50 pages • 1 hour read
Katherena VermetteThe Break
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A 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
Stella
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussions of sexual assault, addiction, and racism against Indigenous people.
Beginning with Stella’s perspective, the narrator positions her as almost completely independent from the other women in her family despite their close bonds with each other. Although she appears to be closed off from her family, Stella is a rounded character due to the complexity of her past and her struggle to identify herself both within and outside of her family. One of her first thoughts is how “[her] hands look like her mom’s did, older-looking hands for a young woman. Old-lady hands. Her Kookom had hands like this too” (7). Right away, vermette positions Stella as part of both her mother and grandmother, as though she does not exist independently from them even if she is physically not with them. In this moment, she refers to both of them in the past tense, even though her Kookom is still alive, which nevertheless indicates a lack of closeness between them. As the novel progresses, Stella unravels how much guilt she feels for not being involved with her family anymore and for witnessing but not intervening in Emily’s sexual assault. Her character arc revolves around her shedding her guilt and rejoining the family.
Stella is a dynamic character because of the internal development that she makes by the end of the novel. Her husband, Jeff, has asked her not to see her family, and even though she abides by his wishes, she feels contempt for him. He “[forces] her into a hug,” and Stella simply “waits until he’s done” (15). This moment indicates that she is living for him and not for herself. However, once Stella visits Kookom close to the end of the novel, she decides to start taking action for herself. When she decides to spend the night with Kookom, she “thinks of all the steps, everything to do” (207), and she follows through with her decision by calling Jeff to let him know her own choices. She even tells Kookom that she wants to go back to school, which will allow her to pursue her own passions. Although these are small moments in the primary plot of the novel, vermette’s use of these small decisions illustrates a development within Stella.
Emily
As a young teenage girl at 13, Emily begins the novel with a naive excitement at the opportunity to spend time with an older boy, Clayton, outside of school. She focuses on having a first kiss and she believes in the power of connecting with others. Her focus also lies on her crush and how she feels about herself: “Emily is thirteen. She feels ugly and fat most of the time and is positive no one has ever, ever liked her” (17). By following Emily’s thoughts and feelings with a matter-of-fact statement of age, vermette suggests that such negative perceptions are standard for teenage girls, subtly critiquing the normalization of these perceptions. Emily nevertheless maintains an idealistic view of the world. She plays with her best friend, Ziggy, and their time spent together is filled with laughter and giddiness, which further illustrates her young, naïve attitude. She leans on Ziggy just as she does the women in her family.
However, as the novel progresses, Emily’s world shifts from innocent excitement about a first kiss to the traumatic aftermath of a sexual assault. Despite most of the plot centering around this sexual assault that she experiences, Emily only has two chapters that narrate her perception. This illustrates a drastic dichotomy and shift between her character in Part 1 and Part 4. She no longer views the world through a lighthearted lens but feels pain and a wanting to be rid of this pain. She states that she understands why people crave to be “nothing.” Although she has not had much experience with addictive substances, she begins to mirror the mindset of the characters who do have addictions to drugs and alcohol like Cheryl and Rain. On the other hand, Emily still embodies the desire to nurture and take care of those around her by not providing all the details of the sexual assault. She claims to remember everything that happened that night, but she believes “the only thing [she] can do to make any of this better” is to shield her family from the truth (307). Her inner thoughts illustrate how caring she is despite her own inner turmoil. Her healing and recovering from this trauma are in motion by the end of the novel but left partly ambiguous as the reader never has access to Emily’s thoughts after Chapter 26.
Cheryl
Cheryl, who has an overarching view of her family, spends most of the novel attempting to reconcile with the past as she maintains the role of caregiver for not only her daughters and grandchildren but also her mother. Through her role of caregiver, she plays an observer, which allows her (and therefore the reader) to understand the other characters’ mannerisms and helps her to provide the support they need. When observing Lou, the narrator illustrates, “Even at thirty-five her girl can still shout the way she did when she was fourteen, but Cheryl can only let her be” (53). Within this moment, vermette illustrates how Cheryl both recognizes Lou’s internal battle and understands what exactly it is that Lou needs. This is also seen when Tommy watches Cheryl as she sits next to Emily on the hospital bed in Chapter 12. Cheryl does not simply provide comfort or space for the women in her family, but she has a developed understanding of who they are as individuals, allowing vermette to portray characterization through Cheryl’s perspective. For example, she correlates them to wolves and paints these women in an animal form; she understands the essence of who they are. However, at times, this causes her to struggle with her own self, such as the times that she left Joe to be closer to her daughters in the city. Rather than giving in to her own desires, she believes that her purpose is to be within close proximity to Lou, Paulina, and their children, creating regret for the life that she could have lived.
Cheryl is also the confidant of her family; vermette hence uses scenes with Cheryl to relay revelations. When Stella confides in Cheryl about witnessing the crime, Cheryl rubs circles on her back “just like [Stella’s] Kookom does, just like her mom did” (268). This simple act seen through Stella’s perception proves how Cheryl has a gentle demeanor that propels the other characters to divulge their secrets. Due to this, Cheryl actively works toward helping her family heal. This moment of tender touch portrays something intergenerational aiding recovery rather than compounding trauma, highlighting the novel’s theme of Intergenerational Trauma and The Importance of Healing.
Cheryl is a largely flat character. By the end of the novel, her character has not changed much; she takes her family to the bush to experience a sweating in an effort to help them all cleanse themselves from the past. This moment simultaneously allows for Cheryl to oversee the healing of her family while also attempting to move on from her past.
Tommy Scott
Tommy—the only male perspective in the novel—struggles with his identity as he exists between two worlds. vermette utilizes Tommy as a symbolic character who represents the hardships that Indigenous peoples face in society. Through him, she explores Indigenous Identity in a Colonized Culture. As a police officer, he wants to establish a relationship with the community; he learned about “community policing” at the academy, which involves connecting the police force with those whom they are meant to be protecting (76). However, he feels as though his job is simply writing reports about crimes that will not be revisited. Tommy’s internal battle illustrates how he wishes to be a bridge between the Indigenous community and the white population. However, he tends to feel as though he does not belong anywhere. When he exists alongside Officer Christie and Hannah, he views himself as an outsider.
Like Cheryl, Tommy observes the world around him to gain an understanding of the people within his reality. Just like the members of the Charles/Traverse family, his world is impacted largely by the women around him, especially since he had a traumatic past with his father. When seeing Emily’s aunts, mother, and grandmother, he thinks about how they are akin to his own aunts. He views them as the people who “intimidate the hell out of him” (123). vermette constructs Tommy in relation to others rather than himself, which makes him contrast the other characters who tend to fixate on how they perceive themselves as individuals.
