The List

Letta is the novel’s main character. She is a few years shy of 18 when the story begins. She is proud to be Benjamin’s apprentice, but also enjoys the fact that her position as a wordsmith exposes her to words that many people never learn. Letta is curious, compassionate, and has a fierce temper. She is also, as far as she knows, an orphan. Her parents disappeared when she was very young. If they are still alive, the reader never learns of it.

Letta believes in Ark and in Noa’s mission. Part of her narrative evolution is the transition from a believer in John Noa’s ideals to hating the man who created the system of Ark. Initially, she feels the same horror for the Desecrators as anyone else, and she thinks Ark is worth any sacrifice. Whenever she doubts, she simply imagines the Melting and makes herself feel the tragedy of the end again: “Letta could feel their presence brooding in the background as she tried to imagine the awfulness of it. The towering wall of water bearing down, the screams, the vain attempts to flee” (14).