Max the Mighty

Rachel is a “skinny red-haired girl who’s maybe eleven or twelve years old. She’s got bright green eyes and freckles and her clothes are about two sizes too big” (3-4). She loves reading so much that her head is buried in a book almost all the time. The other kids call her Worm, short for Bookworm, but she considers her nickname a badge of honor.

Rachel’s domineering stepfather, the Undertaker, strikes her mother and knocks her unconscious and then tries to harm Rachel, but she escapes with Max’s help. While she and Max are on the road, she continues her habit of resolving social stress by reading exciting classic adventure novels. Soon, though, she finds herself living her own adventure, as she and Max travel in Dip’s converted school bus and, later, on a train in the company of the kindly Hobo Joe. She and Max reach her father’s town of Chivalry, where her dad died long ago in a mine accident, but Rachel wants to visit the mine and somehow commune with him and receive wisdom. Lost in the maze of underground tunnels, Rachel realizes she no longer needs her father’s protection: She can find her way on her own.

Rachel and Max bond during their adventure, and she and her mom move in with Max and his grandparents, where she becomes like a sister to Max. Her journey teaches her self-confidence and a belief, not in some external source of power like magic or even her father, but in herself. She gets the Undertaker to confess to his crime, and she gains the love and support of an extended family.

Rachel’s stepfather, and the central antagonist of the story, is the Undertaker, a “tall skinny dude with a floppy black hat and a long black coat and black shoes—everything black” (17). His nickname evokes death, and his violent temper threatens constantly to deliver it. A self-styled street preacher who angrily demands donations from passersby, the Undertaker at home systematically berates and beats his wife and stepdaughter. When Max rescues Rachel from the Undertaker’s assaults, the man calls the police and insists it was Max who beat his wife and kidnapped his daughter, which sets the plot in motion.

The Undertaker overplays his hand, tries to capture Rachel in a mine tunnel, becomes trapped by a falling tunnel brace, and finally confesses to assaulting Rachel’s mother. The Undertaker’s efforts to ruin their lives bounces back onto him. The two kids, meanwhile, respond to his challenge by growing stronger as people.

An eccentric but wise retired schoolteacher out to see the world, the Dippy Hippie—Dip, for short—sports long, white hair in ponytails, wears an alarmingly garish Hawaiian shirt over a stout gut, and peers at the world through giant glasses. He drives a converted, colorfully painted school bus, the Prairie Schooner, as he travels across the United States. Dip understands that Max and Rachel are good kids in trouble, and for a few brief days, he creates a safe space for them and serves as a kindly mentor. He later helps rescue them from the mines and the Undertaker, thereby keeping a promise to Max to see him again. He sets an encouraging example of an adult who cares about them and will make great efforts to help them.

Short and “scrawny” with “long scraggly hair and scruffy old clothes that are way too big for him and when he smiles his teeth are kind of crooked” (94), Hobo Joe saves Max and Rachel from ravenous junkyard dogs, then takes them under his wing as they travel on a train to Montana. Joe talks restlessly, but he’s witty and optimistic, and he helps keep them fed and in good spirits. Joe is another kindly person in the style of Dip, someone who helps Max and Rachel when they most need it and whose down-to-earth wisdom gives them perspective on their troubles.

Max lives with his grandparents, Grim and Gram. They’ve raised him since his mother died and his father went to prison. In Freak the Mighty, Max’s friend Kevin encourages Max to read books and to see life more as an adventure than a problem; Grim and Gram thus realize that Max isn’t a bad person like his father. Their faith in him continues in Max the Mighty, and they believe in his innocence even in the face of the Undertaker’s accusations and the police effort to apprehend their grandson. Though minor characters, they anchor Max’s life with their support. Their efforts help free him from arrest, and they bring Rachel and her mother into their home to live, which increases Max’s extended family.

Rachel’s mom “looks a lot like Worm, only older and sadder” (14). When Max first meets her, she wears a “long, old-fashioned black dress and she’s got this stiff-legged way of walking, like her feet are hurting and she doesn’t want them to touch the ground.” She has “dark bruises under her eyes” and behaves as if scared by something terrible (14). The fear comes from being beaten regularly, sometimes into unconsciousness, by her husband, the Undertaker, Rachel’s stepfather. Completely intimidated by him, she blames herself when police check on reports of abuse, and she doesn’t contradict the Undertaker when he accuses Max of kidnapping Rachel.

Rachel resents that her mom fails to protect her from the Undertaker. However, once he confesses, her mother testifies against him and sets things right. Rachel’s mother is a minor character whose violent encounter with the Undertaker sets the plot in motion and who brings the story to a close when she testifies against him and moves with Rachel into Grim and Gram’s house.