Leave the World Behind

Amanda is Clay’s wife and the mother of Rose and Archie. At the outset of the novel, she seems to take much more pride in her career goals and the need that her office has for her than her role in the family. She is the character in the novel most concerned with the lack of access to the outside world through the internet, as she takes great pleasure in feeling connected to work. She is also the source of much of the racist tension in the novel, as her careless comments and microaggressions reveal a discomfort with people of color that she is aware of in theory if not in practice—she notes that she lives in relative isolation from people of color, but that awareness doesn’t always translate into sensitivity or thoughtfulness in her approach to G. H. and Ruth. Her growing panic throughout the novel stems from her loss of control and leads to conflict with Ruth, who has even less control than Amanda.

George “G. H.” Washington is a Black financial expert and co-owner of the vacation house where the action of the novel takes place. He is in his early sixties and has become someone who enjoys the finer things in life. He is a confident man who is self-assured by his ability to know things ahead of time thanks to long experience predicting the market, and he relies on money as a powerful tool to get what he wants. Though he is aware of his race and the way it affects others’ perception of him, his position in the upper class has shielded him. He responds to crisis by trying to plan (evidenced by the food and other supplies he has stored in the vacation home), but without any real access to information he turns to his contractor Danny, who represents a type of capable masculinity that G. H. comes to realize that he is lacking.

Though the guide refers to him as G. H. throughout, the novel alternates between George and G. H. depending on the omniscient narrator’s distance from him: To Amanda and Clay, he’s G. H., but for Ruth and himself, he’s George, further revealing the divide and tension between the two households. Like most of the characters, though, as the danger they are in becomes clearer, he begins to see the strangers in his household as a community to which he belongs, taking a fatherly attitude toward Clay and Archie in particular.

Ruth is G. H.’s wife and co-owner of the home. She is much less comfortable than G. H. with the situation of the novel, resenting the fact that they are staying downstairs in their own home; the racist implications of the temporary living situation and its echo of other types of injustice do not escape her (the Black owners being forced downstairs into the less desirable living quarters despite owning the home), nor does the way the other family is using her home, which she initially sees as careless and messy. She resents the fact that Amanda can be with her family during a crisis, as she keenly misses and worries about her daughter and grandchildren in Massachusetts. She also resents the fact that Amanda keeps looking to her for comfort or allyship in a way that Ruth perceives as being asked to be subservient or a secondary character. She is not able to do that for Amanda, but as the crisis intensifies she starts to want Amanda and her family to stay in the house rather than return home.

Rose is a young pre-teen who is at a liminal moment between childhood and a more teenage maturity. She sees herself as a plucky heroine, which leads her to leave the house early on the last morning of the novel in search of supplies. Like the other characters, she takes comfort in technology and views the DVDs she finds in her scavenging to be of as much importance as shelter and food. The narration intimates that she is more prepared than the others to live in a post-apocalyptic society, but she has been prepared by fiction, and the reality that is coming for her is much harsher than what she has known.