Character Analysis
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (And Also Fit In)
Zoey Montgomery is your typical high school kid in a lot of ways: All she wants is to feel like a normal teenager and not stand out. Which is why she's disturbed to notice a dead man standing near her locker afterschool one day: "no one else noticed him until he spoke, which is, tragically, more evidence of my freakish inability to fit in" (1.1). There you have it: From the first paragraph of the first chapter of the book, we see Zoey worrying about her inability to blend into the crowd.
Before getting Marked, Zoey looks pretty average, as far as we can tell. When she hides in a bathroom rather than face the afterschool crowds, she checks herself out. We see that she's got eyes with a "hazel color that could never decide whether it wanted to be green or brown," hair that's "long and straight and […] dark," and "high cheekbones, long, strong nose, and wide mouth—more features from my grandma and her Cherokee ancestors" (1.57). Doesn't seem like much cause to worry about sticking out, right?
But as soon as Zoey is Marked with the crescent moon of the House of Night on her forehead, fitting in becomes impossible, and she knows it: "I couldn't walk into the middle of all of them with this thing on my forehead. I'd never be able to be part of them again" (1.53). We all know that teens can be cliquey, so yeah, we can see where Zoey wants to hide her new Mark from everyone. But how long can you hide a permanent mark on your forehead for, huh? Not long.
Want more evidence that Zoey truly longs to fit in? At the full moon ritual she attends, she and the other attendees get to make a wish. Zoey's is: "My secret wish is that I belong […] that I have finally found a home no one can take away from me" (15.88). Seems pretty convincing to us. Even though her looks are somewhere between average and cute on the hotness spectrum, Zoey is plagued by doubts about her ability to fit in, which she starts out the book wanting more than anything. This isn't just a classic teen-navigating-high-school desire, though.
Family Drama
Zoey's family is a big part of why she cares so much about fitting in at school. See, they're not terribly functional, leaving Zoey with the desire to create a nurturing relationship with her friends, a place where she can feel normal and fully accepted. While most teens place a lot of pressure on their social lives, Zoey places just that much more since she doesn't get a whole lot of love at home. Check out what she says right after she gets Marked:
I just wanted to attempt to be normal, despite the burden of my mega-conservative parents, my troll-like younger brother, and my oh-so-perfect older sister. I wanted to pass geometry […] But most of all, I wanted to fit in—at least at school. Home had become hopeless, so I was left with were my friends and my life away from my family. (1.49)
That's some pretty heavy stuff. When Zoey comes home after getting Marked at school, we begin to see why her relationship with her family is so messed up. She really wants to be comforted by her mom: "I was sixteen years old, but I suddenly realized that I wanted nothing as much as I wanted my mom" (2.51). But Zoey's mom doesn't support her, and instead freaks out and calls her step-dad to come deal with the problem. And guess what? He doesn't understand, either.
Weirdly, Zoey's bad home situation is what makes her resolved to run away from home and stay away. She thinks:
I'm going to remember how awful they made me feel today. So when I'm scared and alone and whatever else is going to happen to me starts to happen, I'm going to remember that nothing could be as bad as being stuck here. Nothing. (3.40)
So Zoey actually draws strength and resolve from her crummy family life in a sort of twisted way—it drives her to have the guts to head off to the House of Night by not really giving her anything to stay home for.
Luckily Zoey's entire family isn't terrible, and her grandma is actually pretty awesome. Zoey knows she can always count on her in times of trouble, saying, "During those awful first months after Mom married John I think I would have shriveled up and died if I hadn't been able to escape every weekend to Grandma's house" (4.14). And Zoey's grandma really cares about her. When Zoey collapses, Grandma Redbird takes her straight to the House of Night, knowing it's her best chance to heal.
Oh, and while we're on the whole family bit, Zoey's genes contribute to her supernatural connection. She explains:
Grandma Redbird said that it was obvious that the Redbird Wise Woman blood had skipped over her daughter, but that was only because it had been saving up to give an extra dose of ancient Cherokee magic to me. (5.4)
So not only does Zoey have the cultural background in Cherokee life and language thanks to her grandma, but there's a hint that her DNA carries extra goodies to help her along the way, too.
