52 pages • 1 hour read
Patricia FordeThe List
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | 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
Letta
Letta is the novel’s main character. She is a few years shy of 18 when the story begins. She is proud to be Benjamin’s apprentice, but also enjoys the fact that her position as a wordsmith exposes her to words that many people never learn. Letta is curious, compassionate, and has a fierce temper. She is also, as far as she knows, an orphan. Her parents disappeared when she was very young. If they are still alive, the reader never learns of it.
Letta believes in Ark and in Noa’s mission. Part of her narrative evolution is the transition from a believer in John Noa’s ideals to hating the man who created the system of Ark. Initially, she feels the same horror for the Desecrators as anyone else, and she thinks Ark is worth any sacrifice. Whenever she doubts, she simply imagines the Melting and makes herself feel the tragedy of the end again: “Letta could feel their presence brooding in the background as she tried to imagine the awfulness of it. The towering wall of water bearing down, the screams, the vain attempts to flee” (14). Anything is worth avoiding another event like the Melting.
Letta is also sensitive and suggestible to art, which she initially interprets as proof that art is subversive and dangerous. Music moves her, although she pities those who can’t see it for what it is: “She found it hard to believe that the woman would have left John Noa to go live with Desecrators because of something like music. Did people never understand that they had to make sacrifices for Ark?” (85). But by the end of the novel, she understands that music’s power to evoke feelings—especially unpleasant or sad feelings—represents the power and value of art, not its risk.
Letta’s empathy—as well as her intense hatred of injustice—makes her growth possible. She lets Marlo in and nurses him even though she knows that decision could land her in danger, especially since she doesn’t know if he is a Desecrator. She tries to help Daniel as well. She dislikes Werber for his arrogance, but his arrogance manifests largely as a lack of empathy, which she abhors. She cares for Salom when his leg is injured, because it is simply the decent thing to do. Ultimately, Letta appears incapable of ignoring those in need, regardless of who they are.
Marlo
Marlo is a young man of approximately Letta’s age. He is a member of the Creators—Desecrators, to Letta and the rest of Ark—and functions as Letta’s love interest. The reader’s introduction to Marlo occurs when he goes to the shop after being shot. This immediately signals Marlo’s involvement in something dangerous. He makes Letta uneasy, but he serves as the tool that helps her see the Creators and their ideals as something beautiful, not as a destructive force.
Marlo’s unique feature is that he dreams vividly, frequently, and believes that dreams are messages. Rather than dismiss the dream as a random piece of his subconscious, Marlo believes that all dreams have a meaning, and each person must draw the right conclusion from the dream. This confuses and intrigues Letta, who thinks, “He was like someone from another planet. There was something so unearthly about him, so otherworldly. Who believed so strongly in dreams that they obeyed them?” (171). At one point, he claims that Letta summoned him in a dream, which is why he arrives unexpectedly, just when she needs him. Marlo’s belief in the portents of his dreams, whether or not those dreams actually do tell the future, nevertheless show that he is comfortable trusting his instincts.
Marlo urges Letta to allow herself to act according to her nature. He holds her, himself, Noa, and everyone else to the same standard when he says, “We have to be what we are” (86). Marlo lives his convictions, setting an example for others to emulate. His life is frequently in danger, but Marlo is at peace. He honors his nature and trusts that his instincts will serve him if he is brave enough to follow their prompts.
John Noa
John Noa is the novel’s antagonist. He is a charismatic leader who is responsible for presciently creating the city of Ark, saving many from the Melting. Despite Noa’s erudition, charisma, and vision, he is a ruthless authoritarian who believes he is carrying out what is best for the planet and humanity. Letta, like the other children of Ark, “had grown up on stories of his great valor, his clever thinking, his vision” (177).
