Unwind

by

Neal Shusterman

A 15-year-old ward of the state and a budding concert pianist. Risa grew up in a state home and with the help of her piano teacher, Mr. Durkin, worked hard to demonstrate her worth—an attempt that ultimately fails, as the school decides to unwind her thanks to budget cuts. She manages to escape the bus transporting her out of the school when it crashes to avoid hitting Connor and Lev. As Risa joins Connor on his runaway journey, she shows herself to be shrewd and calculating. She’s an exceptional planner and is very good at reading people, which allows her to manipulate them to survive. She’s incensed when Connor snatches a storked baby off of a porch, but thanks to the time she spent caring for infants at the state home, she knows how to care for the baby, whom they name Didi. Despite fearing Connor because of the fact that he makes bad decisions, Risa can’t bring herself to abandon him and finds herself falling for him. Especially once they enter the safe house system and make it to the warehouse, Risa takes it upon herself to teach Connor some of her skills. She encourages him to carefully watch the kids and take note of who’s in charge, and she tries to impress upon Connor the importance of not playing into the hands of Roland, a bully who manipulates everyone. At the Graveyard, Risa begins to find her place as a medic. She feels as though she has purpose and is hopeful for the first time in a long time. Risa also takes her medical training seriously, so when the Admiral has a heart attack, Risa insists that they must get him to a hospital, regardless of the risk to herself, Connor, and Roland. This lands them all at the Happy Jack Harvest Camp when Roland betrays them. There, Risa struggles with the ethics of playing in the band, which keeps her safe from unwinding, while witnessing the atrocities at the camp. She’s paralyzed in the clapper attack on the Chop Shop and refuses transplant surgery, as being paralyzed means she’s safe from unwinding. She returns to the Graveyard to play piano.

Risa Ward Quotes in Unwind

The Unwind quotes below are all either spoken by Risa Ward or refer to Risa Ward. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Inequality, Injustice, and the Law Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2  Quotes

“Please, Miss Ward. It’s not dying, and I’m sure everyone here would be more comfortable if you didn’t suggest something so blatantly inflammatory. The fact is, 100% of you will still be alive, just in a divided state.”

Related Characters: Risa Ward, Admiral Dunfee, Headmaster Thomas
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

“Anyway, since it was legally ours, we paid for the funeral. It didn’t even have a name, and my parents couldn’t bear to give it one. It was just ‘Baby Lassiter,’ and even though no one had wanted it, the entire neighborhood came to the funeral. People were crying like it was their baby that had died...And that’s when I realized that the people who were crying—they were the ones who had passed that baby around. They were the ones, just like my own parents, who had a hand in killing it.”

Related Characters: Connor Lassiter (speaker), Risa Ward, Lev Calder, Didi, Connor’s Dad, Connor’s Mom
Page Number: 75
Explanation and Analysis:

“People shouldn’t do a lot of things,” says Connor. He knows they’re both right, but it doesn’t make a difference. In a perfect world mothers would all want their babies, and strangers would open up their homes to the unloved. In a perfect world everything would be either black or right, right or wrong, and everyone would know the difference. But this isn’t a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is.

Related Characters: Connor Lassiter (speaker), Risa Ward, Lev Calder, Didi
Page Number: 75
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

Please what? the teacher thinks. Please break the law? Please put myself and the school at risk? But, no, that’s not it at all. What he’s really saying is: Please be a human being. With a life so full of rules and regiments, it’s so easy to forget that’s what they are. She knows—she sees—how often compassion takes a back seat to expediency.

Related Characters: The Teacher/Hannah (speaker), Connor Lassiter, Risa Ward, Didi
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

There’s nothing keeping them tied to this baby anymore. They could stork it again first thing in the morning [...] And yet the thought makes Connor uncomfortable. They don’t owe this baby anything. It’s theirs by stupidity, not biology. He doesn’t want it, but he can’t stand the thought of someone getting the baby who wants it even less than he does.

Related Characters: Connor Lassiter, Risa Ward, Didi
Page Number: 93
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25 Quotes

The fighter in him screams foul, but another side of him, a side that’s growing steadily stronger, enjoys this exercise of silent power—and it is power, because Roland now behaves exactly the way he and Risa want him to.

Related Characters: Connor Lassiter, Risa Ward, Roland
Page Number: 153
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

The days begin to pass quickly, and before she realizes it, she’s been there a month. Each day that goes by adds to her sense of security. The Admiral was an odd bird, but he’d done something no one else had been able to do for her since she’d left StaHo. He’d given her back her right to exist.

Related Characters: Risa Ward, Admiral Dunfee
Page Number: 202
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 52 Quotes

In her mind’s eye she always pictured harvest camps as human cattle stockades: dead-eyed crowds of malnourished kids in small gray cells—a nightmare of dehumanization. Yet somehow this picturesque nightmare is worse. Just as the airplane graveyard was Heaven disguised as Hell, harvest camp is Hell masquerading as Heaven.

Related Characters: Risa Ward
Page Number: 267-68
Explanation and Analysis:

“What do you do with the club feet, and the deaf ears? Do you use those in transplants?”

