50 pages • 1-hour read
After You
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Character Analysis
Louisa Clark
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content, mental health conditions, death, sexual harassment and violence, graphic violence, substance use, and death by medically assisted suicide.
Louisa Clark is the main character and first-person narrator of the novel. Her distinct experience and means of processing the world thus guides the narrative from beginning to end. The Complicated Process of Grieving and Healing Louisa experiences from Will Traynor’s death also dictates the novel’s overarching plot line and its explorations of loss, transformation, and renewal.
Louisa is a self-possessed individual whose life has changed since her former lover and employer Will died 18 months prior. Because Louisa was Will’s caretaker, she feels guilty for his death by assisted suicide. She did everything in her power to remind Will of life’s value, but even her love wasn’t enough to convince him to stay alive. At the novel’s start, Louisa is thus reeling. She is living alone in a London apartment she secured with the money Will left her, but she’s working a job she hates (bartending at an airport bar), isn’t in communication with her family (who are all back in her Stortfold hometown), and doesn’t have friends outside of Nathan (Will’s former physiotherapist who lives in New York). Without a proper support network or definitive sense of purpose, Louisa struggles to remember who she is and imagine a future beyond her loss.
Louisa is a dynamic character who changes as a result of her experiences and relationships throughout the novel. Life changes that usher her toward transformation include her fall from the roof, her unexpected connection with Will’s daughter, Lily Miller, her relationship with Sam Fielding (the ambulance driver who reports to her accident), her reconciliation with her family, her participation in the Moving On Circle grief group, and her decision to move to New York City and take a new job. At the novel’s start, Louisa is living out of fear. She is hesitant about trying new things and pursuing new relationships because she’s wary of failing or encountering more loss. However, with the help of her family and friends, she begins to emerge from her sorrow.
Louisa is also an empathetic and reflective character. While she is initially reluctant to open her heart in the wake of losing Will, her decisions throughout the novel prove that she is still capable of maintaining loving relationships. (In particular, she invests in Lily’s life and makes sacrifices to ensure Lily’s well-being; she also commits to a long-distance relationship with Sam because she realizes that intimacy in the present isn’t a betrayal of her history with Will.) Her decision to leave behind her life in London and relocate to New York shows her desire to live her life to the fullest—her ultimate way of honoring Will’s memory.
Lily Miller
Lily Miller is one of the novel’s primary characters. She is Will’s biological daughter, but she doesn’t know anything about Will until the start of the novel. Via the internet, she learns that Will was paraplegic and recently died by assisted suicide with the help of his former caretaker, Louisa. (This research leads her to Louisa’s flat and into Louisa’s life.)
Lily is 16 years old and in search of love and acceptance. Although Lily has lived with her biological mother, Tanya, since she was a child, she’s never felt loved by her. Tanya has been in and out of various intimate relationships since Lily was young, thus making her feel second to her mom’s desire. Lily particularly resents Tanya for marrying her stepdad and putting this relationship (and the new family she made with him) before her needs. Lily deals with her feelings of abandonment and rejection by drinking, smoking, acting out at school, and disappearing from home. Her behaviors are irksome to Tanya, who has all but given up on her daughter.
In Louisa, Lily seeks support and camaraderie. She relies on Louisa for a place to live and hopes that Louisa can tell her about Will and connect her with Will’s family. Initially, Louisa feels overwhelmed by Lily’s adolescent moods and antics. Lily comes and goes from her apartment without communicating with Louisa. She also goes through Louisa’s things and even steals her jewelry. Despite these frustrations, Louisa empathizes with Lily and devotes herself to her care. She helps her make relationships with Steven and Camilla Traynor, gives her a place to live, and sacrifices her own needs to remove Lily from a sexually exploitative situation.
Lily is another dynamic character. Her relationship with Louisa particularly aids her transformation. Louisa is one of the first people in Lily’s life to accept her. She offers Lily the care and support she hasn’t received from her family. Lily also helps Louisa to change. In particular, she reawakens Louisa to her life. The two redo Louisa’s apartment together, go out dancing, and have long heartfelt conversations. The more time they spend together, the more alive and purposeful Louisa feels. She initially tries to be Lily’s caretaker but eventually learns to simply share life with Lily. Over time, Lily comes to see Louisa not only as a mentor but also as a sister and friend. Their relationship undergoes various challenging seasons, but ultimately, they support one another through their hardship and teach each other about love, healing, and self-acceptance.
