Protagonist

Character Role Analysis

Dana

Dana is the one whose perspective we get from the first line onward and she stays our moral center for the rest of the book. Her problems are our problems and we root for her to make it out of this book alive. Or at least this is the reaction the book is hoping for. Octavia Butler uses all kinds of tricks to get us to sympathize with Dana, but at some point she has to put the ball in our court and say, "Yeah, this is the main character of this book. I hope you're on her side." Making the antagonist a slave owner also makes it pretty hard to cheer against Dana.