51 pages • 1 hour read
Barbara O'NealWhen We Believed in Mermaids: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A 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
Dr. Katherine “Kit” Bianci
Content Warning: The source material for this guide includes descriptions of alcohol/drug addiction and recovery, the sexual assault of a child, suicidal ideation, abortion, and parental neglect.
Dr. Katherine “Kit” Bianci is the protagonist of the novel. Kit is an emergency room doctor with a complicated past. At the beginning of the novel, Kit is working her way through a changing relationship with her mother based on her mother’s recovery from a drug and alcohol addiction. Kit’s mother had addictions throughout all of her childhood, and this created a situation in which Kit and her sister, Josie, were often neglected. This neglect in Kit’s childhood has altered Kit’s perception of the world in ways that impact her interactions with other people and her sense of security.
As the novel progresses, Kit begins to confront memories from her childhood. Many of these memories concern on her sister, Josie, and a boy the family took in, Dylan. Kit’s perception of these memories is based on her understanding of each situation and her age and maturity at the time the memory was created. However, as the novel progresses, she begins to see some of the memories through mature eyes. While Kit had always known that her childhood was unusual, seeing certain events through the eyes of an adult, she begins to appreciate how Josie and Dylan attempted to protect her as a child. However, she also sees their failings based on their own lack of maturity and experience. These failures alter her perception of these people, allowing her to understand how the actions of Dylan and Josie both protected her and placed her in the same sort of danger her parents placed her in through their neglect.
Kit’s experiences as a child also affect her approach to relationships with men. Kit witnessed her parents’ extreme passion turn into abuse and neglect both in their relationship with each other and their children. When Kit fell in love for the first time, the relationship ended badly due in part to her sister’s interference in the situation. Kit experienced loneliness in her adolescence as both her mother and sister focused on their own problems in the aftermath of tragedy and left Kit to her own devices. The combination of these things, as well as the loss of Dylan and her father, cause Kit to reject the possibility of a committed relationship. Kit avoids engaging with men who could potentially be suitable long-term partners due to The Fear of Emotional Connection. She worries she will either lose the person she loves or the passion of a relationship will destroy her ordered life.
At the end of the novel, with Kit’s changing perspective on her childhood and the people she loved, she begins to change her perception of her life. Kit recognizes that those she loved did the best they could with what they had, and that they failed because of their own addictions and trauma. Kit also accepts that while her mother and sister failed her in childhood, they are now willing to provide her the support and love she desires. Kit also begins to accept that her views on a committed relationship were jaded by the trauma of her childhood, and that the right man might be worth the risk of a broken heart. While still afraid of what the future might bring, Kit opens herself to the possibility of a relationship with Javier, the man she met in Auckland. By confronting her past and changing her understanding of why things happened as they did, Kit is able to grow as a character and change her overall perception of her life.
Josie Bianci/Mari Edwards
Josie Bianci/Mari Edwards is Kit’s sister and the deuteragonist of the novel. This character has two names because she changed her name after an incident that allowed her to begin her life anew. In this way, Josie and Mari become two separate characters that have a few shared characteristics but live their lives completely differently.
Josie is seen in the novel through memories and flashbacks experienced by both Kit and Mari. Josie is initially a carefree child who spends her days dancing and playing with her younger sister, Kit. However, a shift is quickly seen in Josie’s character after the arrival of the young boy, Dylan. Josie matures faster than her sister because of the neglect she experiences at the hands of her parents, placing her in the position of having to raise her little sister. Dylan’s arrival eases this burden slightly, but not enough to create a change in how this situation has already influenced Josie’s personality development. Through more flashbacks, it is revealed that Josie experienced a series of sexual assaults at the hands of a guest in the restaurant her parents own, causing a change in her character. Josie is withdrawn, confused, and unable to trust those around her. This change in her character continues as she ages and can be seen in her behavior as a teenager.
The development of a drug and alcohol addiction is both a symptom of Josie’s trauma from the sexual assaults and her inability to trust the adults in her life. Josie turns to others her own age for comfort, spending time with groups of kids who share her fascination with drugs and alcohol and a budding interest in sex. Josie develops a complicated view of sex based on her experience as well as her fascination with Dylan, her trauma at the hands of her attacker complicated by her natural curiosity in Dylan’s sex life when she discovers she can watch him through a crack in the wall of her bedroom closet. Without an adult to help her navigate these adult topics, she turns to Dylan. However, Dylan has experienced his own abuse, and he isn’t equipped to help Josie. Instead of advising her to turn to an adult, Dylan teaches Josie to cope the say way he does, by using drugs and alcohol. Compounding Josie’s struggles, Dylan doesn’t discourage Josie’s sexual interest in him, but returns her interest instead. Based on her trauma, on the loss of Dylan and her father, Josie copes by doing what Dylan taught her and by losing herself to addiction.
The alias of Mari is created after Josie dies on a train destroyed by a terrorist’s bomb. Mari doesn’t have so much trauma in her past. Instead, she had an idyllic childhood in Canada marred only by the deaths of her parents in an accident. Mari embraces a new home and finds a career that fulfills her both emotionally and financially. Mari is confident and secure in herself, and this leads to a fulfilling relationship with a man that leads to marriage and children. Mari hasn’t just left Josie in the past, she killed Josie and even recovered from her addiction. When Josie/Mari’s character finally must confront the past and figure out how to cope and incorporate it into her present, she completes her character transformation.
Dylan
Dylan is an integral part of Kit and Josie’s story, but he is a static character who never changes or experiences character growth. Dylan is the personification of all the trauma and pain Kit and Josie experience in their childhood due in large part to their parents’ neglect and singular focus on themselves.
Dylan arrives on the doorstep of Eden, the Bianci family restaurant, beaten and homeless. Kit and Josie’s mother takes this child into their home and lies about his situation in order to protect him from being taken away. In this way, Dylan can be compared to Heathcliff from the novel Wuthering Heights. However, Dylan never grows up or falls in love with either of the Bianci sisters, though there is great affection between Dylan and both girls.
Dylan becomes a parent to Josie and Kit, stepping in when the Bianci parents fail to stand up to their obligations toward the girls. However, Dylan was only 13 years old when he arrived at Eden, and he suffered abuse that is not talked about but is shown in the scars on his body. Dylan is the only person in Josie’s life who recognizes the signs of abuse she displays after being sexually assaulted over the course of one summer. Dylan attempts to help Josie by encouraging her to talk about the abuse, but he also teaches her to use drugs to deal with the resulting panic attacks and emotional trauma. Later, when Josie tells Dylan that she has become fascinated with his sexual activity, he doesn’t discourage her, and he doesn’t tell her no when she asks him to become intimate with her one night when they are once again unsupervised.
Dylan is only viewed in the novel through the eyes of Kit and Josie, and both girls were young when they knew Dylan. Their perception of him is skewed by their maturity and understanding of the world at that point in their lives. When they look back on Dylan as adults, they begin to see problems with his behavior and understand his motivations, but by this time Dylan has been gone for years. However, even viewed through this unreliable lens, certain aspects of Dylan’s life are made clear by the author. Dylan was the survivor of vicious abuse from a young age. Dylan didn’t trust adults, and never found a way to deal with the trauma of his abuse outside of his use of drugs and alcohol. Dylan is also viewed as the only source of security and love the Bianci girls experienced as children, despite their different perspectives of him.
