The Poppy Fields

Sasha is one of the novel’s main characters. An occupational therapist by profession, she is extroverted and caring. She calls herself “everyone’s favorite passenger, a friend to all” (23), and demonstrates her openness in her willingness to befriend Ava. Sasha enjoys helping people and views her job as an opportunity to do some good in the world. Ava finds the idea of Sasha’s work calming, and it helps her to feel more comfortable around Sasha, even though she does not typically warm up quickly to strangers. This ability to put others at ease has been beneficial to Sasha in both her professional and personal lives.

Sasha is also characterized by the tragic end to her engagement. Although she had always prioritized romantic love and saw herself primarily as a wife and a mother, she became worried that she made the wrong choice in the weeks leading up to her wedding. After her fiancé was tragically killed by a drunk driver, she felt responsible for his death. She worries that her ambivalence about marriage makes her a bad person and feels unworthy of the sympathy heaped upon her by friends and family.

Like each of this novel’s key figures, Sasha’s character arc relates to loss, grief, and healing. She heads to the Poppy Fields intending to seek treatment, but over the course of the road trip, she changes her mind. Through conversation with the other passengers, listening to Sky playing one of Dean’s songs, and self-reflection, Sasha comes to believe that grief is actually a manifestation of love and that the sadness she feels over losing Dean is a sign that she truly loved him. She decides that she wants to experience each stage of her grief as a way to honor that love rather than sidestepping the first, hardest period after the loss. Ultimately, the novel argues that there are many ways to handle loss and grief, and Sasha provides one of those models.

Ray is a firefighter who travels to the Poppy Fields because his brother, Johnny, died of an aneurysm after undergoing a sleep treatment. His work as a first responder is a key facet of his characterization. Ray is physically fit, capable, and readily able to take charge of difficult situations; “[s]trangers instinctively follow[] him, with or without his fireman’s gear” (15). A natural leader, Ray radiates strength, competence, and trustworthiness.

These qualities are important for firefighters, but for Ray, the boundary between personal and professional identity is blurry. He is as stoic off the job as he is at work, the result of his father’s strict parenting. His father had high expectations for his sons and was proudest of them when they displayed strength in the face of adversity, downplayed their emotions, and did their best to embody traditionally masculine traits. Although Ray does credit his father with his strength of character, he also recognizes that his father lacked emotional intelligence and was too harsh on his family members. Ray’s inability to ask for help, which adversely impacts him at work, is rooted in his father’s insistence that his sons grow up “manly,” and as an adult, he realizes that his father’s legacy is complex: While he is grateful for the example of stoicism, he vows to be more in touch with his emotions than his father.

Ray reveals that in the past, he was not entirely successful in his attempts to sidestep his father’s more problematic lessons: When Johnny came to him for help dealing with his grief, Ray pushed his brother away. He unconsciously reproduced their father’s worst qualities, and he and Johnny had a serious argument. Ray was devastated by their falling out in large part because family is so important to him. He and his brother, although sometimes at odds, were close as children and adults. Ray became a firefighter and Johnny a paramedic, and the two worked out of the same station. Ray’s relationship with Johnny has shaped him as much as their relationship with their father, and the bond they shared was arguably the healthiest relationship that either man had.

Like each of the travelers depicted in this novel, Ray is on a journey of healing and self-discovery. Initially angry at the Poppy Fields for the role he is sure they played in Johnny’s death, Ray ultimately comes to understand that his grief was making him unaware of the truth: The person he was truly blaming for Johnny’s death was himself. Because he was unable to apologize to his brother before he died, Ray feels a tremendous amount of guilt.

At the end of the novel, although he realizes that grief is an inevitable part of life, Ray chooses to undergo the sleep treatment to ease himself through the process. There is also, however, another motivating factor in his decision to seek treatment at the Poppy Fields: Ray learns that his brother found the treatment helpful, and he wants to better understand Johnny. Ray cannot go back in time and take back the judgmental comments he made to Johnny about his brother’s choice to undergo the treatment. For Ray, seeking the treatment himself becomes a way to posthumously affirm his brother’s choices and do the “right” thing, bringing his journey full circle.

Ellis is Ava’s sister and the scientific brain behind the Poppy Fields’ controversial sleep treatment. She is driven and hardworking and prioritizes her professional life over her relationships. She left home for good to attend Stanford and returned only rarely as she devoted more time to her career. Ellis’s orientation toward work instead of family fractured her relationship with her sister, caused her to miss Granny Mae’s death, and has prevented her from engaging in meaningful romantic relationships.

