The Wall

The Captain is unnamed. He started out in life as an Other who breaches the Wall 10 years before the events of the novel. The Captain is an impressive, intimidating Black man who bears tribal markings on his face, indicating he is from the Global South, the lower-income nations who have borne the worst of global climate change. Despite his sternness, the Captain is initially a mentor who teaches Joseph to think in black-and-white terms, and which are designed to enhance Joseph’s chances of surviving on the Wall and fending off Others. The Captain is stoic and rarely shares what he is thinking. Joseph admires him, but comes to realize that being so removed from others damages one’s relationships. The Captain is also a model of what success as a Defender looks like, and his success—from being an Other to being a person in a position of authority—inspires Joseph to commit fully to being a Defender.

We gain new insight into who the Captain really is when he betrays his company and nearly kills Joseph and Hifa. Rather than being a positive example of an Other, the Captain is a traitor to the United Kingdom. While Joseph is not able to overcome the sense of betrayal, the Captain’s presence consistently forces Joseph to examine his assumptions about who the Others are. The Captain dies defending the floating community, a testament to his bravery.

The hermit has been isolated for so long on the energy installation where Hifa and Joseph shelter that he has ceased to speak. Joseph describes the hermit as a “pale, thin man, wearing nothing but black drawstring trousers,” “emaciated,” having eyes that are “wild and startled,” and “any age from thirty to sixty” (237). The hermit is important in the novel for two reasons. The first is that he helps Hifa and Joseph get their happy ending by allowing them to enter the installation. The second is that his response to climate change is more measured than any Joseph and Hifa have so far found. He shares his resources, but he is also canny about sharing them with people who are unlikely to consume all of his supplies or hurt him.

The hermit is a storyteller who uses pieces of paper and cardboard to describe why he has let Joseph and Hifa in and to share his survival story. The poor state he is in—starving while surrounded by an installation full of food—illustrates that material abundance alone is not enough to ensure the survival of humanity during times of crisis and scarcity. People need each other.

Hifa is Joseph’s romantic interest. She is a petite woman with dark curly hair, brown eyes, and brown skin. Like Joseph, she finds life on the Wall difficult, but unlike Joseph, she accepts that the only way to make life bearable is to procreate. She acts as a foil to Joseph by making no secret of her dreams and feelings about their experiences on the Wall, which helps Joseph realize that being on the Wall has made him afraid of sharing who he really is.

Outside of her relationship with Joseph, Hifa feels oppressed by her mother’s self-involvement, and a trapper who’s skilled with nets makes her a valued part of the floating community. Hifa’s choice to become a Breeder shows her to be pragmatic, while her desire for Joseph to tell her stories with happy endings shows that she is a person who needs a little idealism to thrive.

Hughes also serves as a foil to Joseph. Joseph describes him as a “skinny, gentle intellectual who did meditative martial arts and read Romantic poetry and wanted to be an academic” (70). Hughes is also similar enough in appearance to Joseph that the Captain and others sometimes mistake the two for each other. He presents a contrast to Joseph in thinking ahead to life beyond the Wall, but is also able to live in the present.

In contrast, Joseph either becomes so consumed by his ruminations that he ignores his immediate present—a dangerous habit for a Defender on the Wall—or is so caught up in his future plans that he is unable to truly engage with others. Hughes seems to have mastered the trick of striking the right balance. He is a good enough fighter that he survives alongside Hifa and Joseph during attacks, and is resilient enough that he adjusts to life in the floating community just like Joseph. Hughes likely dies in the fire that burns the floating community after the pirate attack, showing that luck sometimes accounts for who lives or who dies. His main importance in the novel is that his example encourages Joseph to be more intentional about creating his future.

James is an ambitious and young politician for whom Joseph has contempt, but who later leads Joseph to work toward his ambitions. Joseph describes James as “a short shiny young man with a mop of blond hair in an also shiny suit” and as a “baby politician” who has likely never served a day on the Wall (101). These descriptions suggest that James lacks substance. His shallowness reflects the bankrupt ethics of the United Kingdom, which has abdicated responsibility to the Others by building the Wall. Joseph initially assumes James is insincere in his elevated rhetoric about the holy duty of being a Defender. However, he cynically cozies up to James because he believes James can help him advance.

The two men are more alike than different at this point in Joseph’s arc. Joseph’s shift from seeing James as a contemptible elite to a useful ally who can help him become an elite marks a shift in his self-identity. Once James and the Defenders are put out to sea, James becomes a relic of the worst parts of life beyond the Wall. Like the people who built the Wall, his response to crises are extreme. He suggests killing the Captain out of vengeance, and throws a grenade that sets the floating community on fire. His likely demise allows Lanchester to represent the self-destructive nature of powerful people who think they can stave off the worst effects of climate change.

Mary is the cook for Joseph’s company. She has full, curly hair and is friendly and affectionate to some members of the company, especially Hifa. She is a static character in that she doesn’t change throughout the novel, and is mostly defined by her job. She uses her rounds feeding the company to socialize. Her dream is a hopeless one: to get enough money to open her own restaurant. Mary dies in the first attack of the Others on the Wall. Her character shows how the enslaved characters in the story have humanity.

The “olds” is the name Joseph gives to his parents and people of their generation who oversaw the lackadaisical response to climate change and the construction of the Wall, which was built to avoid dealing with the consequences of that inaction. People like Hifa’s mother and Joseph’s parents are objects of ridicule; young adults like Joseph understand that ignoring climate change and not dealing with the consequences is unfair and unethical. The olds’ apologies to their children are ineffective and insincere, since they do nothing to change the status quo.

Each of the olds represent different kinds of failed parents. Joseph’s mom is endlessly apologetic, which Joseph takes as performative and as being more about her than the wrongs her entire generation has inflicted upon his. Joseph’s father pretends like all is well and refuses to speak about the current situation, assuming that not talking about it will diffuse the tension between him and his son.

Hifa’s mother is still another type. She is self-involved and revels in predicting tragedy for her daughter as Hifa embarks on Breeding. Hifa’s mother is also an example of an older person who is complicit in the exploitation of Others. The universal dislike and contempt younger characters have for older characters highlights that responses to climate change have an ethical dimension.