“You don’t have either of those, do you?”

“No—but I do have an appendix. What happens to that?”

“Well,” says the counselor with near infinite patience, “a deaf ear is better than no ear at all, and sometimes it’s all people can afford. And as for your appendix, nobody really needs that anyway.”

Related Characters: Risa Ward (speaker), Emby
Page Number: 269
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 55 Quotes

“How can you do this?” she asks during one of their breaks. “How can you watch them day after day, going in and never coming out?”

“You get used to it,” the drummer tells her, taking a swig of water. “You’ll see.”

“I won’t! I can’t!” She thinks about Connor. He doesn’t have this same reprieve from unwinding. He doesn’t stand a chance. “I can’t be an accomplice to what they’re doing!”

Related Characters: Risa Ward (speaker), Connor Lassiter, Dalton
Page Number: 274
Explanation and Analysis:
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Risa Ward Quotes in Unwind

The Unwind quotes below are all either spoken by Risa Ward or refer to Risa Ward. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Inequality, Injustice, and the Law Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2  Quotes

“Please, Miss Ward. It’s not dying, and I’m sure everyone here would be more comfortable if you didn’t suggest something so blatantly inflammatory. The fact is, 100% of you will still be alive, just in a divided state.”

Related Characters: Risa Ward, Admiral Dunfee, Headmaster Thomas
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

“Anyway, since it was legally ours, we paid for the funeral. It didn’t even have a name, and my parents couldn’t bear to give it one. It was just ‘Baby Lassiter,’ and even though no one had wanted it, the entire neighborhood came to the funeral. People were crying like it was their baby that had died...And that’s when I realized that the people who were crying—they were the ones who had passed that baby around. They were the ones, just like my own parents, who had a hand in killing it.”

Related Characters: Connor Lassiter (speaker), Risa Ward, Lev Calder, Didi, Connor’s Dad, Connor’s Mom
Page Number: 75
Explanation and Analysis:

“People shouldn’t do a lot of things,” says Connor. He knows they’re both right, but it doesn’t make a difference. In a perfect world mothers would all want their babies, and strangers would open up their homes to the unloved. In a perfect world everything would be either black or right, right or wrong, and everyone would know the difference. But this isn’t a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is.

Related Characters: Connor Lassiter (speaker), Risa Ward, Lev Calder, Didi
Page Number: 75
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

Please what? the teacher thinks. Please break the law? Please put myself and the school at risk? But, no, that’s not it at all. What he’s really saying is: Please be a human being. With a life so full of rules and regiments, it’s so easy to forget that’s what they are. She knows—she sees—how often compassion takes a back seat to expediency.

Related Characters: The Teacher/Hannah (speaker), Connor Lassiter, Risa Ward, Didi
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

There’s nothing keeping them tied to this baby anymore. They could stork it again first thing in the morning [...] And yet the thought makes Connor uncomfortable. They don’t owe this baby anything. It’s theirs by stupidity, not biology. He doesn’t want it, but he can’t stand the thought of someone getting the baby who wants it even less than he does.

Related Characters: Connor Lassiter, Risa Ward, Didi
Page Number: 93
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25 Quotes

The fighter in him screams foul, but another side of him, a side that’s growing steadily stronger, enjoys this exercise of silent power—and it is power, because Roland now behaves exactly the way he and Risa want him to.

Related Characters: Connor Lassiter, Risa Ward, Roland
Page Number: 153
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

The days begin to pass quickly, and before she realizes it, she’s been there a month. Each day that goes by adds to her sense of security. The Admiral was an odd bird, but he’d done something no one else had been able to do for her since she’d left StaHo. He’d given her back her right to exist.

Related Characters: Risa Ward, Admiral Dunfee
Page Number: 202
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 52 Quotes

In her mind’s eye she always pictured harvest camps as human cattle stockades: dead-eyed crowds of malnourished kids in small gray cells—a nightmare of dehumanization. Yet somehow this picturesque nightmare is worse. Just as the airplane graveyard was Heaven disguised as Hell, harvest camp is Hell masquerading as Heaven.

Related Characters: Risa Ward
Page Number: 267-68
Explanation and Analysis:

“What do you do with the club feet, and the deaf ears? Do you use those in transplants?”

“You don’t have either of those, do you?”

“No—but I do have an appendix. What happens to that?”

“Well,” says the counselor with near infinite patience, “a deaf ear is better than no ear at all, and sometimes it’s all people can afford. And as for your appendix, nobody really needs that anyway.”

Related Characters: Risa Ward (speaker), Emby
Page Number: 269
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 55 Quotes

“How can you do this?” she asks during one of their breaks. “How can you watch them day after day, going in and never coming out?”

“You get used to it,” the drummer tells her, taking a swig of water. “You’ll see.”

“I won’t! I can’t!” She thinks about Connor. He doesn’t have this same reprieve from unwinding. He doesn’t stand a chance. “I can’t be an accomplice to what they’re doing!”

Related Characters: Risa Ward (speaker), Connor Lassiter, Dalton
Page Number: 274
Explanation and Analysis: