Characters from Alice Hoffman's Saint Helene - Essay Example

The main character of the novel is Saint Helene though of course. The characters are set in the era of candles and lights made out of paper bags, sand and candles. Helena’s mother takes the authority in the house of replacing every melting pot of white wax with fresh candles. However it is shown in the beginning that Helene’s indifferent to her surroundings. Helene went to a high school called Middleborough High till her junior year. She was known to be a quiet recluse girl who had been dejected by the people around.

Her companionship was very little. She was barely known her school. Whatever little was she known, she was known as someone who would spend her entire afternoon in a cafeteria filling paper pages. That was all people knew about her. The whole school used to look down upon her. The girls around her used to thank their stars that they are not Helen. That is the kind aura with which Alice Hoffman has set the character of the book in the beginning of the novel. To many she is unrelatable. She is not your routine girl.

She hardly cares about her exterior and how she appears to the outside world. She is known to be fat, ugly, sorrowful . she has no friends. People think she is lost in her own world and the girls in her school find relief in the fact that they are not HER. . However, she is a strong person from within. She puts a tough fight against the insulting connotations sent her way by her peers and school people. (Hoffman) As the story progresses her character is shown to evolve. Slowly and gradually she is redeemed in her eyes and in the eyes of people around her.

She gains confidence, holds her ground and starts becoming more viable and acceptable by the society that was around her. The evolution in the character was phenomenal. It’s the best character in the book and makes inroads into this world without having the most appealing features or the most charismatic habits. She is by far the best character that this story has to offer. Bibliography Hoffman, Alice. Saint Helene.