Witness

Esther is an odd six-year-old Jewish child who talks to animals and plants, and her love of nature reflects her spiritual disposition; she therefore is thrilled to live on the farm with Sara and her father. Esther is happy, optimistic, and constantly asking questions, and her childlike view of the world often puts her in trouble. Esther pines for her dead mother, and she dreams of stopping the train so it can take her to her mother in heaven. She is the only person who knows who shot her father, but she only tells God who it is. Her loving nature helps Sara to break out of her shell, and their relationship helps Esther cope with her father’s near death. Esther is a static character because she does not undergo meaningful change in the novel.

Even more distinctive than her innocent disposition, however, is Esther’s manner of speech with highly unconventional grammatical patterns. Hesse has stated that she patterned Esther’s unusual speech after The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow, a nature diary written by Opal Whiteley when she was six years old. Whiteley, too, was considered “odd” in both her writing style and her obsession with the natural world (Hesse, Karen. “Why does Esther talk so funny?” karenhesseblog, 2018). Additionally, Hesse said, she wanted this peculiar syntax to reflect not only Esther’s “innocence and naiveté” but also that she is the daughter of immigrants. The historical context of the novel suggests that Esther’s first language may be Yiddish; as a six-year-old Jewish girl from 1920s New York, her parents (or at least her father) possibly immigrated from Eastern Europe during the “Great Wave,” in which many Yiddish-speaking Jews came to the States—largely to New York City.

Merlin is a young man who is trying to navigate the path to adulthood—namely, “manhood.” He pretends to be tough and brave, but he easily is embarrassed and concerned with how people see him. Gullible and naive, he immediately joins the Ku Klux Klan when they begin recruiting for members in the town, but he soon has reservations about the morality of the group.

He is loyal to his friends and his girlfriend, Mary, but those loyalties get him in trouble with the law. It is Reynard who helps him out of trouble and gives him a job, which gives Merlin a sense of pride in the trust that Reynard has in him. When the Klan demands that he poison Leonora and her father, despite his racist and antisemitic boasts, he finds his courage and goes against their orders. Returning to town weeks later, he finds that Leonora is willing to testify on his behalf, and he realizes that the color of a person’s skin does not define who they are. Merlin is a dynamic character who comes of age by the end of the novel.

Reverend Johnny Reeves is the town preacher, a 36-year-old unmarried man who sexually preys on young girls in secret. He immediately embraces the Klan due to their racism and misogyny, which accord with his own. Despite his claims of piety, his sermons routinely denounce Black people, Jews, and women. When the Klan gains traction in town, Johnny uses his ministerial position to spread their destructive message of hatred. Johnny is a very ironic character, and this irony is expressed largely through his hypocrisy; the most corrupt character among all 11 narrators, he occupies a position of authority that would suggest his moral uprightness.

Upon discovering Johnny’s rapist history, even the Klan revokes his membership and bans him. He attempts to redeem himself in their eyes by shooting Ira, but they abduct him and brand him on his back with the letters “k.k.k.” He dies by suicide, jumping off the bridge over the Connecticut River. Johnny is a coward and a self-righteous zealot, hypocritically railing against the very behaviors that he is guilty of (namely, sexual immorality). His punishment is to become a restless spirit, his fraudulent voice forever silenced. Johnny is a static character who does not change his racist and hypocritical views.

Sara, a local farmer, is a 42-year-old woman who is proud to be unmarried. She watched her mother work all day and night to raise a family and take care of Sara’s father with no rest, and she decided early on that while she didn’t mind hard work, she would not be a “drudge” for anyone except herself.

Sara is a peppery character, pragmatic and no-nonsense. Early on, she realizes the potential power of the Klan, claiming that “there’s a kind of power they wield, / a deceptive authority” (59). Even after a threatening letter thrown through her window warns her to evict Ira and Esther Hirsch, her resolve against the Klan and her loyalty to the father and daughter remain unshaken. Soon after Esther comes to live with her, Sara begins to love the little girl, and her relationship with Esther becomes the most important thing in Sara’s life. Sara is a dynamic character due to how she changes in response to Esther’s friendship.