Heretic's Characters Flashcards
Sarah Carrier
Sarah Carrier is the 10-year-old daughter of Thomas and Martha Carrier and the narrator of the story. She is a girl of high ideals, intelligence, and a sense of justice. She hates stuffed shirts and fears religious crazies. She is the perfect vessel to absorb and pass on her mother’s example of integrity, courage, and love once she overcomes some resentments against her.
Martha Carrier
Martha Carrier, wife to Thomas and mother of five children, is the high-spirited and highly-intelligent woman who sacrifices her life to prove her witch-hunting tormentors cowards and manipulators. Martha comes from an old family in Massachusetts (Carrier) and displays the independence from social norms that often accompanies that elevated status. By her intelligence, wit and facile conversation she is not only the heroine of the book but the real strength of her family.
Thomas Carrier
Thomas Carrier is the nearly seven-foot-tall giant who runs the family farm in Billerica. A Welshman, Carrier is constantly aware of his status in the colony as a newcomer. Although possessed of strong opinions as well as a strong sense of right and wrong, Thomas generally avoids interactions with the other farmers and townsfolk for fear of standing out as a misfit at a time when witch-pursuers race across the landscape looking for scapegoats. He nurtures resentments at local people for blaming him for causing smallpox.
Richard Carrier
Richard Carrier is the nonidentical twin of Sarah Carrier. Perhaps because they are twins, the two have an especially close relationship.
Hannah Carrier
Hannah Carrier is the nearly two-year-old infant daughter of the family. She and Sarah develop a strong and almost maternal bond.
Tom Carrier
Tom Carrier is the oldest of five children in the Carrier family.
Andrew Carrier
Andrew Carrier is the second oldest of the three sons in the Carrier family.
Reverend Francis Dane
Reverend Dane is a well-known clergyman who is accused of witchcraft, tried, and executed.
Aunt Mary Toothaker
Mary is Martha’s sister, and each has her own style of raising children and managing her family; Mary is easygoing and relaxed with her children while Martha is strict and not particularly communicative. Sarah, the narrator, prefers being with her Aunt and Uncle Toothaker after a visit during the smallpox epidemic.
Uncle Roger Toothaker
Uncle Roger is an alcoholic womanizer and a cheater as well as a physician. His character defects have earned him the everlasting enmity of Martha Carrier who in trying to explain them to her daughter Sarah, also must impart some birds-and-bees knowledge to her 10-year-old.
Mercy Williams
Mercy Williams is the feral 17-year-old who is bought as an indentured servant by Thomas Carrier for a five-year period, so she can work off the debt she owes her rescuers who snatched her from the Wabanaki Indians after they massacred the rest of her family. Marcy is crude and vulgar with the instincts for self-preservation of a sewer rat. Ultimately, she betrays Martha Carrier and the entire family by accusing them of being witches.
Reverend George Burroughs
Reverend George Burroughs of Wells, formerly the minister of Salem, gives the town council of Boston a lurid description of an attack by Abanaki Indians on colonial settlements along the Agamenticus River. Later, his friends and former parishioners in Salem arrest, try, and hang him for witchery.
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