54 pages • 1 hour read
Claire SwinarskiWhat Happened To Rachel Riley?
Nonfiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2023A 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
Anna Hunt
Content Warning: This section discusses sexual harassment.
Anna is the narrator and protagonist of the book. She is 12 years old and is just starting eighth grade at a new middle school at the beginning of the book. Her family recently relocated to Madison, Wisconsin. She is an avid reader and loves listening to podcasts.
Although young for her class, Anna is intelligent and curious. She is not only intrigued by the stark difference in reception that Rachel Riley receives but also picks up on the fact that Rachel used to be popular, making her current social situation an anomaly. Once Anna begins to delve into the story of what happened to Rachel, she is quickly able to piece together clues and identify the people she ought to speak to. This displays her deductive skills.
Anna’s inherent sense of justice also fuels her investigation into Rachel’s story. She cares deeply about Rachel’s situation despite not having a particular friendship with Rachel and being entirely new to the middle school. Anna reflects on how this is because she cannot stand by and watch something happen that she believes is not right. Her sense of justice further heightens when she learns about the “game” and how Rachel has been ostracized for trying to stop something problematic.
However, Anna is not immune to the social pressure she experiences as a middle schooler. Especially because she is a year younger, there are aspects of middle school life in which she feels out of place. She is conscious of her body and her lack of knowledge about what is popular and cool among her peers. This sense of not quite fitting in heightens after Anna’s experiences in social situations with her peers. She experiences the pressure to fit in other environments too. For instance, even after she sees the “game” resurface and experiences it herself, she fears speaking up about it because she doesn’t want to face the same ostracism that Rachel did.
Despite this, Anna makes a real impact due to the combined factors of her unwavering sense of justice and the social support she receives from her family. The latter, in particular, helps her deal with the emotional upheaval that the “game” and the middle school experience bring about. With her mother and sister’s reassurance, Anna finds the courage to confront both Rachel and Jordan and join hands to address the sexual harassment issue with responsible adults at school. While things do not turn around drastically and immediately, Anna and the other girls achieve slow but tangible change.
Anna’s character arc explores each of the three central themes. Her investigation into Rachel’s story and experiences with the “game” develop the theme of The Complexity of Holding Boundaries and Exerting Bodily Agency, her journey of growing up underlines The Interaction of Social Pressure and Identity Formation in Middle School, and the change she eventually helps bring about is a result of The Pursuit of Justice and Truth in the Face of Social Resistance.
Rachel Riley
Rachel is the eighth grader at the center of Anna’s investigation. A once extremely popular middle schooler, Rachel is a social outcast at the beginning of the eighth grade. While Anna is determined to figure out why, Rachel claims early on that she is aware of why she is being treated this way. Rachel seems to have made her peace with it.
Rachel is a strong-willed and outspoken young girl. When the “game” first appeared, she was the only girl in the class who outwardly and consistently expressed her anger and displeasure over it. She continued to hold this stance even when the boys targeted her for it, revealing that she is unafraid of social retaliation. When the “game” resurfaces, Rachel does not shy away from bringing up the issue again, calling out the boys involved publicly at the eighth-grade dance.
Despite Rachel’s courage, she is also cynical of things changing, and her wariness stems from the responses of the adults around her that she has witnessed for years. She recounts the teachers’ indifference to the blatant sexual harassment of Anna. Although she has spoken up to her peers, she has shied away from telling her parents and other adults the entire truth of what happened. She fears that they will not believe her or do anything, like the teachers’ previous inaction. Thus, despite her bravery, the anger that Rachel feels becomes counter-productive, as she is unable to bring about any actual change. She keeps the adults in the dark and pushes her peers away from her, beginning with Jordan, whom she is angry with for lying, and Anna, who genuinely cares for her and wants to uncover the truth.
Rachel eventually does come forward with her experiences once Anna learns the whole truth, and Jordan expresses regret at having handled things the way she did. The fact that she agrees to the community meeting and her responses to Jordan especially indicate that, ultimately, Rachel does come to believe that things can change. She forgives Jordan for her betrayal and eventually even reconciles with Cody. Part of Rachel’s ability to forgive comes from the fact that she is not going to remain at East Middle School—at the end of the school year, she will move to Moorland Academy. Thus, Rachel’s character arc does see some evolution and closure, especially in her friendships. Though she does not stay long enough to witness the change that she has helped create at East Middle School, her character development reiterates the importance of The Pursuit of Justice and Truth in the Face of Social Resistance in bringing about this change.
