Dane Character Analysis

Dane, a handsome boy with white-blond hair, is Jenna Fox’s neighbor in California and her classmate at the village charter school near their houses. Possibly a psychopath, Dane displays limited emotions, bullies others, and displays violent and destructive behavior. Though he flirts with Jenna, Jenna suspects that he only does so because he wants to “compete” with Ethan, the boy Jenna actually likes. At one point, Dane accosts Jenna in their neighborhood’s woods, grabbing her wrist and refusing to let her go until she squeezes his crotch so hard he falls down. After this moment, Jenna begins to define her humanity in opposition to Dane’s apparent inhumanity; for example, she frees her friends Kara and Locke’s minds from hellish disembodied suspended animation, even though their memories could prove her innocence in a fatal car accident, in part because she knows that Dane would leave their minds to suffer in order to protect himself.