#mr. hewitt

[corinne-the-healer]

Characters who die before the story starts

I've been thinking (oh God, not that again) about characters in the series that seem like they primarily exist in relation to other characters, to the point that their own personalities and characteristics are either secondary or non-existent: specifically, Mrs. Hewitt, Mr. Hewitt, and The Return's one in particular.  

And I think I figured it out.  

They're all dead and are from communities that don't have records* of them.  Since they're dead, we don't actually get to see them.  We can hear second-hand accounts of the characters, but we never see the characters themselves.  Similarly, because there are no records*, we rely on word of mouth to learn about them.  We only see them through the eyes of those they left behind, as that's all that can be remembered of them.  

For me, one of the most interesting points of the series was how it played with the idea of a limited and unreliable narrator.  History, the current situation, and characters all vary significantly depending on who is describing them.  We all have limited knowledge, we all have bias, and the way we view and describe the world is significantly influenced by those two facts.  The fact that Mrs. Hewitt, Mr. Hewitt, and the Return's one in particular are all portrayed in relation to the people remembering them highlights this fact.  We see them through a limited, biased perspective, just as we see the history of New World.  

*I realize that Mrs. Hewitt left her journal, but that seems to be more of a record of what happened, as opposed to a record of her own character.  While we still get a taste of her character through her journal, we don't get nearly as much of a feel for her character as we would if we saw a well-written scene of her doing something, or if we had maybe a short written piece about her life.  

**Also, I'm really sorry if this is unorganized or rambly or doesn't make sense.  It's 2 in the morning and my mind was not meant to function this late at night.  Sorry if anyone is annoyed by me flooding the tag tonight.  I'm just in the mood to write some meta for the series.  

[corinne-the-healer]

Mrs. Hewitt and others

Is it just me, or were we never given Mrs. Hewitt's first name?  Or Mr. Hewitt's first name?  Or any sort of name at all for The Return's one in particular?  That always annoyed me a quite a bit.  I like having an individual name for characters.

Also, am I wrong?  Were any of these characters named?  Am I just really oblivious?

EDIT: Part of my reasoning behind this is that I like being able to describe characters as individuals, not just by how they relate to others.  That reasoning primarily applies to Todd's parents.  In terms of his dad, I was bothered that all we get to know is who is family is, that he did farm work, and that he died to protect his wife; in terms of his mom, I was mostly annoyed by the fact that there are so many female characters in fiction that are primarily described by their relation to male characters.  

However, Mrs. Hewitt is not a very extreme example of this, and gets much better treatment than most other female characters like that, and pretty much every other female character is very well fleshed out, so this doesn't bother me quite as much as it would if this were a different work.  Also, I feel like a lot of why she wasn't fleshed out much was because a significant theme throughout the series was how difficult it can be to pass on accurate information about the past.  Considering that, it makes sense that we don't get a very fleshed out image of Mrs. Hewitt, since we only see her through snippets of memory and a few journal pages.  While I see how it makes sense in context, I would have really liked it if she had been named.  

Back to Mr. Hewitt: I wish we had heard Ben would talk about Todd's father the way he did about Todd's mother.  Maybe if he even said a bit about his personality.  I was really disappointed that we learned so little about his character.  

Oh God, this is just all over the place.  I'm just rambling now.  Maybe I'll come back to this and actually write organized thoughts about it.