Nikola “Nik” and Maja Hunt
Anna’s family consists of her father, Jamie; her mother, Maja; and her older sister, Nikola “Nik” Hunt. Jamie and Maja are lawyers. Maja took a teaching job at the University of Wisconsin, which led to the family’s move to Madison. Nik, who is 16 and in high school, is a tech genius. While she was more withdrawn at their old home in Chicago, she comes into her own in Madison, making new friends and thriving in high school.
While Anna and Nik enjoy good relationships with both their parents, Jamie is a relatively background character in the context of the story. Especially because the book explores themes of sexual harassment through the lens of girls and women, Maja and Nik play more of a central role in Anna’s life. Nik is in the know of the “game” and what it entails from almost the beginning, as she helps Anna find the website and accompanies her in her investigation at the barn. However, while Nik is older and more self-assured than Anna and urges her younger sister to speak up about the harassment happening at her school, Nik cannot stop predatory behavior altogether. She is the recipient of unwanted attention, initially unable to stop a boy who is interested in her from constantly hounding her with calls, texts, and even handwritten letters delivered to her house—even after she tells him that she is uninterested.
In both Nik’s and Anna’s situations, it is Maja who intervenes and helps the girls navigate their discomfit. Maja’s calm but firm demeanor models for the girls how to hold boundaries and exert bodily agency. Although Anna is not privy to the details, following Maja’s conversation with Nik, Nik can firmly and decisively tell Bronson to stop contacting her. Similarly, Maja’s reassurance and validation of Anna’s anger and advice on how to express that anger constructively are what help her, Jordan, and Rachel bring up the issue of sexual harassment to the school guidance counselor. As characters and through their dynamics with each other, Anna, Maja, and Nik highlight two important themes. First, the insecurity that Anna feels is part of the developmental process of growing up, as explored in The Interaction of Social Pressure and Identity Formation in Middle School. Second, The Complexity of Holding Boundaries and Exerting Bodily Agency is something that girls and women must face across different ages and contexts.
Jordan Russell
Jordan is the most popular girl in the eighth-grade class. Rachel and Jordan used to be close friends, but their friendship fell apart after Rachel took the blame for the barn fire and Jordan refused to support or stand up for her to the rest of the class.
Although Jordan’s actions were unjust toward Rachel, the text continually portrays her as a “nice” girl. She is warm and welcoming toward everyone, and even Anna is on the receiving end of Jordan’s characteristic kindness at Bee’s birthday party. However, Jordan’s niceness also stems from conditioned ideas of what young girls ought to be. She refuses to speak up for herself or her friends even when she is uncomfortable, as she has been taught that this is the way she must be kind: She must avoid causing any friction, conflict, or discomfort to anyone else, regardless of how she feels inside. Thus, Jordan represses her true feelings and attempts to address the issue of her discomfort with the “game” in secret ways that will have no lasting impact.
The only person whom Jordan is actively unkind to is Rachel, and this is because everyone else treats Rachel unkindly. Jordan allows Rachel to be treated this way because she is too afraid to allow her reputation of niceness to fall apart. This reluctance demonstrates The Interaction of Social Pressure and Identity Formation in Middle School. Ultimately, however, Jordan also comes to regret this treatment of Rachel, especially when she recognizes Rachel’s loyalty to her and sees how nothing has changed concerning the “game.” Jordan’s decision to eventually step forward alongside Anna and Rachel underlines how she is not a “bad” character; rather, her actions stem from the social conditioning and powerlessness that young girls experience in multiple ways. She sees the “game” as problematic from the beginning but feels powerless to do anything about it, especially because she has been taught to value superficial “niceness” over her boundaries and comfort. Once she is empowered to see and act differently through both Rachel’s and Anna’s actions and the support of the adults around her, Jordan chooses differently. In doing so, she contributes to positive change.
