Protagonist

Character Role Analysis

Julie Beaufort-Stuart

The protagonist is the main character in a novel, the person we want to win or prevail. Certainly we're all pulling for Julie over her Nazi captors, and while she shares the spotlight with her best friend, Maddie, even in her own narrative, the story is really mostly about her: after all, she is the title character. In Part 1, which is Julie's narrative, she constantly protests that she's telling a story about Maddie, not about herself, but as von Linden observes, she weaves herself into the story so deftly that it's almost hard to spot, subtly revealing something about herself on every page.

Maddie Brodatt

Maddie is the second protagonist, the one who stars in Julie's narrative in Part 1 and takes over the narrative herself in Part 2. Unlike Julie's narrative, which focuses on herself and Maddie in the past, Maddie's narrative focuses on the present, and because Julie is missing or dead for all but a few pages, Maddie tells us about herself in her own words.