45 pages • 1-hour read
Michael Without Apology
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Character Analysis
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, death, child abuse, addiction, and substance use.
Michael Woodbine
Michael is the protagonist, and he is 19 years old in the narrative present. In the sections that take place in the past, he is seven and eight years old. Michael is born to Livie and Miles Costa. He lives with them and his biological brother, Thomas Costa, until he is severely injured in a fireworks accident when he is seven. He then goes to live with his foster parents, Judy and Charles Woodbine, who adopt him a year later. The fireworks accident, his parents’ drug and alcohol addictions, and their failure to take care of him and decision to put him up for adoption comprise Michael’s childhood trauma. Michael tamps down his residual anger over these events throughout his adolescence and early adult life. His avoidance is a self-defense and coping mechanism.
Michael is a dynamic character who changes over the course of the novel due to his experiences and friendships. In college, Michael takes a film class with Professor Robert Dunning, which opens him up to a new way of seeing the world and himself. Mr. Dunning is also a burn survivor with severe childhood trauma. Dunning inspires Michael to accept himself without apologizing. He also teaches him that film can be a powerful way to process his feelings, communicate with the world, and spread messages of hope and love. Michael is drawn to Dunning because he sees Michael in ways that no one else has before. He admires his confidence because Michael aspires to be as self-assured.
The documentary short that Michael makes for Mr. Dunning’s class—Here I Am—Get Used to It—conveys Michael’s desire for healing and search for a community of like-minded people. Via the film, Michael not only interviews people with similarly fraught relationships with their bodies but also tells his own story. Ever since Michael was hurt as a child, he has felt self-conscious of his appearance and weighed down by the implications of his physical scarring. In his film, he confronts these fraught aspects of his psychology and begins to heal from them. He also meets people who teach him that to experience pain is a normal part of the human experience. Together, they share their stories and support one another. One key interview subject is 30-year-old Madeleine, with whom Michael has a relationship. Michael falls in love with Madeleine, and she teaches him how to live more fully and take risks.
By the end of the novel, Michael has learned to accept himself. He discovers strength in his fraught past while learning to move beyond it and create a new future. He goes on to become a successful voice in cinema, gets married to a woman named Caroline, and starts a family. These aspects of his life come about because of his newfound confidence, maturity, and fearlessness.
Mr. Robert Dunning
Mr. Dunning is one of the novel’s primary characters. He is Michael’s film professor, mentor, and friend. He plays the role of the archetypal guide in Michael’s story, offering him instruction in both the academic and emotional realms. Michael is immediately impressed by Dunning because he has suffered greatly but remains confident and empathetic.
Mr. Dunning was injured in a car accident when he was a teenager that left him severely burned and scarred. He wears the evidence of this traumatic incident all over his body. The entirety of his face “seem[s] to have been burned, but the scarring [i]s especially severe around his mouth. His lips look[] stretched and inflexible. The edges of his nostrils ha[ve] a melted appearance, and his ears seem[] welded to the sides of his head, with no real independence or definition” (5). When Michael first meets him, he also notices that Dunning’s hands and fingers are burned. He is shocked by Dunning’s appearance and seeming shamelessness about his scars. Dunning’s self-assuredness helps Michael see that there is no reason to hide his past experiences from the world, no matter how painful.
Mr. Dunning remains a fixture in Michael’s life throughout the novel and is always there for Michael when he needs him. He invests in his artistic pursuits and offers Michael advice on his romantic and familial relationships. He becomes a paternal figure for Michael, guiding him through life’s challenges and joys. Due to Dunning’s investment in him, Michael gains the courage and confidence he needs to grow as a person and an artist.
Madeleine
Madeleine is another of the novel’s primary characters. She and Michael meet via his film project, as she is one of the respondents to his ad seeking volunteer interview subjects for Here I Am—Get Used to It. Michael is immediately drawn to her. She is “older than a college girl,” with “very short dark-blond hair” (73). Michael notices her in the student union just before she contacts him about the film. He isn’t drawn to her because she’s “exceptionally beautiful,” but she does “have some kind of energy, or style, or way of carrying herself” that strikes him “as exceptional” (73). Madeleine indeed proves to be an extraordinary person. Not unlike Mr. Dunning, she is bold and fearless. She is unabashed about who she is, what she wants, and how she thinks. For example, she is initially skeptical that someone as attractive as Michael is making a film about body insecurity and demands that Michael show her his scars before she agrees to the film.
