Character Clues

Character Analysis

Names

In a book called Freewill, you just know it matters that our main character's name is Will. Though he spends most of the book feeling like a passive victim in his own life, his name lets readers know that this isn't actually the case—he's exercising his freewill all along. Though Will takes a while to realize it, his name clues readers into the fact that he's always living a life based on choices.

Angela's name also adds to her characterization. It refers to angels, after all, so while she claims to not have much use for people and doesn't come across as your typical helper type, from the moment we meet her, we're clued into the fact that Angela is here to help Will. Which is exactly what she does in her own way, first reluctantly befriending him, and then coming to really care about him, even standing up to him and pushing him to be a better person. Does she have a halo around her head? Not exactly—but she's just the kind of angel our antihero needs.

Props

Will makes things out of wood, so while he claims not to care about this, he is creative and more skilled than he realizes. The whole time he feels useless, his woodworking lets readers know that he actually isn't the wastoid he believes himself to be. He makes beautiful things, and is praised for his talent by his teacher and peers alike. What he makes shows that he is busier and more hardworking than he remembers and more talented than he believes, letting readers know there's hope for him yet… even if Will just can't see it.

Thoughts and Opinions

We spend the whole entire book inside Will's head, so, yeah—thoughts and opinions are major tools of characterization in this book. And guess what? Because of this, we have a whole lot to say about them over in Will's analysis in the "Characters" section. So hop on over there to explore the inner workings of our main man's dark mind and what, exactly, his thoughts and opinions tell us about him.