49 pages • 1 hour read
Stephen Graham JonesI Was a Teenage Slasher
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Tolly Driver
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses extreme violence.
Tolly Driver is the protagonist and narrator of I Was a Teenage Slasher. Tolly is described as a lanky teen, which makes him an unlikely candidate for a killer. He also has an allergy to peanuts, which Amber uses against him during their final confrontation. Although he is a high school student, he occasionally works at his mother’s hardware store, helping to move goods around in the warehouse. The narrative is framed as a memoir that Tolly has written 17 years after the Lamesa killings. This allows Tolly to make asides about the ways the killings have affected his life, whether through public perception, his remorse, or the use of his abilities at work. When he admits to fictionalizing an encounter with a welder during his memoir, Tolly admits that his narration may be unreliable in parts. He produces the memoir for Amber, leaving it for her to find in the glove compartment of her retired truck.
When the narrative begins, Tolly is grieving the loss of his father, who worked as a pumper. Tolly believes that he is destined to follow the same path in life, an idea that is reinforced by his place in the social hierarchy of his high school. Tolly is seen as an outsider, partly because his peanut allergy causes his peers to see him as “fragile.” The dynamics between Tolly’s reputation and his grief feed into the theme of Grief and the Struggle for Social Acceptance. Nevertheless, Tolly hints at the possibility that he could live a life beyond Lamesa. He explores the possibility of using his natural writing talent to apply for college. Toward the end of the novel, he meets a former colleague of his father’s, who encourages him to pursue his father’s dream of living a bigger life. This clashes with Tolly’s tendency to use his grief as an excuse for why he can’t chase ambitious dreams after high school.
Because Tolly is infected by the blood of Justin Joss, he transforms into a slasher, obeying the genre conventions of slasher films. His slasher persona is characterized by the wearing of his mother’s belts over his face. Tolly frequently uses these belts to grapple and kill his victims. He also gains several superhuman abilities like enhanced limping speed, enhanced victim perception, perfect marksmanship with thrown weapons, and night vision. Most importantly, Tolly’s slasher persona weaponizes his resentment against the social hierarchy that ostracizes him, justifying the killings as a revenge mission to punish those who humiliated and nearly killed him at Deek’s pool party. Although Tolly is the protagonist of the novel, his slasher persona also makes him his own antagonist. His defeat at the hands of Amber resolves the narrative conflict.
Years later, a televised dramatization of the killings will name this slasher persona “Strappy.” Tolly will spend the rest of his life reckoning with his actions. The memoir becomes a way for Tolly to expose the truth of his feelings during that time.
Amber Big Plume Dennison
Amber Big Plume Dennison is a major supporting character in the novel. She walks alongside Tolly through every part of his slasher journey, beginning with their shared arrival at Deek’s house party. Unlike Tolly, Amber is beginning to integrate into the social circle at Lamesa High. This is evidenced by the relative ease with which she settles into the party, whereas Tolly struggles to garner the attention of his crush, Stace Goodkin.
Amber is Indigenous American. This puts her at odds with the county sheriff, Burke, who is prejudiced against her. This reflects the wider disadvantages Amber faces as an Indigenous American in Texas. It also explains why she does not trust the sheriff when Tolly suggests handing himself over to her. Amber nevertheless maintains a close affinity for her heritage, as evidenced by the silver-feather earring she inherits from her family and plans to wear to Deek’s party before it is lost underneath the driver’s seat of her truck.
Amber has a brother in the military, who inspires her love of slasher movies. This makes her a mentor to Tolly once he starts to learn about his newfound abilities. She teaches him about the patterns and character archetypes that populate a slasher movie, then uses that knowledge to prevent Tolly from killing again. She therefore not only supports Tolly by working to preserve his moral integrity, but also supports the teen community of Lamesa by ensuring their safety.
