Emily

In a novel in which many characters’ points of view vie for control of the story, Emily is the undoubted protagonist, the young girl through whose naïve eyes the narrative is predominantly told. Emily is a startling child. Emily is only ten years old, and the narrator remarks on “her minute impish erect body: her thin, almost expressionless face: her dark gray eyes contracted to escape the blaze, yet shining as it were in spite of themselves: and her really beautiful lips, that looked almost as if they were sculpted” (66). More than any of the other children, she is on the cusp of childhood and adolescence, and their adventure onboard the pirate ship mirrors the intensity of this internal development.

Over the course of the journey, Emily is forced to commit increasingly odd, violent acts, with little to no understanding of what motivates her to behave in...