped in Italy as “fascinating,” as if it existed outside of her (66).
Dorothy’s primary characteristics are hedonism, selfishness, a need for constant stimulation, vanity, and intelligence. Her primary weakness is her inability to resist her appetites for too long: “My fondness for gratification has always been my downfall” (98). Dorothy cannot throw herself into a project that does not gratify her appetites or appeal to her vanity, which, for her, includes having a child or a long-term relationship.
Dorothy’s observational skills make her a skilled predator. While men think they are winning her over with suave seduction, she is gathering data on them, flattering their worst impulses, and satisfying her own desires. She understands people, and men in particular, to an acute degree, which helps in her crimes and her façade of normalcy.
Although Dorothy is a loner, describing herself “as an emotional dragon, lizard autonomous, diamond-scaled, fire-bright, and handsomely alone in the world,” she dislikes being alone (196). When she is alone, no one admires her or gazes at her with sexual hunger. Besides the men in her life, Dorothy doubts whether she can have friends that are not based on matters of exchange or transaction. Indeed, this is part of what makes her relationship with Emma unique: It’s never entirely clear what they get from each other, which may be part of their mutual appeal.
In terms of her crimes, Dorothy is a serial killer of men. Her case is more sensational given that she is also a cannibal: Dorothy is both a metaphorical and literal maneater. She represents the overlapping of sensual appetites. She is eventually as titillated by murder and cannibalism as she is by seduction, sex, food, and writing. Even in prison, she maintains her popularity and fearsomeness: “There’s a lot to be said for intimidating intelligence and a dearth of conscience, and I possess both” (24).
Ultimately, Dorothy is uninterested in being good or improving herself in ways that do not benefit her. The clearest example of this is her rejection of Alex. She admits that he made her better, but that version of herself was intolerable and boring.
Emma Absinthe
Emma first appears in the novel as Joanne Correa, Dorothy’s temporary roommate at Pennistone College. Dorothy writes that she immediately disliked her. Joanne represents—at first—a type of feminine frailty that Dorothy loathes.
However, Joanne undergoes several identity changes during the novel, and she serves as both a foil and an ally for Dorothy, who refers to her friendship with Emma as both her “greatest accomplishment” and “greatest wound” (47).
Emma is her final identity. Dorothy writes, “I knew Emma before anyone knew Emma. I knew Emma before Emma knew Emma. I even knew Emma before Emma was Emma, for when I first met Emma, she was merely Joanne Correa” (39). Joanne’s other identities—Tender and Emma—are fierce and independent. The more that Dorothy reveals about Joanne, the more inscrutable she seems to the reader, to the point where it can be argued that her meek, frail identity despised by Dorothy was the falsest version of her.
Emma is a chameleon who evolves from timid roommate to aggressive activist, which led to activities requiring Dorothy to bail her out of jail. Like Dorothy, she is also a skilled manipulator of men, as evidenced by her success as a popular phone sex operator. She is uninhibited, adventurous, and willing to use people to create the reality she wants—in this case, the isolated but privileged life of an agoraphobic artist. Dorothy compares her to Emily Dickinson, the reclusive, tormented poet whose admirers visited her, rather than her going to them.
Emma is methodically, commercially controversial as an artist, inserting herself in inappropriate ways into her paintings. She is also an unapologetic, calculated provocateur. She knows that painting her face over the visages of famous men will provoke attention, just as she understands what she is doing when she replaces the face of famous characters from literature with her orgasmic visage.
Dorothy describes Emma as her “best friend, [her] closest ally, and the only human who [knows her] almost as well as [she knows] [her]self” (125). The only way Emma could know Dorothy as well as she knows herself would be if she shared some—or all—of the same characteristics. Dorothy describes them as alternate versions of similar cosmic phenomena when she says that Emma “was the black star to [her] black hole” (214).
One of Emma’s greatest ironies is that she testifies against Dorothy in court, although she is less helpful than the prosecutor had hoped. She is called as a witness, and she has been the most literal witness to Dorothy’s life, to the extent that Dorothy would share it with anyone. Emma represents Dorothy’s paranoia about relationships and her certainty that information is the ultimate power to wield against someone. Emma is, in essence, the true figure of love and companionship in Dorothy’s life.
Marco/Davide Marco Iachino
Marco is the man to whom Dorothy gives the most attention on the page. He hides his true identity, Davide, and is a married butcher from Rome. She describes him as “the most important” of her men, as she met him when she was in college. She has the most history with Marco, and, like her parents’ relationship, she describes them as a merging organism.
Marco is also the only man the reader encounters who actively resists Dorothy, sometimes remaining faithful to his wife. Dorothy describes him as having a “tortured conscience” (127), which is what, according to her, leads to his death.
In terms of Marco’s characterization, the reader has only Dorothy’s descriptions of his body, his temperament, and his history. Like all of her important men, he is handsome, sexually capable, intelligent, and successful. She renders him as less than a well-developed character, however, which illuminates a useful insight into Dorothy. Marco is just something that she uses. He is a two-dimensional character to the reader, not because Dorothy isn’t putting in the work to describe him, but because he is largely a two-dimensional, disposable character to Dorothy.
