Character Analysis
S-4711, or "S" as he is referred to, is one of the Guardians charged with hunting down enemies to the state. He seems to hover around D-503 for most of the early parts of the novel: shadowing him in the Ancient House, and following him throughout. He seems to be a duplicitous figure, compared both "the warm, tender breath of the Guardian Angel" (12.10), and to a trickster with a "double-curved" shape (2.18). As it turns out, he's part of the rebels as well, seduced by I-330 and employed discreetly against the State. He ends the book by giving D-503 one final piece of knowledge—the possibility that the universe is finite—before they are both captured and lobotomized by the State.