The Mysterious Benedict Society - Characters

Characters

• Reynard "Reynie" Muldoon is an eleven-year-old boy living at Stonetown Orphanage. He is exceptionally talented at problem solving, logical deduction, and reading people's emotions, and his intelligence resulted in the assignment of a special tutor at Stonetown Orphanage, Miss Perumal. Reynie looks between the lines, observing and questioning, and gets past most obstacles by finding the "puzzle" within the situation. He is described as an especially average-looking boy with average brown hair, average pale complexion, and average clothes. At the end of the book he gets adopted by Miss Perumal.
• George "Sticky" Washington is a tea-skinned boy with a bald head. He is also eleven. He has a prodigious photographic memory and a talent for speed-reading. He is, however, timid and nervous and resorts to polishing his glasses in stressful situations. He ran away from his parents because they forced him into academic competitions and because he later had reason to think that they no longer wanted him around at all. He also has the special ability in which everything he reads "sticks" in his head.
• Kate "The Great Kate Weather Machine" Wetherall is a twelve-year-old girl who is resourceful and athletic, possessing extreme agility skills and dexterity bordering on the superhuman. She dreads being slow and she used to be in the circus. She has blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. She carries a red bucket containing various items, including a Swiss Army knife, a flashlight, a pen light, rope, a bag of marbles, a slingshot, a spool of clear fishing twine, a horseshoe magnet and a spyglass disguised as a kaleidoscope. She is very cheerful and optimistic. Kate's mother died when she was a baby, and she believes that her father abandoned her. At the end of the book, Kate's real father is revealed to be Milligan.
• Constance "Connie/Connie girl" Contraire is a small, extremely intelligent, precocious, stubborn and often unpleasant girl. She has the ability to write clever and whimsical poems, and her ultra-sensitive mind is also the most severely affected by the hidden messages transmitted by the Whisperer. Almost towards the end, she is very stubborn when she is in the Whisperer. At the end of the book she is adopted by Mr. Benedict. She is compared to a crab by Kate in the first book.Kate often carries her to speed things up. She is two years and eleven months old at the end of the book. She also has the ability to telepathically send and receive/read other people's mind messages. However, when changing someone's mind, she gets a big headache, especially when she cures Mr. Benedict of narcolepsy.
• Ledroptha Curtain is the antagonist of the story and the head of the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened (L.I.V.E.). Mr. Curtain created the Whisperer and other inventions in order to brainsweep all the world's minds, as part of a scheme in which he will control the world and be declared "Minister And Secretary of all the Earth's Regions" (M.A.S.T.E.R.) Partway through the story, he is revealed to be Mr. Benedict's twin brother. He uses a modified wheelchair to get around, due to his narcolepsy, a condition he shares with his brother. However, unlike his brother, his narcolepsy is triggered by anger, whereas Mr. Benedict's narcolepsy is triggered by strong emotion. Ledroptha Curtain is a play on words of the phrase "Let drop the curtain".
• Mr. Benedict is the person who started The Mysterious Benedict Society and brought the children together. He is the one who wants to stop Curtain's Whisperer. He has narcolepsy like his twin, Ledroptha Curtain, which is triggered by feeling strong emotion. He is very reluctant to let the children go on a dangerous mission, but when reminded there is no other way, he lets them go. He leaves a note to the reader at the end of the book saying that to find his first name, "if you are acquainted with the code, then I assure you that the answer lies within your grasp." The key word in the note to the Reader is "code" and the phrase "answer lies within your grasp." In hardback versions of the book, a Morse Code sequence appears on the inside of the book jacket underneath the author's name and blurb, literally where a typical reader would be holding the book. In paperback versions, there is a Morse Code sequence on the back cover of the book, underneath the plot description.
• 'Milligan' Wetherall is the guard for the children when they enter L.I.V.E. and for Rhonda, Number Two, and Mr. Benedict. He is a sad and somber man, even described as a "scarecrow" owing to his shabby and depressing demeanor. His sadness is attributed to his kidnapping by secret agents working for Mr. Curtain, after which he lost all of his past memories, due to the Whisperer. He claimed, in one chapter where he was asked why he was sad, that he felt comfortable about the name "Milligan", and that it is because it seems familiar to him. The name "Milligan" seems familiar to him because as soon as he woke up and couldn't remember anything, he heard a child's voice in his head say "Milligan" and assumed that as his name, since he couldn't remember his real name. In the beginning of the book, Kate tells the rest of the children one distant memory of her father that apparently abandoned her. That memory is swimming in a mill pond and after asking her father, "Daddy, can we go to the MILL AGAIN?" And her father replying "Of course we can, Katie-Cat. Of course we can go to the MILL AGAIN." Mill again. MILLIGAN. When Milligan has a memory breakthrough, this is how the two find out the truth about him being Kate's Father. Milligan also has flax blond hair and ocean blue eyes. '
• 'Number Two' is one of Mr. Benedict's assistants. She is always referred to by her code name, despite Mr. Benedict telling her that her real name is fine. She is said to have a 'pencil like' appearance complete with a yellow complexion, rusty red hair, and yellow clothes. She passed Mr. Benedict's tests several years ago, and was later adopted by Mr. Benedict. She almost never sleeps because she has insomnia. She is always trying to watch Mr. Benedict in case he falls asleep due to narcolepsy.
• Rhonda Kazembe is also a former student, but was adopted by Mr. Benedict just like Number Two. She is very small, giving her the ability to pose as a student during Mr. Benedict's tests, and offer answers to any child who will take them. Therefore, if they agreed to cheat, they would not pass the quiz. Like Number Two, she also tries to watch for Mr. Benedict's Narcoleptic attacks. She grew up in Zambia and spoke Bembi in her youth.