The picture Zoey paints us of her family gives us a good sense of why her life is so messed up: Her mom's inattentive, her step-dad's a jerk, and her siblings pretend to fit in in order to escape notice. Only her grandma really cares for her, though that caring goes a long way. Understanding Zoey's family dynamics helps us see how her background influences her behavior, ranging from her boy troubles to her desire to care for her new friends.
Bashful with the Boys
Zoey's got a history of bungling romantic relationships. But as we take a stroll through her dating disasters, keep in mind that a lot of her boy blunders are typical for teens, and that Zoey's under a lot of extra pressure as she Changes.
Before getting Marked, she refers to Heath (a typical football jock-type) as her "almost-boyfriend" (1.8), meaning they're kinda-sorta but not-quite broken up. The way she puts it is: "I'm sorry, but I don't want to go out with a guy whose main focus in life has changed from trying to play college football to trying to chug a six-pack without puking" (1.12). He sounds like a winner, right? It's no wonder Zoey's feeling meh about him.
If you're wondering why Zoey dated Heath at all, well, we're right there with you. After she's Marked, Zoey runs into Heath in the school parking lot and suddenly feels massively attracted to him: "Hell, we'd been making out for a year, but he'd never made me feel like this—nothing ever like this" (2.38). What we're hearing is that Zoey stayed with Heath for so long, despite a lack of fireworks, because… well… we're not really sure why. And maybe she's not either. Maybe Zoey's not so good at romantic relationships. But then again—remember how she longs to fit in.
In another instance of Zoey being clueless, she develops a crush on the school hottie, Erik Night. When she recounts to her buds how he was looking at her, they ask if she smiled at him. Zoey's response: "Ah, crap. I bet I hadn't. I bet I just sat there and stared like a moron and maybe even drooled" (14.30). Sounds like she's got to work on her game a bit, right? But when we remember how desperately she wants to be normal—and how abnormal this means she feels—it makes sense that she doesn't act more smoothly in this encounter. She lacks self-confidence, after all.
When Zoey and Erik (finally) kiss, she reacts in a totally unexpected way. She tells us:
[…] when we broke off the kiss we were both breathing hard, and we stared at each other. As my sense started to return to me I realized that I was totally smushed against him and that I'd been standing there in front of the dorm making out like a slut. (24.74)
It seems to us like Zoey has internalized some of the negative stereotypes about sexuality that circulate in our culture, like the idea that enjoying intimacy makes you a slut. Since she's spent so much of her time longing to fit in, it's not surprising that she'd be especially tuned into dominant cultural ideas—she's seen them as a key for acceptance, after all. But as we see over and over again in her interactions with boys, Zoey really needs to learn to follow her gut and makes peace with who and how she is in the world.
Mystical and Marked
When Zoey's first Marked, she begins to experience really strange things. Even though all this stuff is weird and new, she has to learn to incorporate it into her identity as a fledgling. First, she intimidates some of Heath's buddies, and she notices: "Then I felt it. A tingling sensation that crawled over my skin and made my new Mark burn. Power. I felt power" (2.27-28). Zoey's never really been in a position of power before, so this is new and a little scary.
Then there's the desire for blood that Zoey feels from the day she's Marked onward. It (understandably, if you ask us) creeps her out: "I remembered how hypnotically beautiful Heath's blood had been, and the rush of desire I'd felt for it" (2.48). At least once she arrives at the House of Night, she learns that other fledglings feel this way, too, though never as early as she does. In this regard, Zoey's not quite as different as she thinks.
When Zoey gets her first taste of blood, not knowing that she's drinking blood, she loves the taste of it, though later she's horrified to realize that she drank blood. Even worse, when her almost-ex Heath shows up, she's drawn to get a lick of his blood. She worries that this is turning her into a freak: "no-damn-body bothered to explain to me that the tiniest speck of his blood would turn me into… into… a monster" (18.17). Zoey really seems to be struggling with the changes taking place in her life and in her body. And since blood lust is one of them, um, we don't blame her.
