White Oleander
Janet Fitch (1999)
“A girl passes through the hands of strangers to discover who she is when stripped of everything — including the mother who defined her.”
Characters in White Oleander
by Janet Fitch · 1999 · 8 characters analyzed
Cast: Astrid Magnussen, Ingrid Magnussen, Starr Thomas, Ray, Claire Richards, Rena Grushenka, Paul Trout, Olivia Johnstone.
Character Analysis
Astrid begins as her mother's creation — a twelve-year-old who sees the world through Ingrid's aesthetic framework and worships her without question. The novel is the story of her de-creation and re-creation: each foster home strips away a layer of Ingrid's influence and replaces it with something Astrid has earned through her own suffering. By the end, she is an artist whose medium (visual art) is itself a rejection of her mother's medium (poetry), and whose commitment to honest witness stands in opposition to Ingrid's commitment to beautiful fabrication.
Evolves from imitation of Ingrid's lyricism to a more direct, visual idiom. Her language becomes less ornate and more precise as the novel progresses.