The Staircase in the Woods

Owen is the novel’s dynamic protagonist. According to his former therapist, he has obsessive-compulsive disorder and deals with obsessive and intrusive thoughts. He also harbors resentment toward Lore for taking the friends’ ideas and turning them into computer games to fuel her own successful career, leaving him behind. He is the only one of the three friends to respond to Nick’s repeated emails about staircases over the years, and he does this only out of a sense of obligation and guilt. Before seeing his old friends again, he has a harsh, judgmental thought about Hamish and has to tell himself that this is merely “[a]nother invasive thought he ha[s] to stomp out” and that “[p]eople are allowed to change” (30). In many ways, he feels left behind by the Covenant group, and even when he angrily tells Lore to go ahead of him, he feels bitter when she takes him at his word. Owen feels like a victim because of his father’s emotional abuse, but he also feels like a guilty perpetrator because he failed Matty, killed his own father, and missed the signs of Nick’s father’s abuse.

When he is trapped in the supernatural house, Owen transforms.