The Ogress and the Orphans

The novel’s antagonist is The Mayor, who “delighted in discord and sowed acrimony wherever he went” (3). The Mayor thrives on the chaos he causes. He enjoys turning people against one another and to him, swindling towns and playing with emotions are a game. On the surface, he seems evil for the sake of being evil, and though his motivations are never revealed, it may be that he causes division because he is secretly scared of something. Greed is the Mayor’s fatal flaw. He is so obsessed with his hoard of coins that he doesn’t think to cover the windows of his house to keep his secret from the townspeople. This leads to the orphans seeing the coins and later to the crows discovering the hoard and distributing it to the people in the scene where the Mayor is run out of town.

Anthea is the eldest orphan at the Orphan House and “a tall, serious girl” (22). Anthea believes in facts and logic and seeks to prove almost everything she learns. The exception to this is the rule that orphans must leave the Orphan House at age 14, which shows how fear disrupts how we normally view the world. Rather than seek proof of the rule, Anthea avoids it because she is afraid of the truth. She does extensive research about the town before the Library burned and pieces together the truth of Cass’s disappearance before anyone else. Both things take less work than looking up or asking about a rule, showing that Anthea doesn’t want to know if the rule is true. Anthea also embodies responsibility. She is constantly working to better the lives of the other orphans, and once she meets the Ogress, she comes up with the idea to help the townspeople by sharing factual stories with them.

Bartleby is the second-oldest orphan. He has mismatched eyes—one green and one milky-white that only sees light and shadow, which he believes lets him “practice seeing things in two separate ways” (27). Bartleby’s eyes symbolize his philosophical mind. Where Anthea seeks the singular truth, Bartleby looks at situations from multiple angles to find the different ways something may be understood. He asks questions no one else thinks to ask, and those questions allow Anthea and others to come up with ideas they may not have otherwise. Bartleby and Anthea foil one another, and their differences complement one another’s strengths.

Cass’s full name is Cassandra, but she rarely uses it. While Anthea prizes logic and Bartleby focuses on debate, Cass is “more of a doer than a talker” (27). When sickness sweeps through the Orphan House, Cass remains untouched and picks up the duties of those too sick or tired to work. When she learns about the rule and how Anthea might have to leave, Cass goes so Anthea can stay, only realizing all the flaws in her plan once she’s on her own. Cass’s disappearance jumpstarts the conflict in the latter half of the novel. Being brought back to town by the Ogress allows the butcher to rile up the townspeople with the idea that the Ogress is stealing children. Cass’s firsthand experience with the Ogress’s kindness motivates her and the orphans to visit the Ogress, which leads to the book’s conclusion.

Elijah is one of the younger orphans. He hears stories from the wood of the Orphan House and is almost constantly talking and telling stories, which distracts those around him. No explanation is ever given for Elijah’s ability to hear stories. It may be a gift inherent in his family, or it may be that he listens to objects others ignore. Elijah represents the storyteller archetype in fairy tales—a person who receives stories from an undisclosed source and shares them to teach lessons and solve problems.

Myron is the husband of the Orphan House Matron. When the Library burned, Myron rushed inside to rescue as many books as he could, and as a result, his lungs were damaged. He gets tired easily and still has angry-looking welts on his skin from the burns he sustained. At the end of the book, Myron is unsure how much time he has left, and he represents the idea of living every moment as if it’s the last. Myron is one of the few adults in Stone-in-the-Glen who is not affected by the Mayor. No reason is ever given for this, but it may be that he heard a warning from the stone when he rescued the books, which turned him cold against the Mayor.

The butcher is one of the first Stone-in-the-Glen residents to openly turn hostile against neighbors he’s trusted for years. The butcher is easily swayed by the Mayor’s talk of thieves in town, and since no one can force us to think things we don’t agree with, it is likely the butcher was already suspicious. In Chapter 38, the butcher rushes into the barn to help the Ogress rescue the sheep, and one of the lambs falls asleep in his lap after he saves it. This scene shows the trusting nature of animals. The lamb doesn’t know the butcher caused the fire. It only knows that it feels safe with the butcher. From one perspective, the lamb shows that good people can do bad things without becoming totally bad. From another perspective, the lamb shows that it can be easy to mistake a dangerous place for a safe one.

Harold is one of the many crows who live with the Ogress. The other crows shun Harold because he is more concerned with helping the town than being an excellent crow. Crows are prideful creatures, and most are quick to judge and find fault. Harold shows how all members of a group are not the same. While a group may share similar experiences, those experiences affect individuals differently. Harold is proud to be a crow, just like the other crows, but he also has other emotions.

The stone is the narrator of the story and knows all the stories that ever were or ever will be told, and it represents the wisdom of boundless knowledge. Barnhill may have chosen to have the stone tell the story because giving knowledge to an inanimate object allowed her to have a wise being that wasn’t a human. A human would react a certain way to knowing so much, and they might choose to use that information for personal gain. A stone will be around much longer than a human, and it could hold vast knowledge without human traits dictating how it used that knowledge.

The cobbler’s wife is another adult less affected by the Mayor. She is a voice of reason in the town, which means many people ignore her in favor of letting their emotions rule them. When Cass goes missing, the cobbler’s wife jumps into action, tending to the Orphan House and seeing to other needs in the town. She organizes a book swap when the Ogress and orphans start leaving books, and she is elected as mayor at the end of the book. Her character arc is a juxtaposition to the selfish greed of the Mayor and shows how people within a community are often best equipped to lead it.

Anthea, Bartleby, Cass, and Elijah play individual roles throughout the novel, but the younger orphans at the Orphan House are just as important. Together, they represent how families don’t have to look a certain way or be made up of just parents and their biological children. The younger orphans also show how Anthea, Bartleby, Cass, and Elijah grow up during the book. The older kids take on more responsibility because the younger kids need them, and the older kids want to create a better world for the orphans to grow up in.