47 pages • 1 hour read
S.A. BodeenThe Raft
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Robie
At the beginning of the story, Robie is a vulnerable young woman pretending at toughness and independence. By the end of the novel, she has transformed herself, thanks to her ordeal on the raft. Robie’s character transformation follows the arc of the Hero’s Journey, the archetypal story form identified by Joseph Campbell.
In stories that hew to arc of the Hero’s Journey, the protagonist is forced to leave behind his or her normal world in order to take on new responsibilities that they are reluctant to accept, and ultimately to face their greatest fears in pursuit of the object of their quest. In Robie’s case, the object of her quest is sheer survival, and the normal world she leaves behind is the world of human civilization. She, like any protagonist within the Hero’s Journey storyline, initially resists rising to the challenges and responsibilities of her new situation, but eventually, through navigating an initial batch of tests and challenges, finds the strength within herself to take on the frightening new world.
For Robie, the ultimate ordeal is the moment when she faces the fact that Max has been dead for some time and is forced to confront her fear of isolation and embrace the fact that she is the only one she can count on to save her life. This is the key to her final transformation. When she returns to society, she is not only much more grateful for her situation than she was at the beginning of the book: she has also graduated from adolescence to adulthood.
Robie's Parents
Robie’s parents, like her Aunt AJ, are characters whose relationship to the story is tenuous. These adult figures are mostly absent from the bool and function chiefly as objects of Robie’s longing. She misses their protection and the safety they provide. The journey on the raft forces her to survive without the intervention of these characters.
Max
Max is in many ways a foil to Robie. While Robie is portrayed as a relatively vulnerable person with hidden strength, Max is portrayed as a relatively invulnerable, even heroic person, with hidden vulnerability.
After he saves Robie’s life on the raft, Bodeen portrays him as helpless to save Larry. Shortly thereafter, he admits that he’s been through worse than this plane crash, revealing a history of trauma. The next morning, he is described in a very vulnerable way, when Robie says, “Max’s head lolled on the side of the raft and, with knees curled and arms crossed, he seemed to be sleeping. In that position he looked like a little boy.”
This tension between bravery and fragility starts to make sense as the reader learns about Max’s personal history. Max lost his first love in a car accident. He failed to insist that she buckle her seatbelt, and then after, the wreck, he is unable to save her. He carries this incident within him, but he survives nonetheless. He is a model for Robie, who must learn to survive through her own fear, guilt, and heartbreak in the wake of the crash.
