All the Little Raindrops

The extreme, violent “game” at the novel’s center affords characters opportunities to act on both their worst and best impulses. In the opening chapters, for example, Noelle’s selfless protection of Evan contrasts starkly with the sadism of the game’s spectators. However, the dichotomy is internal as well as external, with characters like Bennett Meyer and Dr. Caspar Vitucci demonstrating how good and evil can coexist within the same person.

Noelle’s father was a dedicated and faithful husband who pursued justice for his murdered wife at all costs but also gave in to his own corrupt desire for revenge. Worse still, his plan targeted not Sinclair himself but the man’s innocent son. When Noelle finds the evidence that must have prompted her father’s terrible decisions, she wonders, “How long had he stewed, allowing the open wound to become a gaping sore that he fell into, melding with the rot? Becoming it. Morphing into the very monster he despised” (329). In reality, however, Meyer never fully transformed into a “monster”; when he confronted the reality of Evan’s captivity, he “immediately regretted what he had done” (349). Though this regret came too late to change anything, it speaks to Meyer’s complex moral character.