Dan Character Analysis

She inhales deeply. It is so beautiful; it is so much more than…well, than almost anything, really. In another world, she might have spent her whole life reading. But this is the new world, the rescued world—there’s not much room for idleness. So much has been risked and lost; so many have died.

It seems suddenly easy to bake a cake, to raise a child. She loves her son purely, as mothers do—she does not resent him, does not wish to leave.

Leaving the desk, she can hardly believe she’s done it. She has gotten the key, passed through the portals.

The candles are lit. The song is sung. Dan, blowing the candles out, sprays a few tiny droplets of clear spittle onto the icing’s smooth surface. Laura applauds and, after a moment, Richie does, too.

“So,” Dan says after a while. “Are you coming to bed?”

“Yes,” she says.

From far away, she can hear a dog barking.

They settle into another silence, one that is neither intimate nor particularly uncomfortable. Here she is, then, Clarissa thinks; here is the woman from Richard’s poetry. Here is the lost mother, the thwarted suicide; here is the woman who walked away. It is both shocking and comforting that such a figure could, in fact, prove to be an ordinary-looking old woman seated on a sofa with her hands in her lap.

She inhales deeply. It is so beautiful; it is so much more than…well, than almost anything, really. In another world, she might have spent her whole life reading. But this is the new world, the rescued world—there’s not much room for idleness. So much has been risked and lost; so many have died.

It seems suddenly easy to bake a cake, to raise a child. She loves her son purely, as mothers do—she does not resent him, does not wish to leave.

Leaving the desk, she can hardly believe she’s done it. She has gotten the key, passed through the portals.

The candles are lit. The song is sung. Dan, blowing the candles out, sprays a few tiny droplets of clear spittle onto the icing’s smooth surface. Laura applauds and, after a moment, Richie does, too.

“So,” Dan says after a while. “Are you coming to bed?”

“Yes,” she says.

From far away, she can hear a dog barking.

They settle into another silence, one that is neither intimate nor particularly uncomfortable. Here she is, then, Clarissa thinks; here is the woman from Richard’s poetry. Here is the lost mother, the thwarted suicide; here is the woman who walked away. It is both shocking and comforting that such a figure could, in fact, prove to be an ordinary-looking old woman seated on a sofa with her hands in her lap.