Ship Breaker

Nita, also called Lucky Girl, is the feisty and initially narrow-minded corporate heiress of Patel Global Transit. She is incredibly wealthy and beautiful, with long straight black hair and large black eyes, but she is also arrogant and sometimes cruel towards those she considers socially and economically inferior. When Nailer first sees her in the wreckage of her clipper ship, he is struck by her beauty: “[E]ven bruised and dead, she was pretty” (90). However, intolerance and dishonesty temper Nita’s beauty; she lies about her circumstances and compares the ship breakers to animals, though she has the “grace to look embarrassed” when Nailer calls her on it (134).

Once the princess of a corporate kingdom, Nita is flung into the poverty-stricken world of the masses after the wreck, and she must adapt to her changed circumstances to survive. She is pragmatic regarding her own role in the corporate war besetting her father: “I’m a chess piece. A pawn [...] I can be sacrificed but I cannot be captured” (196). Surprisingly, she is willing to sacrifice her life to help her father retain control of the corporation; her morals prohibit her from allowing her enemy, Pyce, to change the nature of the company and sell illegal fossil fuels. This willingness to endure hardship rather than give herself up drives her character arc. She sheds her “prissy distaste” for the slums and contributes her share (218), matching Tool and Nailer by working at the most menial of jobs on the docks. Tool frequently challenges Nita’s perspectives regarding corporate mistreatment of people in poverty, as well as her belief that the bioengineered half-men are animals. Her growing awareness of the inequities of the social and class system demonstrates that she is a dynamic character, capable of change. After working alongside Nita for three weeks in the slums of Orleans II, Nailer sees that she “show[s] a determination to carry her weight” (218). When he tells her that he would vouch for her on a light crew—a statement that implies that he would stand for her in all situations—Nita recognizes how important this promise actually is. She no longer looks down on the ship breakers but recognizes that they are all just trying to survive; her privileged background doesn’t grant her an edge in the world of people in poverty.

Nita’s kidnapping is the basis for Nailer receiving the job aboard the Dauntless, which fulfills his long-held dream of sailing on a clipper ship. By the end of the novel, she not only saves Nailer by pulling him from the sinking Pole Star and supporting him against the stormy waves, but she also has overcome her deep-seated prejudices and has made a vow to implement changes in her corporation that will help the clans in Bright Sands build better lives.

Bacigalupi describes Richard Lopez, Nailer’s father, as a “demon” (10), “a city killer” (132), “a drunk and a bastard” (64), and a “burning core of violence and hungers” (58). He is small and dangerous, “blurringly fast” (133), and has an addiction to amphetamine and alcohol. His parenting teeters between uncaring neglect and brutal physical abuse. His moods are like storms, “full of undertows and crashing surf and water spouts” (56), and Nailer tiptoes around those moods to avoid inciting Richard’s violent nature “fueled by the rattle of drugs and anger and [...] madness” (56). His body is tattooed with old crew marks, self-inflicted slashes to mark the men he’s killed in the ring, and a threatening dragon whose tattooed claws wrap around Richard’s neck. He is an apex predator; killing and brutalizing the weak gives him enormous pleasure, and he is the perfect crew boss for the hired thugs that Lucky Strike uses to police the beach.

Richard’s defection to the corporate villains who are hunting Nailer and Nita causes him no moral qualms; his ambition surpasses loyalty to anyone, including his son. In fact, Richard is Nailer’s most deadly foe; Tool warns Nailer, “Your father is more than a dragon. If he catches you, he will slaughter you” (248), and this warning is far from hyperbole. Bacigalupi builds Richard’s character up to supernatural proportions and associates him with death imagery; Richard at one point vanishes into the blackness like “a pale skeleton” (159), and Nailer is said to be “spawned by demons” (10)—a reference to his father’s eyes. As an antagonist, Richard is completely amoral. His lack of loyalty and integrity contrasts sharply with Nailer’s fidelity and honor, and Nailer’s revulsion towards his father is the prime reason he is so strongly against violence. Nailer cultivates his own loyalty, compassion, and morality to counteract any traits he might have inherited. Because Richard is a static character, he is brutally evil to his end, and aside from a whispered plea to Nailer for help, he remains a ruthless killer. 

Tool is one of the more complex characters in Ship Breaker. A mentor to both Nita and Nailer, he is a half-man—a bioengineered warrior created to protect the rich and fight wars. His genetic code includes DNA from humans, canines, hyenas, and tigers. He is genetically programmed for loyalty to a single patron, but he was smarter than his creators preferred, and he now has no master. Tool is huge, heavily muscled, and has “blunt doglike features” (138). He has a reputation for eating people raw, but in reality, Tool displays more humanity than most of the residents of Bright Sands. When Nailer’s father holds Pima, Nailer, and Nita prisoner on the island, Tool alerts Pima’s mother and helps with the rescue. He volunteers to accompany Nailer and Nita to Orleans II because he believes they might benefit from his wisdom. Although he says this sardonically, he in truth becomes a mentor to both Nita and Nailer on the journey. He lays bare Nita’s biased judgements against those in poverty, his words “like a whip, lashing her” (210), but it is his unrelenting stripping away of her preconceptions that helps her to grow. His insistence that genetics are not destiny allows Nailer to resolve his fears about his father. As a mentor, Tool also steps away when Nailer outgrows the need for his protection.

Tool is an outlier; he isn’t attached to any clan or social class—not even his fellow half-men—which gives him an autonomy that all the other characters lack. Being on the outside looking in, he has distance to reflect on the truths of the world, which sets him up as a sort of philosopher. He himself is a paradox: Although he is a fearsome warrior, he walks away from Richard Lopez, explaining, “I do not lunge into battles that cannot be won” (243). When Nita disparages his sense of loyalty, he points out that if he were loyal, he would have turned her over to Richard’s killers. He muses about mortality, saying of Nita, “She is just one person. These people think she is infinitely valuable. But she is just one more who will die, if not now, then later” (247). He is not saying that Nita is not valuable as a person, but rather that all things must die, and still the world goes on. It is a deep philosophy for a creature society perceives as little more than a dog. His final advice to Nailer is pragmatic but also strangely caring towards the boy who is terrified of becoming like his father: “When the fighting comes, don’t deny your slaughter nature. You are no more Richard Lopez than I am an obedient hound” (248). In this statement, Tool encapsulates the themes of free will, destiny, family, and survival. As a static character, Tool does not change, but he is the driver of change for Nailer and Nita.

Pima is a young woman on Bright Sands, a crew boss and a sister-figure for Nailer. She vouches for Nailer, getting him a job on the light crew, and stands up for him against other bosses and predators on the beach. She is the oldest of the crew and outgrowing her usefulness for light salvage. Tall, Black, and muscled, Pima will still have to bulk up to transition to heavy crew, a move that she pragmatically knows is a long shot. Pima holds the crew together, interceding for Nailer against Bapa, the big boss, and warning the crewmembers against relying too much on luck. She is a foil to Nailer: realistic about her options while he daydreams of clipper ships, hardnosed about letting Nita die when he is empathetically arguing to save her, blessed with a loving and protective mother where Nailer has a violent father. Nailer learns about loyalty from Pima, who would risk her life to save even the newest member of her crew but who would also unrepentantly punish betrayal with exile or death. Nailer considers her his family, and at the end of the book, he saves both her and her mother from the privations of the beach.