65 pages • 2 hours read
M. R. CareyThe Girl with All the Gifts
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A 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
Melanie
The cornerstone of Carey’s narrative, Melanie is an enigma. Part ravenous monster, part curious student, her emotional growth over the course of the story allows Carey to address important themes: what it means to be human, and whether we really are so different from those we label “monsters.” Melanie outwardly appears to be like any other child; she has a crush on her favorite teacher, she loves the stories of Greek mythology, and she is frightened by the unknown—especially Dr. Caldwell, who only appears to whisk away children who never return. When Melanie scents Justineau for the first time and her true nature asserts itself, the brutal transformation is shocking to both readers and her, and yet her developing maturity allows her to cope with that shock.
Melanie is also special, as both Justineau and Caldwell recognize. She is immensely bright and inquisitive, and she displays a wider and more complex range of emotion than the other children; she is, in effect, more human. Further, she evolves. She develops a keen self-awareness that she faces head-on despite the disturbing implications. She learns not only reading, writing, and history, but also empathy and forgiveness. She respects Caldwell’s knowledge despite the urge she feels to exact revenge for all the children Caldwell has dissected. She risks herself repeatedly to protect the group even though she remembers Parks as cruel inside the base. Melanie’s ability to grow both intellectually and spiritually make her an obvious leader to guide the next generation through this broken world.
Helen Justineau
Assigned to Hotel Echo to assess the children’s psychological development, Justineau quickly loses her objectivity, much to the displeasure of Dr. Caldwell. She and Caldwell butt heads on a regular basis over Justineau’s relationship with her students—particularly Melanie. Justineau, who sees only Melanie’s open mind and willingness to grow, cannot view her as anything but human. While that view is shaken when Melanie scents her and almost bites, it never completely disappears. Justineau’s empathy is part of her natural disposition, but it is also born of her need to atone for her past sins—specifically, for the death of a young boy she killed while driving intoxicated. She confesses this only to Parks, believing the sergeant to be the only one capable of a similar act and therefore the only one capable of understanding.
Her maternal instinct is fierce. She is willing to resort to violence to keep Melanie free of Caldwell’s scalpel. She frequently threatens the doctor, and if circumstances required it, she would no doubt follow through on her threats. Justineau’s protectiveness is sometimes all she has, and it often defies logic. Even when Melanie wants to risk herself for the group’s safety, or when she agrees to be shackled and muzzled, Justineau protests, forgetting that Melanie knows herself better than anyone. Justineau continues to see Melanie as her young defenseless student even after she proves herself a deft survivalist out in the wild. Justineau does change over the course of the story, however, coming to admire Parks—whom she once saw as little more than a sadist—and even to accept Melanie as the leader of the post-apocalyptic world she and the other children inherit. In many ways, by the end of the novel, the roles are reversed: Melanie is the teacher and Justineau the student.
Sergeant Parks
At first glance, Parks appears to be a stereotypical military man: aggressive, duty-bound, and a stickler for rules and regulations. He chastises Justineau frequently for her emotional ties to Melanie, a child he sees simply as a monster. As someone with the physical and emotional scars of battle—he has more close-up experience with hungries and junkers than anyone at the base—he is justifiably reluctant to cut the children any slack.
However, when the survivors of Hotel Echo escape the junker attack, Parks becomes the de facto leader, and he reveals both a flexible and practical side. Parks has been in the trenches long enough to know that rigidity can mean death, and his ego doesn’t prevent him from asking for help or admitting when he doesn’t have the answer. In the process, he throws out his prior assumptions about Melanie. Though he initially refers to her as “it,” as the novel progresses he develops a kind of affection for her, keeping her secrets (for a time) and showing consideration for her anxieties. Justineau sees the change in him, and the two, once enemies, share a night of intimacy before a gang of hungry children infect him. Ultimately, Parks cannot protect himself or the other survivors. Navigating a world teeming with ravenous monsters is too tall an order for one man, but the novel allows him the dignity of dying before the infection can transform him into the very plague he’s been charged with eradicating.
Caroline Caldwell
While it would be easy to dismiss Caldwell as a two-dimensional villain, her obsessive work ethic and devotion to finding a cure give her some measure of credibility, even in her confrontations with Justineau. No matter how sincere Justineau’s feelings for and belief in her students, Caldwell is on the logical side of this argument: The children are infected with a deadly pathogen and safety precautions, even restraints and cells, are necessary. Admittedly, Caldwell’s ego and delusions of grandeur often drive her, but perhaps all great discoveries and innovations share the same spark.
Caldwell also carries a chip on her shoulder despite her purely clinical pretensions. Being left out of the mobile research teams in the early days of the pathogen has left an emotional scar on Caldwell, pushing her forward despite lack of resources and a raging infection that she knows will kill her. While the ends, in her mind, justify her means, it’s difficult to sympathize with someone who decapitates a child with a bone saw or removes another child’s brain in front of their own eyes. Caldwell clings to her clinical objectivity to the end, seeing it as the only logical antidote to the messy emotions that cloud judgment and impede scientific advancement.
Private Gallagher
The product of an abusive home, Gallagher’s stint in the military is his only path out of the trauma. Unfortunately, his assignment to Hotel Echo and the inherent dangers of junkers and hungries present an entirely new kind of trauma. Torn between his fear of death and his fear of returning to Beacon, Gallagher is ruled by his anxieties. The one thing that keeps that fear at bay is Sergeant Parks. Parks is for Gallagher the responsible authority figure he never had as a child, and he clings to the sergeant’s every order like a lifeline. In the military, Gallagher finds a code by which to live—an orderly replacement for the chaos of his childhood. In some ways, he is the perfect soldier—obedient to a fault, never questioning orders. Lurking behind his strict, soldierly façade, however, is the ever-present fear, and one day it asserts itself: Gallagher the soldier becomes Gallagher the terrified child, whose only recourse is to run. Ultimately, this irrational act, coupled with his own repressive past, dooms him: He stops to leaf through a porn magazine, giving the hungry children ample time to ambush him. The tragedy of Gallagher is his inability to overcome his past, which gives him too much empathy. Even as the feral children swarm over him, he cannot bring himself to fight back, seeing them as traumatized children like himself.
