An Academy for Liars

Dante Lowe is Lennon’s mentor and love interest. He is described as being in his early 30s, mixed race, and tall. He has many tattoos, with the prominent ones being moths on his neck and hands. Dante is a tenured professor of persuasion at Drayton. As a child, he lived with his mother and his abusive father, then his abusive stepfather, before he was sent to a juvenile detention center for almost murdering his stepfather. Dante was mute for much of his childhood, but his fellow detainees at the juvenile center claimed to be able to hear his voice in their heads, indicating that his powers of persuasion manifested when he was still young. After he left the juvenile detention center, he disappeared until he graduated Drayton at the age of 19 with a doctorate. While he was a teenager at Drayton, Eileen was his advisor, and they had a romantic relationship resulting in the birth of a son.

As Lennon’s mentor, Dante guides her toward the cultivation of her powers. He takes a relatively hands-off approach to her learning, even as Lennon attempts to use illicit drugs to access her gatekeeping abilities. When she questions Dante about his laissez-faire attitude, he says, “I stand in your way now and you’ll just hurt yourself again tomorrow. At some point, you have to learn how to deter your own worst impulses, or if not that, then work around them. Maybe this is your way of doing that” (140). Though Dante is a skilled persuasionist, he values his own freedom. This is why he gives Lennon the freedom to make her own decisions, even if he thinks they are the wrong ones.

Dante is a mysterious character throughout the novel, and he keeps details about his past under wraps. Like Lennon, he has an aberration—a darker side of himself that Lennon sometimes sees. Lennon sometimes wonders who the real Dante is because he continues to keep secrets from her until she discovers the truth about August. As Dante and Lennon grow closer, their relationship becomes romantic. He finally lets Lennon see his pain, and she thinks: “He seemed so fragile in that moment. She could feel his torment. His grief” (390). The empathic bond between the two of them is strong, as they have similar desires to be of consequence, and they are haunted by similar feelings of guilt and grief.

In the end, Lennon is the one to bring Dante back to the present after his death. She does this by turning her back on persuasion. Instead, she gives Dante the freedom to choose to live again with her and to possess the autonomy that he struggled to find throughout his childhood and adult life as Eileen’s prodigy.

Eileen is the primary antagonist of An Academy for Liars. She is first introduced as vice-chancellor of Drayton, and though Lennon finds her intimidating, she finds nothing obviously menacing about Eileen or her motivations. However, after Eileen’s strange and nearly callous reaction to Benedict’s death, Lennon begins to grow suspicious. Eileen’s birthday card to Dante seems to confirm Lennon’s suspicions, as she notes there is “[s]omething ominous in the way it [is] written, a promise there, a threat that she couldn’t yet decipher. But it [is] undeniably present, like the ghost of magnolias scenting the paper. A kind of darkness behind her words that Lennon didn’t yet understand” (332). The card both foreshadows the revelation of Eileen as the primary antagonist of the novel and the revelation of Eileen and Dante’s past relationship.

Lennon is horrified by the discovery that Eileen had a romantic relationship with Dante when he was only 15, and she is appalled by how easily Eileen is able to take Lennon’s memories and study them. This makes Lennon wonder “just how many times Eileen had glimpsed within her mind without her ever knowing it. How many of her secrets had been exposed? Was there any part of Lennon left that Eileen didn’t see or know?” (360). Eileen carelessly abuses Lennon’s privacy, and she also planned on using Lennon as a tool to keep Drayton hidden. Eileen’s character is further complicated by her racist tirade against Lennon and Dante after Lennon’s attempted escape, saying, “You people have such rage in you” (417). She propagates the harmful racist stereotype that Black people are more prone to outbursts of rage or violence. Eileen’s adherence to racist beliefs further contributes to her dehumanization of Lennon, as she sees Lennon solely as an object she can use to fulfill her goals.