Emmeline

Emmeline takes center stage throughout the novel as the story’s young protagonist. She is quite childish at the beginning, the result of being sheltered by her parents her entire life. At the start of the story, she is quick to trust and love, as she doesn’t know anything different from life inside the Republic.

However, Emmeline grows emotionally as she progresses through the novel and loses two pairs, her mother, and her father. She learns to value family and learns what trust really means. As she loses her two main sources of information early on in the story, she must learn to figure things out for herself.

Emmeline transforms into a younger version of her mother once she realizes what the Republic is really up to. She has strong urges to protect her family, and she does this in the ways her mother would have, by...