Sam Fielding
Sam Fielding is another of the novel’s primary characters. He is an ambulance driver and comes into Louisa’s life on the night that she falls off her roof parapet. He is the EMT who reports to the scene of the accident. He resurfaces by chance in Louisa’s life when she runs into him outside of the Moving On Circle group. Struck by Sam’s authenticity, Louisa agrees to spend more time with him. He is one of the first people she opens herself to in the wake of Will’s death.
Sam is an empathetic, intuitive, and sensitive character. When he and Louisa first meet, Louisa thinks that he is one of the grief group members Jake’s dad; she mistakenly assumes that Sam understands her sorrow because he’s grieving his late wife. She agrees to date him and have sex with him despite what she assumes is his promiscuous lifestyle because she wants physical comfort and the feeling of being alive. Later, however, she feels hurt that Sam is showing interest in her while allegedly sleeping with other women. These miscommunications complicate Louisa’s impressions of Sam and thus how she represents him in her first-person account. Once the two clear up these misunderstandings—Sam is Jake’s uncle, and he is only seeing Louisa—Louisa can see Sam for who he is: a kindhearted, honest person who genuinely cares about her.
Sam’s character is integral to Louisa’s growth throughout the novel. Louisa doesn’t simply change because of knowing Sam, but Sam offers her the grace and understanding she needs to heal from her sorrow over Will. (Sam is intimate with loss and therefore sensitive to Louisa’s emotional journey.) At the same time, Sam is more ready to embrace love and life than Louisa is; he therefore gets discouraged when Louisa pushes him away for fear of betraying Will.
Sam and Louisa end up together at the end of the novel, thus offering Louisa a happy romantic ending. When Sam is shot two times in the stomach while on the job, Louisa realizes how fragile life is and how important it is to embrace love when life offers it. Sam’s near-death experience also helps Louisa to see that Sam stayed alive for her in the same way that Will couldn’t; their love therefore teaches Louisa that she is worthy of love. Furthermore, Sam encourages Louisa to be herself, pursue her dreams, and prioritize her needs above others. He is the one who ultimately convinces her to accept the job in New York, assuring her that their love can withstand the tests of time and distance.
Will Traynor
Will Traynor is a secondary character. In the novel’s prequel, Me Before You, Will is a main character, but he passes away at the end of that novel. In After You, Will never appears in scene because he died by assisted suicide 18 months before the narrative present. At the same time, his memory haunts the pages of Louisa’s narrative. She is still reeling from his death and trying to make sense of her life without him. Her memories of him pervade her first-person account.
Will was a strong-willed, self-possessed individual who changed Louisa in many ways. She not only invested in him as a person and devoted herself to him while she was his caretaker, but she also fell in love with him. In After You, she loses her sense of who she is and what her life means without him. She continues to miss “his voice, his abrupt, hard-earned laugh, the feel of his lips against [her] fingers, the way his eyelids would lower when he was about to drop off to sleep” (21); all of these memories from their intimate time together shadow her seemingly empty existence in the narrative present. However, when Lily shows up unexpectedly in Louisa’s life, she gets the chance to remember and honor Will in a new way. Lily wants to know about her father, so Louisa openly talks about his character and their relationship, a pastime that helps her memorialize Will. Furthermore, caring for Lily feels like caring for Will even after he’s passed.
Will is a nontraditional antagonist throughout After You. He betrays narrative conventions because he isn’t actively trying to disrupt Louisa’s life; however, his memory does compromise Louisa’s stability throughout the novel. Louisa is often talking to Will, asking him questions, and imagining what he would say to her about her experiences. Over time, she comes to see that these habits are trapping her in the past and her grief. By the novel’s end, Louisa learns that to let Will go doesn’t mean forgetting him. Rather, when she moves beyond Will, Louisa can honor him by engaging in her life, caring for herself, and pursuing the sorts of adventures Will would have loved.
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