Noa is a conflicted, often contradictory character. He is willing to sacrifice whatever he must to prevent another disaster like the Melting. He is disillusioned, bitter, and often hateful towards humanity. His revulsion finds its specific focus in language as a manifestation of everything that is wrong with human nature. Despite his conviction about words as the root of all evil, Noa does not claim that language actually caused the Melting—meaning, words are not what melted the polar ice caps. However, language is a tool of human expression. In Noa’s view, because language expresses humanity’s true nature, it is a tool that only highlights humanity’s entitlement, selfishness, cruelty, and tendency towards self-annihilation.
During one of his internal monologues, Noa remembers the politicians:
Words from politicians assuring people there was no such thing as global warming. Words from industrialists who justified their emission of CO2 into the atmosphere. Words to hide behind. Words to deceive. Useless, dangerous, destructive words (96).
The politicians are analogous to the skeptical people in the Biblical story of Noah, the people who mocked Noah for building the Ark while the skies were still clear. They did not realize he was right until the flood was beginning.
On that note, it’s impossible to read the character of John Noa and his city of Ark without allusions to Noah and the Ark. Each of them took drastic action to save the human species from uncontrollable flooding. However, in the Bible, Noah acted out of faith. He built the Ark because God commanded it. That was enough to put him in motion. John Noah, on the other hand, grew so bitter about the progression towards the Melting that he chose to chart humanity’s future on his own. Whatever his ideals may have been, his willingness to perform sadistic medical experiments on less privileged, expendable people, show a man who could never truly be acting in humanity’s best interest.
Noa tells Letta that the politicians “used words to keep people in ignorance” (216). Here, Noa betrays his willingness to act hypocritically if he believes the ends justify the means. Noa is just as guilty of keeping people in ignorance as the pre-Melting politicians, he just does it in a different way. Noa treats the right to exist with language as an exam that humanity has failed. Ironically, he acts from a sense of justice and duty when he wishes to restore humanity to its pre-language state, to place people back on equal footing with the animals. Letta recalls learning that “John Noa would say that they talked themselves into the disasters that they created. The animals lived peacefully on the planet—[…] in harmony with nature. Man […] had spoiled everything. Man and his words” (70).
Despite his conviction, his willingness to sacrifice everything for Ark, and the losses he has witnessed, it is Noa’s love for Amelia that causes him the most emotional tension. He describes Amelia in his internal monologues as someone who will always be there. When he has Leyla killed, he risks losing Amelia, which makes him panic. Even though he is working for the regression of humanity, and wishes to destroy the future, the thought of a future without Amelia torments him.
Benjamin Lazlo
Benjamin is the “master wordsmith” who takes Letta on as his apprentice. He is generous, kind, competent, and serious about his duty as wordsmith. Although he is absent for most of the novel, his influence of Letta shapes many of her most pivotal decisions. In the absence of her parents, Benjamin serves as Letta’s father-figure, mentor, teacher, and professional trainer. As he dies, Letta reflects on what he has meant to her:
She’d always thought of him as a stopgap, someone who would take care of her till the people she loved came back. Now she realized he was the person she loved, and he was the person who loved her, and she didn’t want to lose him (211).
Benjamin was a brilliant academic who was also close friends with John Noa. Unfortunately, Noa eventually views Benjamin’s discomfort with his plan as a betrayal. Benjamin experiences torture at the hands of the gavvers and dies of the trauma caused by the enforcers of his former friend.
He wrote extensively about the dangers of global warming prior to the Melting but was dismissed as a paranoid conspiracy theorist. However, he doesn’t become disillusioned with humanity in the same way as Noa. In fact, it’s difficult to find an interaction with Benjamin in which he doesn’t speak positively, with a goal of giving hope to whoever he is speaking with. His final words to Letta are, “Just remember… the birds still fly south” (220). Although this is cryptic at the moment, he is encouraging Letta to maintain optimism. Benjamin knows that the instincts of animals are usually correct, and the fact that birds are still heading southwards should give her hope that they have a real destination. He also has the foresight to stash a package of Letta’s parents’ maps for her, which will help her continue her task without him, while hopefully learning more about her real parents.