Madeleine influences Michael’s journey toward self-acceptance, healing, and change. She is 30 years old and dying from cancer. She and Michael enter a sexual relationship because Madeleine knows that she only has a year to live and wants to enjoy herself in the meantime. However, she never treats Michael with callousness. She genuinely cares about him and wants him to enjoy his life—with or without her. Throughout their time together, Madeleine shows Michael the importance of claiming one’s experiences and identity to live a happier life. She participates in Michael’s film and falls in love with him, giving him counsel for his work and life in the future. She urges Michael to continue using his voice to spread messages of hope and to seek out new romantic relationships after she is gone. She teaches Michael the power of love and intimate connection.
Thomas Costa
Thomas is a secondary character and is Michael’s biological brother. Michael grows up with him and their parents, Livie and Miles, until he is seven. From a young age, Michael learns that Thomas likes to get into all “kinds of mischief” (19). When Thomas dares Michael to steal and set off a firework at the beach, Michael is afraid. However, he obliges because he also worries about how Thomas will see him if he doesn’t go along with the plan. Thomas has a big personality and a tendency to be domineering and intense. Unlike Michael, he embraces risk and danger. He is also more aware of his surroundings and the truth of their parents’ substance addictions. As a child, Michael can’t help feeling small in comparison to Thomas. Taking the firework is an unconscious way of proving himself to his brother.
Thomas and Michael live the majority of their lives apart, as the fireworks accident alters their circumstances forever. Thomas goes to live with another foster family because CPS and the police believe he is a danger to Michael and don’t want the brothers together. Michael is later devastated when he learns that Thomas gets to go home to their parents, whereas he is meant to stay with the Woodbines. He sees this arrangement as evidence that their parents love Thomas more than him.
Thomas and Michael’s reunion later in the novel reveals new truths about Thomas’s character, Michael’s childhood, and Livie and Miles’s true natures. Michael agrees to take a drive with Thomas not long after the Costas write Michael a letter trying to explain themselves. Thomas is “a real jerk” (219), just like he always was. Michael “thought he’d outgrow it,” but he finds that Thomas “hasn’t changed at all” (219). Instead of showing remorse over the fireworks incident or over losing touch with Michael, Thomas has absolved himself with ease.
However, Thomas’s version of the past does help Michael understand his childhood and family better. Thomas went home to Livie and Miles, but his life was difficult: His parents continued to neglect his basic needs, and he ended up in more foster homes. Michael sympathizes with Thomas, suddenly realizing that their parents don’t really care about either of them. Thomas’s character thus offers perspective on Michael’s life and past and becomes a key to his healing.
Livie and Miles Costa
Livie and Miles are secondary characters and are Thomas and Michael’s biological parents. They are people with drug and alcohol addictions, and their excessive substance use in turn makes them neglectful of their children. When Michael is seven years old, Livie and Miles are drinking heavily and doing drugs out of their car when they are supposed to be caring for Thomas and Michael on the beach. Their irresponsibility leads to Michael’s injury and near death. The Costas are then arrested and imprisoned for child endangerment, and their boys are put into foster care.
Years later, Livie and Miles reach out to Michael after they see his documentary short. They insist that Michael has the wrong impression of his childhood and want to meet with him and “correct” the story. The Costas are the source of Michael’s childhood trauma. Although over a decade has passed since their abandonment, Michael still feels anger and bitterness toward them. He initially has no interest in seeing them because he believes that they never loved him and willingly gave him up. His meeting with Thomas corrects some of this impression. He learns that Livie and Miles never changed, are still people with substance addictions, never cared for Thomas either, and have only contacted him because they think he made money off his film.
Confronting Livie and Miles is an important part of Michael’s healing and self-acceptance. He is frustrated and hurt when they first reunite. Over the course of the meeting, this anger dulls into reconciliation with his parents’ selfishness. He discovers that seeing them has let him acknowledge and move beyond the pain they caused him. They are the antagonists of the novel: They cause upheaval in Michael’s life as a child and cause him psychological distress throughout his adult life.
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