Mom/Vivian Character Analysis

“Mom told me, ‘Don’t be like Icarus, Ellie. Caution is our friend.’ Because I was immature back then, I asked, ‘Aren’t we supposed to take risks?’”

“That’s a good question,” Jay said. “Not immature at all.”

“Mom thought I was being—in her words—obstinate,” Ellie said. [...] “What I’m trying say is: this summer, investigating my cousin’s murder, we might skirt the line between wise and unwise danger. It’s hard to know that you’re flying too high until the feathers start dropping.”

“The two made off with four hundred dollars, Marlboros, and ten bags of dried meat. I remember a news reporter saying, ‘They killed a man for just four hundred dollars.’ And I thought that the word ‘just’ was completely unnecessary. No amount of money would make the crime less heinous. I don’t care if there was four billion dollars in that register, Ellie.”

“If I’m right,” Dan said, “you won’t need to stop waking ghosts, as long as you’re mindful of the difference between the dead and the living.” He wagged a finger at Ellie, as if lecturing a class of rowdy toddlers. “There is a difference. The dead should not seem like kin. When they do? They might devour you.”

“Be patient. Have faith.” Vivian put her arms around Lenore and Ellie and pulled them into a hug.

“Faith in what?” Lenore asked, and she sounded genuinely curious and a little bit spiteful. “Justice?”

“Family,” Vivian said. “It’s all we’ve ever had.”

“But you knew the story,” Vivian said. “Somebody told it to you?”

“Yeah. A teacher. I can’t remember which one. Could have been during English class a few years ago.”

“Did it help you learn about volume, density, and displacement?”

“Uh-huh. It’s hard to forget a story about Archimedes streaking through a city. The mental image alone is burned into my mind.”

“It helps my students, too,” she said. “That’s why some stories are particularly important. They’re more than entertainment. They’re knowledge.”

“Only one kind of monster uses guns,” Vivian said.

Vivian wondered if she’d made the right decision by bringing Ellie to the party. She admired her daughter’s courage. Of course she did! But the world presented too many opportunities for brave people to risk their lives. Wisdom helped reduce those risks; the inexperience of youth increased them.

“There’s a lot I want to learn,” Ellie said. “My mother, her mother, and my grandmother’s mother taught me about the way of our land, our dead, and our monsters, but the times have changed. I need college to prepare for the next Willowbee.”