A Number - Character Analysis

Character Analysis

Each character has a different core emotion. Salter goes through a range of emotions from love, to anger, to despair, each as a result of his actions and decisions. Salter is tormented by his choices and hides “behind the smoke screen of lies and cigarettes” to try to live this new life with his new child, Bernard (B2). Salter’s action seem unreasonable, in the dialogue they say “but another child might have been better” asking the question of why did Salter not just have another child? Why did he make a clone of his first child? Salter’s response was that he thought his first child was so perfect that he wanted another chance, a second try. He loves this clone, but he quickly becomes angry and snarls at his original son saying he should have been squashed as a child. He then turns to despair once he finds out his original son and the clone that he loved are dead, and then looking for answers he finds another clone. He asks this clone a series of questions and is disappointed that this clone seems to have no unique features, nothing to keep the memory of his dead sons special. Bernard (B1) is a “bitter, angry 40-year old” who finds his father after being given up. Bernard was abused and neglected as a child by Salter and naturally is angry, but still has a bond with Salter because he is his father. The clones are a threat to this bond; Salter showed love to this clone, love he never showed Bernard. In bitter anger he murders the clone that lived with Salter, and then having nothing else to live for, Salter would hate him, he kills himself. Bernard (B2) is living a life full of lies. From conception he has been told lies, from how is mother died to being a clone. The lies are slowly uncovered one by one, each time driving him further and further away from Salter, he is angry and confused and lost. His world has been shattered and he is scared; scared of not having a sense of self anymore, scared of his lack of uniqueness, and scared of Bernard (B1). Michael Black is another clone of Bernard but he is very pleasant. He is a “mild-mannered teacher, a happy family man, who takes the news of his unusual genesis with extraordinary equilibrium, and whose quiet contentment is utterly baffling to the tormented Salter.”. He seems normal, but also seems very shallow and like everyone around him. He lacks a depth that Salter is searching for, but is content without it.