By the end of the novel, Amber is revealed to be Tolly’s final girl, or his nemesis according to slasher genre conventions. Just as Tolly undergoes a transformation throughout the novel, Amber’s final role in the narrative is foreshadowed by shifts in character. Tolly first observes that Amber is studying the encyclopedia, a dramatic turn away from her repulsion for literature. Later, Tolly notices that Amber refuses to deploy curse words, which clashes against her natural speech. Amber also starts to display a nurturing side when she cares for an ailing baby bird at her home. Amber initially suggests that Mel is Tolly’s final girl, though it is hinted that Amber might have come to the realization that it was herself all along ahead of their final confrontation. The fact that she conceals a jar of peanut butter to use against Tolly at the grain elevator suggests that she was conscious of the possibility that Tolly would try to kill her. Mel’s eventual death makes Amber the final girl.
Amber does not let Tolly’s actions get in the way of their friendship, however. Her final act of mercy toward him involves wiping off the peanut butter after he has fallen off the grain elevator. She turns away to trigger his supernatural healing ability, giving him a chance to live another life after the Lamesa killings. Tolly remains moved by her kindness, especially as he had considered that his life was over after killing Mel. Amber’s mercy speaks to her belief that Tolly can take control of his life, resolving the theme of Fate Versus Free Will.
Justin Joss
Justin Joss is the first slasher who appears in the novel. His narrative function is to establish the genre rules that the novel will derive from slasher movies. This makes him a template for Tolly’s story, foreshadowing what will happen next. When he was alive, Justin was an unpopular student desperate to ascend the rungs of the school social ladder. His drive for social acceptance began at an early age. Tolly recounts an incident where Justin ate a mound of salt because he thought it would gain approval from his peers. Ironically, this only made him the subject of further ridicule. Justin persisted in seeking acceptance, leading to his untimely death at the pumpjacks. Justin once again participates in the deadly initiation rite of riding the pumpjack because he thinks it will gain him access to Deek’s clique.
Justin’s return as a slasher is triggered by the taste of blood. One of Deek’s friends accidentally spills blood on his gravestone. This symbolizes Justin’s motivations for killing their clique in a brutal way, introducing The Perils of Revenge as a theme. He uses the drill bit his father left behind on his gravestone as a weapon, giving his revenge an air of poetic justice. Justin’s mission only ends once he kills Deek at the pumpjacks. This makes him vulnerable against his final girl, Stace, who maintains sympathy and remorse for Justin even though she was not directly involved in Justin’s death.
Mel Boanerges
Mel Boanerges is a secondary antagonist in the novel. She is a baton twirler in the marching band who initiates Tolly’s humiliation at Deek’s house party. To Mel’s credit, Tolly’s humiliation was not unprovoked. She and the other marching band members restrain him after he drunkenly jumps into the pool, splashing water on Mel and her beau. His humiliation, however, may be seen as disproportionate to the act, resulting in Tolly’s near-death by peanut allergy. It is unclear how intentional the use of peanuts was in Tolly’s humiliation since Tolly asserts that his allergy was known by the entire school community. In any case, there is little remorse shown for Tolly’s sudden anaphylaxis, especially as Mel and the other marching band members leave before he regains consciousness.
Mel is initially suspected to be Tolly’s final girl, but this is a red herring distracting from Amber’s status as a final girl. Mel’s function as a red herring is foreshadowed by the genre conventions of the slasher, in which the final girl is identified by her distanced involvement in the original sin that creates the slasher. Mel cannot be the final girl because she initiated the original sin. Consequently, Tolly suspects that Mel isn’t final girl material the way Stace is because of her casual cruelty toward others. Amber appears to confirm that Mel isn’t the final girl when she points out that Tolly never ran her through the Tunnel of Love trope.
Instead, Mel is responsible for alerting Lamesa to the identity of the slasher in their midst. She spray-paints graffiti calling Tolly out as the killer, though she nearly identifies one of Justin’s victims among Tolly’s. This pins the blame on Tolly for the deaths that occur over that week, even though the death of Deek’s crew has nothing to do with Tolly’s motivations for killing. In this way, the truth becomes obscured by the “official” story that rewrites Tolly’s public reputation. It subtly reinforces the social hierarchy that is unwilling to consider Tolly’s side of the story.
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