Another new, weird thing is that Zoey not only has the outline of a crescent-shaped Mark on her forehead (like all fledglings do), but it also becomes filled in by the time she arrives at the House of Night. Whenever she catches someone staring at her, she thinks, "maybe he was just curious about my freakishly colored-in Mark, like practically everybody else was" (12.79). Even in this place where everyone's kind of different, Zoey feels a little extra different—but now it's because she's a bit more magical than her peers, even if this makes Zoey feel weird.
To add to the list of strange mystical stuff that happens to Zoey, during her first full moon ritual, she can somehow feel each element being invoked. The rest of the ritual affects her too: "I could feel her words wash against my skin and close my throat. I shivered and the Mark on my forehead suddenly felt warm and tingly" (15.82). Like most of the stuff we've listed so far, that doesn't seem to be normal for newbie vampyres. But unlike in high school where Zoey was more normal than she felt, here she really isn't typical—Zoey is special amongst vamps.
By the time Zoey's adventures have concluded, we also learn that she has a rare affinity to feel all five elements, that her vampyre Mark is surrounded by the tattoos that only mature vampyres get, and that she's able to Imprint on a human. Zoey's not thrilled about all this stuff, but she has to learn to deal with the fact that she is spiritually special and set apart from the rest of the fledgling vampyres in the school. She's always felt different, but now she actually is.
Leadership Material
Interestingly, though, despite being bad with boys and having a rocky relationship with her family, Zoey has the chops to become a leader in the vampyre world—and all thanks to the ways in which she's different. When she has a vision of Nyx, the Goddess of the night and patroness of the vampyres, Nyx tells her:
"Zoey Redbird, Daughter of Night, I name you my eyes and ears in the world today, a world where good and evil are struggling to find balance." (5.59)
Whoa. That's a pretty massive declaration from a goddess to a teenager. Zoey doesn't feel ready for such a big responsibility, but she has to deal with it.
The real shocker comes later, when Zoey's been at school for a few nights, and she actually decides to take action to fix things. Aphrodite's being groomed for a leadership position but is screwing everything up, leading to Zoey telling her bestie:
"Aphrodite gets away with too much crap. She's mean. She's selfish. She can't be what Nyx wants for a High Priestess." (20.24)
Figuring out what Nyx wants from her and carrying it out becomes a big part of Zoey's life. Sometimes this means listening to what is likely Nyx's voice inside her head, despite Zoey's fear that she might be going crazy. But the more Zoey accepts this internal guidance, the stronger she becomes as a leader.
Like when Zoey decides to take down Aphrodite, she hears the voice in her head telling her to value her friends in this fight: "The familiar voice floated through my mind, and I realized that I shouldn't question the new instinct within me that seemed to have been born when Nyx kissed my forehead and permanently changed my Mark and my life" (22.53). It's odd, but part of Zoey's journey in becoming a leader is learning when to surrender, trust, and listen. Maybe not the easiest task for a chick who grew up mistrusting her entire nuclear family, but definitely key.
The breakthrough for Zoey in terms of her leadership capabilities is when she (and her buds) stop Aphrodite's botched ritual circle from harming anyone. Zoey tells Aphrodite that her reign of mean girl terror is over, saying:
"You're finished, Aphrodite. You're no longer leader of the Dark Daughters. […] I didn't come to the House of Night asking for these powers. All I wanted was a place to fit in. Well, I guess this is Nyx's way of answering my prayer." (28.106-108)
Considering that Zoey started out as a frustrated, insecure teenager, it looks like she's come into her own as a powerful chosen leader. While at first her biggest concern was just fitting in, now she's on board with being special and set apart if it serves a higher purpose. Clearly Zoey is special, and her transformation from yearning to blend in to accepting her leadership position is a, er, mark (pun totally intended) of maturity by the time this installment in the series ends.
Zoey's Timeline