Every Heart A Doorway

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child death, death, bullying, transgender discrimination, and emotional abuse.

Nancy is the novella’s protagonist. The 17-year-old wears black and white clothes that match her hair, which is “bone-white streaked with runnels of black, like oil spilled on a marble floor” (16). The only splash of color that Nancy wears is her pomegranate hair ribbon, which alludes to the Greek Underworld and reflects her longing to return home. Due to her time in the Halls of the Dead, the solemn girl dislikes the “hot, fast world” of the living and takes comfort in stillness (156). She feels like an outsider at the School for Wayward Children and on Earth as a whole, and she struggles with painful homesickness throughout the novel, as seen during one of her first conversations with Sumi: “I’m crying because I’m angry, and I’m sad, and I want to go home” (29). Nancy has a strong sense of compassion and justice, which she demonstrates by chastising the students who bully Jack and handling her deceased classmates’ remains with great care. This reverence for the dead leads her to join Kade, Jack, and Christopher on the murder investigation, and their experiences together bring the teenagers together as a close-knit friend group.