Norah

Norah is the story’s protagonist. At the beginning of the story, she is 15-year-old juvenile delinquent who is generally rude and unruly. Norah causes much exasperation for her parents, who eventually decide to send Norah to a facility that is supposedly meant to correct destructive behavior in teenagers. Norah is held in the facility against her will, and she soon discovers that the facility is actually designed around physical and mental torture designed to harm the captive teenagers and destroy their sense of identify and independence. Norah tries to write to her parents to tell them the truth and ask them to retrieve her, but her parents do not believe her.

Norah is strong-willed, and so she does her best to resist the psychological effects of the facility’s practices. She nearly succumbs to the facility’s effects, and she even engages in victimizing other girls, which...