However, her lifestyle does suit her. Ellis is a self-reflective individual who has a solid understanding of her own identity, goals, and motivations. She is not interested in marriage because she does not feel “ready to assume the burden of responsibility for a spouse” (32). She is solitary and analytical and prefers time spent in the lab and in contemplation of the broader ramifications of the work that she does.

Ellis is a gifted scientist, but she is only able to apply her emotional intelligence to the problems of work. She withdrew from her grandmother and sister but is consumed by the side effect of her treatment. She is revealed to be deeply emotionally connected to her work, ultimately motivated not by the desire for scientific renown but by her personal ethics and interest in helping people. Ellis is selfless: She offers her treatment free of charge because she feels that it is a public good and does not want to profit from other people’s pain. The anguish that she feels about her treatment’s side effect is apparent in the increasing amount of time she spends thinking about it and remembering individual patients whom it has affected. That she herself experienced the side effect is less important to her than the impact it has had on the lives of others.

All the characters in this novel experience emotional growth, and Ellis’s journey involves coming to a more nuanced understanding of the sleep treatment, the grieving process, and the importance of human connection. Although she insistently examines the side effect from the beginning of the novel, she also initially resists its implications for the treatment. In the end, however, she decides to turn her focus toward resolving the side effect, stepping away from the organization’s power and profit in favor of resolving the more problematic aspects of its treatment. This shift highlights the fact that throughout the novel, regardless of her perspective on the treatment, Ellis has remained focused on the human cost, with the compassion that is a fundamental aspect of her characterization. She also comes to understand the importance of relationships and human connection, illustrated by her reconciliation with Ava. Ava initiates the conversation that leads to the sisters resuming their relationship, but Ellis does finally agree to invest as much of her energy into her personal relationships as she does into her work, showing a renewed commitment to a relationship with her sister.

Sky joins the group as a hitchhiker in New Mexico. She is younger than Sasha, Ava, and Ray, and they initially label her as immature. A recent high school graduate, Sky wants to travel the West without developing any particular plan for her future. She is deliberately untethered from her former life and wants to forge her own path. Sky is a free spirit, and people struggle “to fit [her] into any acceptable category” (100). Sky’s parents spent their own youth traveling the country in a van, and Sky’s journey is an echo of theirs in many ways. Erlick notes the “ethereal” quality of her appearance and her interest in new-age wisdom; she is the most countercultural of the group.

As the narrative continues, it reveals that there is more to Sky than Ava, Sasha, and Ray initially assumed. She is a deep thinker whose ideas about the Poppy Fields help the others reflect on their own reasons for traveling there and on the nature of grief. She is also accepting, noting that she has no judgment about the way that Sasha, Ava, and Ray have responded to grief. She demonstrates both her assertiveness and her kindness when she teaches Ava to drive, as well as her ability to connect with other people when she plays Dean’s song for Sasha. Ultimately, Sky’s role in the narrative is to act as a catalyst that helps each member of the group, in distinct ways, along their healing journey.

Johnny is Ray’s brother. Although he is deceased by the time the action of the novel begins, he is an important secondary character whose role in the narrative aids Erlick’s exploration of both the complex nature of familial bonds and the impact of grief on individuals. Johnny was, like his brother, physically fit and normatively masculine. A paramedic, he was cool under pressure and worked well as part of a team.

Raised by a father with high expectations, who discouraged emotional connectivity, Johnny struggled to manage his grief in the wake of a particularly tragic death at work. Johnny’s response to the young boy’s death speaks to his father’s fraught parenting methods: Although Johnny was well equipped to stay cool under pressure, he was never taught to process complex emotions and could not move past the initial stages of his grief. Johnny and Ray are markedly similar in that they are emotionally complex men who were not raised to understand, articulate, or process their emotions, and with regard to grief, Johnny acts as a foil for Ray, illustrating a different path toward healing. Johnny’s choice to undergo the sleep treatment speaks to his difficulty with grief and loss, but it also illustrates self-awareness and maturity. He argued that the treatment is a grief-management tool and that using the tools at an individual’s disposal is a sign of strength rather than weakness. Johnny’s choice to undergo the treatment ultimately impacted Ray’s own desire to seek treatment at the Poppy Fields, leading him to use the tools available to him without worrying that doing so made him “less” of a man. Even after his death, Johnny helps his brother come to a new understanding about grief and complete his character arc.