Carmen, the 12-year-old protagonist of I Survived the Great Molasses Flood, 1919, embodies the novel’s emotional and moral center. An Italian immigrant living in Boston’s North End, Carmen experiences both personal and collective tragedy. Having survived an earthquake and tidal wave that destroyed her home village in Italy, she arrives in America already shaped by loss. Her father’s faith in the United States—where “a person can be anything they want to be” (35)—gives her hope, yet she quickly learns that freedom often coexists with hardship. When the influenza pandemic claims her father’s life, Carmen must confront grief and displacement once again, relying on her own resilience to endure.

Carmen’s defining traits—intelligence, empathy, and determination—emphasize the novel’s central theme of Courage and Resourcefulness During Disaster. She values education, evidenced by her excitement over her perfect math test and her love of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), and she seeks understanding rather than bitterness in times of hardship. Her recurring memory of her father urging her to “hold on” becomes both literal survival advice and a