I Know What You Did Last Summer

Barry, a point-of-view character, is an 18-year-old college student. He was the one driving during the accident and the one who demanded they keep it a secret. His character helps to develop the theme of Gender Roles, as Barry is a good example of toxic masculinity. He is a football player who cheats on his girlfriend, Helen. The narrator notes, "Helen wasn’t the only girl Barry went out with, though he was pretty sure that he was the only guy she was seeing” (10). Barry has negative opinions about women due to his flawed relationship with his controlling mother and workaholic father. He objectifies Helen and the other women he dates, only viewing them in terms of sexual appeal and their ability to improve his reputation.

Barry is also a bad friend to other men, especially after being shot by the antagonist. While the antagonist (Bud/Collie) intends to kill Barry, he wounds him severely and almost paralyzes him. When he is unable to move his legs, the antagonist realizes that “for a guy like Barry, life in a wheelchair could be worse than no life at all” (184). Barry’s identity is tied to playing violent sports with other men and physically intimidating women. Instead of protecting his friends, Barry lies to Ray about the phone call that led to his shooting. Helen notes how this represents Barry’s lack of empathy and concern for his friends, who have kept his secret for months: “Barry had lied. And with this lie he had shown how little their safety meant to him— Ray’s, Julie’s, and Helen’s” (186). After regaining the ability to move his foot, Barry confesses his lie to Ray—his physical healing causes him to be concerned for the safety of others.

The third point-of-view character, Helen works to be conventionally attractive—dieting to become thin and dyeing her hair to become more blonde—and has unusual violet eyes. These physical characteristics lead to her winning the beauty competition for the “Channel Five Future Star” (11). This well-paying gig as a television presenter allows her to move out of her family’s house, where she has several brothers and sisters, as a teenager. Her focus on her physical appearance can be compared to her boyfriend Barry’s focus on his physical ability to play football. However, Barry does not find this appealing enough to keep him from cheating on Helen. Furthermore, the antagonist insults Helen’s obsession with her looks. She says he makes her sound “self-centered” (161), and he replies, “You said it. I didn’t” (161), an exchange that happens shortly before he attacks her in her apartment. Before this moment, the antagonist (Bud/Collie) flattered Helen to get close to her and learn what happened after he shot Barry.

Helen’s adversarial relationship with her sister and dislike of her mother’s life lead to Helen not having close female friends. The narrator notes that Helen “had never been a person to have girls as friends” (157), and Julie is her friend because their boyfriends are friends. Because no one tells her about Barry’s indiscretions, she stands by his side unwaveringly. She agrees to keep the secrecy pact about the accident from the beginning and tries to support Barry after he is shot. Her revelation about the antagonist’s identity is tied to her revelation about Barry’s infidelity—Helen’s character does not shift until the novel’s end.

Ray, the final point-of-view character, is 18 years old and academically talented—“a natural-born teacher, he often made himself useful in a tutoring capacity” (44). Physically, Ray has green eyes that Julie admires. His beard, which he started growing after the accident, “gave character to a face that always before had held a not-quite-finished look, like a portrait by an artist who had not been able to decide what to do with the mouth and chin. Now the face was done and, young as it was, it was a man’s face” (133). Ray is skinnier than Barry, who is built more like Ray’s father, a former pro football player. While Ray initially sided with Barry about the secrecy pact, he later regrets that decision, due to The Effects of Guilt About Manslaughter.

After the accident and after Julie breaks up with him, Ray travels around California, working odd jobs, like on fishing boat crews. He still retains his romantic feelings for Julie. His romantic rivalry with Bud plays a part in hiding the antagonist’s identity (Bud/Collie) from the reader and Ray. At the novel’s end, Ray saves Julie from getting killed by Bud, hitting him with a flashlight to get him to release Julie. However, he feels that even this wasn’t the best option: “It’s not the way the good guys do it on television, but there wasn’t time to think about that” (198). Making the last line of the novel a piece of dialogue from Ray about his love for Julie characterizes Ray as the primary love interest of the protagonist and makes Ray a foil for Barry, who is driven by lust rather than love.

The novel’s antagonist has a dual identity, going by two different nicknames—Bud, who is dating Julie, and Collie, Helen’s new neighbor. Collie’s full name is included when he first meets Helen in Chapter 4. However, Bud’s full name isn’t included until Chapter 18. Bud reacts poorly to Julie turning him down for a date, and she wonders why she feels threatened by him (193). The identity of Bud/Collie is also obscured by naming conventions in blended families. He has a different last name than his half-brother, Daniel Gregg, who had a different father. In the newspaper story about the accident, the name of Daniel’s half-brother isn’t listed, so the teens—and the reader—can’t connect Bud/Collie to Daniel easily.

One distinctive physical feature of Bud/Collie is his dark eyes. They reflect the darkness of his soul and become darker when he is about to attack someone violently. Both Helen and Julie notice this change in his eyes. Julie notes that “his eyes seemed very dark” (192) just before he attacks her. The soul of Bud/Collie has been darkened by not only losing his little brother, but also by participating in the war. He says, “I cracked up over in Iraq [...]. There’s something about seeing people blown to pieces that kind of gets to you” (183). The most significant clue to his dual identity as the antagonist is that Bud and Collie are introduced as veterans.