Brother

Reb is short for Rebel, which is the name Ray gave himself when he was 14. The nickname confirms his status as the story’s overt antagonist and villain. Reb tyrannizes Michael and, unlike Michael, gleefully takes part in brutalizing the abducted women. Michael refers to him as a “vulture” and a “psycho.” In terms of the outside world, Reb is a rebel. He doesn’t conform to any general standard of decency: He’s a murderer and rapist. In terms of his family, the name is ironic because Reb is a conformist. He abides by the heinous conditions established by Momma. Unlike Lauralynn and Misty, Reb never fully counters the matriarch. He weakly tries to stick up for Lauralynn and is “surprised by the warble of his own voice” (250), but Momma easily dismisses him. Reb doesn’t rebel against Momma’s malevolent status quo.

His history with Lauralynn gives Reb complexity and a motive. Reb and Lauralynn were close, and Reb, with his parents’ approval, kidnapped Michael to keep Lauralynn from running away. The plan backfired, and Reb blames Michael for Lauralynn’s death. His complex plan to punish Michael proves to be the main driver of the novel’s plot, but it also reveals something about Rev: If he was completely devoid of feelings and compassion, he wouldn’t care about avenging Lauralynn’s death. Reb’s relationship with Lauralynn complicates his villainy, while the intricacy of his scheme subverts stereotypes about rural Appalachian people. As Michael notes, Reb is “smart,” but he uses his intelligence to sow destruction.

The dynamic between Reb and Michael alludes to the biblical story of Cain and Abel. Reb is Cain, the older brother who feels marginalized. After he brings Michael into the family, both Lauralynn and Wade connect with him, leaving Reb feeling rejected—like “a slave. Used and abused. Never paid. Undervalued” (227). While Momma doesn’t offer any love to Reb, she does give a degree of protection, and they have a special bond due to their shared “bloodlust.”

Alice is Michael’s romantic interest. Her character develops Michael’s urge to leave the Morrows; ideally, he’d run away with her. Before Michael learns her name, he refers to her as Snow White. By turning her into a fairytale princess, he fetishizes and objectifies her, but he also alludes to the danger that she’s in. Alice and Michael are both unaware that he is her brother. She also doesn’t know that his family engages in cannibalistic mass murders. Her ignorance gives her dialogue an element of dramatic irony; when she says, “[Y]ou’re the strangest boy I’ve ever met” (293), she has no idea how “strange” Michael and his family are.

Alice contributes to the novel’s feminist underpinnings. She has a fully developed, independent identity and, subverting her Snow White characterization, she ultimately rejects her “prince,” Michael. Choosing independence, she kills Michael and tries to survive on her own. The story suggests that she won’t make it; however, as with Lauralynn and Misty, her death comes through autonomy and agency.

Misty Dawn Morrow is Michael’s creative young sister. She makes clothes and macrame, and she gives Michael a sincere relationship within the family. Misty and Michael listen to records together, and the music helps them escape their cruel environment. Misty gives Michael a primary reason not to leave. If he goes, he can’t protect her.

Misty reads romance novels, indicating she’s lonely and wants a boyfriend. Unable to leave the house, she turns Michael into a romantic interest. Jealous of Alice and insecure, Misty asks Michael, “There somethin’ wrong with me? I ain’t as good as she is? I ain’t as pretty?” (327). Misty tries to have sex with Michael to strengthen their relationship and replicate the plots of her Harlequin books. Reb calls Misty a “whore,” but Misty embraces the term, as it gives her agency. She, too, is an empowered female character; her final act, in which she dares Momma to kill her, implies that she retains that agency even in the matter of her murder.

Lauralynn is the oldest sibling, and although she isn’t alive in the present narrative of the novel, her presence is still felt in the family. She’s smart and reads children’s stories to her younger sisters and brothers to help them escape the confines of their world. Paralleling Misty and Michael, she develops a close bond with Reb. The chance that she might leave prompts Reb to kidnap Michael and give Lauralynn a student. Reb’s plan backfires, which motivates him to concoct the intricate scheme involving Alice, Bonnie, and Lucy. Like Misty, Lauralynn adds to the feminist atmosphere of the book. She stands up to Momma, boldly accusing her of killing her rabbits, highlighting the agency and independence of many of the woman characters in the novel.

Momma and Wade are the mother and father of Michael, Reb, Misty Dawn, and Lauralynn. They create a malicious family environment. Momma teaches Reb how to steal, and Wade helps him steal Michael. Once Michael becomes a member of the family, Wade pushes him toward violence by getting him a gun. He also pulls Reb toward alcohol misuse and addiction, giving him cheap gin for his 13th birthday. Wade is a negative model, but as Michael notes, he’s the “lesser evil.”

Momma is in charge of the family, and the murders happen because of her. Michael concedes that they’ve “spent years satiating Momma’s thirst” (374). Early in the novel, Momma’s control of the family is established as she directs them with regard to the death of the woman with the heroin addiction. She, not Wade, tells everyone what to do. She also determines the fate of her children: She kills Lauralynn and Misty and allows Wade to beat Reb, but Wade, subordinate to his wife, can’t kill him. Momma’s authority, however ghastly, centers the novel’s feminist framework.

Ahlborn connects Wade to the outside world more than Momma. He fought in the Vietnam War, and he listens to Creedence Clearwater Revival, whose anti-war songs remind him of the war. Momma doesn’t have overt likes or links to reality. She exists in a vacuum in which she replicates the abuse of her parents through her abuse of her family and the women Reb and Michael abduct.

Grandma Jean and Grandpa Eugene are Momma’s cruel parents who represent the origins of Momma’s trauma. The narrator says, “Grandma Jean was meaner than sin, and even Momma looked uncomfortable when Grandma Jean and Grandpa Eugene spent a week at the Morrow farmhouse” (98). The term “uncomfortable” hints at their past dynamic and contrasts with Momma’s usual control. The narration continues alluding to abuse when Michael remembers Reb hearing about “Grandpa Eugene doing bad things” to Momma (265). Finally, Reb states, “You know that old fucker used to rape Claudine when she was a kid, right?” (383). This history is complicated by the fact that Grandma Jean was aware of the abuse and did nothing to stop it.

Subjected to constant sexual assault as a young person, Momma tortures and kills women who look like her as a way of dealing with the pain that her parents caused. The narrator encapsulates the dynamic when they say, “Michael suspected that Momma had learned how to be cruel from her own parents” (145). Her parents were her teachers, and now she, in turn, is educating her children.

Bonnie is Michael and Alice’s birth mother. When Michael learns that Bonnie is the “new mark,” he’s suspicious since Momma doesn’t normally choose older women. Reb quiets him, and as Momma kills Bonnie at the farmhouse, her abduction and death are revealed as a part of a much larger and more complex scheme. Her death and Reb’s subsequent reveal of the truth of her relationship to Michael prove to be the final motivation for Michael to end his relationship with the Morrow family and end their murderous ways through killing every family member that remained.