Starters

From the first time Callie encounters the Old Man in Prime Destinations, to the last scene with his ominous offer to Callie, there is much mystery surrounding his identity. The Old Man’s mask does more than symbolize the fact that he’s an enigma: It acts as a symbol for the shifting and complicated nature of identity.

Obviously, one layer of this is the fact that the entire premise of the novel relies on Enders masquerading as Starters, which obscures their identity as they co-opt younger bodies to re-experience youth, leaving the actual Starters without an identity, floating in an abyss in time, which, were it permanent as Prime intended, would be a kind of death. The horrific images of violence and pain reflected on the tiles of the Old Man’s mask when he is alone with Callie show how hiding an identity can be detrimental to others.

Even when the Old Man reveals his face to her, it’s an “‘electronic collage” (302). Almost every post-war problem in this story is a result of denying some core truth related to identity. People act as fragments of others, hiding and sometimes even losing their true selves to the pieces they’ve borrowed along the way. If the Enders could embrace their old age, for example, no Starters would have to suffer by sacrificing their identities or even being institutionalized for existing as orphans of the war. Likewise, if some Starters, like Emma, could embrace who they are and all their imperfections, they wouldn’t have been drawn into Prime’s web and put in harm’s way in the first place. If the Old Man could show his true face and real identity, maybe he would be more inclined to have an honest conversation and own up to his mistakes.