Not Wanted on the Voyage

Mrs. Noyes, the wife of Dr. Noyes, is initially introduced as a practical woman with simple desires. She wants the peace and quiet she finds on the porch at dusk, free from the prattle of Emma and the demands of her seemingly endless responsibilities. Dutiful but frustrated by the monotony of her obligations and her own powerlessness, she does her best to keep herself safe from her husband’s wrath by submitting to his will—at least to his face.

Over the course of the novel, Mrs. Noyes is shown to be more than the matriarch stuck in her ways and fearing the usurpation of her rightful place. Despite her flaws, she proves herself to be a deeply empathetic person, willing to put herself in harm’s way to protect others more than once. She is a wily, practical survivor, skilled in subverting her abusive husband’s wrath with placating submission and distraction, and willing to confront him if it means protecting others. Her sensitive nature may be why the deterioration of her family’s bonds is particularly poignant to her, culminating in a decidedly pessimistic, if determined, point of view in the end.

Shem, the oldest son of Dr. and Mrs. Noyes, is a hardworking farmer known as “the Ox.” The tallest and strongest of the children, and the first child to survive, Shem is sandy-haired, flat-faced, and pale of eye. He is unfailingly practical, more concerned with seeing to the harvest when others are distracted by the novelty of Yaweh’s impending visit. Much like his appropriate moniker, Shem is presented as something of a thoughtless brute. Devoid of all sense of wonder, he does nothing but eat, work, sleep, and have sex with his wife, Hannah. While he is a hard worker and undoubtedly a necessary fixture in the workings of the Noyes estate, Shem has a childlike perception of the world, in which he only understands people to exist when he sees them and does not understand the purpose of conversation. He loves his mother to the extent that he is able, but is firmly aligned with his father, and dutiful in his service to him out of habit, if not loyalty.

Ham, the second-born son to survive, was frequently ill as a child. With auburn hair, curious eyes, pale skin and bony, angular features, Ham’s strength comes in the form of stamina and immunity, rather than his brother Shem’s brute force. Due to his chronic illness as a child, Ham has a natural reverence and love of life, resulting in his heartfelt commitment never to take a life of any kind. As an avid astronomer, Ham spends half his life in the Cedar Grove, watching the sky prior to the flood. Eventually, he meets Lucy and falls in love with her. Despite his cleverness, the fact that she is an angel manages to elude him. Of all the men in the Noyes family, he is the only one to never strike his mother—or anyone for that matter.

The Noyes’s youngest born, Japeth, is sleek and newly blue. Seen as a ne’er-do-well by his father, he is frequently tasked with the least auspicious duties. Once a naïve and trusting boy, he has become the resident malcontent, trading his zeal for life for violence and petulance. Resentful of his father’s refusal to honor him, his child-bride’s refusal to sleep with him, and his mother’s insistence that he spend all day trying to scrub the blue from his skin, Japeth’s envy and child-like fury towards others only escalates over the course of the novel. Early on, Japeth exhibits several common symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a result of his near-death experience, such as withdrawal from his favorite activities, vomiting, shaking, and crying spells. Japeth later models his behavior after his would-be murderers in order to gain a sense of confidence and control, demonstrating a sadistic pleasure in killing and appearing to be the undefeatable warrior he wishes he were.

Hannah is the wife of Shem, a daydreamer who spends her pre-flood time in the orchards and creates the flower crowns for the sacrifices. She is described as lean, intelligent, and a “total mystery.” Unsentimental in affect, she is dutiful, but hard to read. She earns Yaweh’s favor early in his visit, drawing the envy of Mrs. Noyes, and keeps Dr. Noyes’s favor throughout the rest of the book by humoring his delusions and serving him without question. Hannah later falls pregnant and throws in her lot with Dr. Noyes for the sake of self-preservation.

Initially described as a childish, nose-picking whiner, Emma would be considered immature were it not for the fact that she is an 11-year-old girl at the start of the story. She is scorned by the Noyes family for refusing to have sex with her husband, Japeth, and considered to be burdensome company by Mrs. Noyes, with whom she shares her pre-flood days laboring in the kitchen. However, as the novel continues, her bond with Mrs. Noyes is revealed to be a deep one. The other characters waver in their descriptions of her, referring to her as a child when wanting to dismiss her and as an adult when wanting to control her behavior, usually in reference to consummating her marriage to Japeth. Emma goes on to suffer terrible abuse at the hands of Dr. Noyes, and rape at the hands of her husband. Despite this, she finds the strength within herself to save the people she loves when they need her the most.

Unspeakably beautiful, with a large brow, wide-set eyes, and a hooked nose, Yaweh is the Father Almighty, Creator of all things. He is also, however, morbidly depressed, as seen from his haggard beard, red eyes, and intense bouts of melancholy. Deeply hurt by the attacks on his person and general lack of love from humanity, he finds sanctuary with his only true human friend—Noah Noyes. At least 1,300 years old, Yaweh is immortal, having recently brought himself back from death on seven different occasions. Prone to weeping and fixating on the outrage of humanity’s attempts to usurp his position as God, Yaweh finds the answer to his woes in two parts—the disappearance of the unpleasant through the “sheer application of water,” and his decision to die (96).

Ever glib and unapologetic, Lucifer appears in disguise as “Lucy,” Ham’s newfound lady love. She is referred to by the local fauna as the “presence” or even “rogue angel,” and described as similar to an angel, but wrong. Mischievous and irreverent, Lucy has been known to “dress up” as whomever she likes, be it women or the pope, trusting her own ability to figure things out as she goes when things go wrong with her schemes. Having appeared as the Morning Star, a cormorant, and several versions of her humanoid form, Lucy eventually concludes that no fulfilling life is to be had outside of her true form. What this looks like, however, is either unknown or subject to change, as she repeatedly changes her features when it suits her. Lucy’s true gender is undetermined, though Michael categorizes her as “male.” Lucy never self-identifies her gender, so it is never clear whether she truly considers herself a male “dressing up” as a female or finds both genders acceptable presentations of her being. In following the pronouns assigned in the narration, Lucy/Lucifer is referred to as “she” when she is Lucy and “he” when referencing her past as Lucifer in the eyes of others.

Despite her acknowledged fall from Heaven, Lucy demonstrates lingering concern for Yaweh in his state of distress. She insists that she never considered herself to be God’s equal, but only asked “why.” This, it seems, she felt was insufficient reason to be cast from Heaven. She survived falling to earth and joined the human race for the sake of her own survival, and to prevent similar widespread bloodshed on earth. 

Over the course of the story, Lucy shows a range of emotion, from irreverence to deep regret over the state of the world and her failures, and appears to grow to care for select members of the Noyes family. After experiencing a world of “merciless light,” followed by the darkness of the flood, Lucy hopes to one day find a world with balance, however long that might take her.

Michael is a warrior through and through, considering battle to be “the best of all possible pursuits” (103). Intensely loyal to Yaweh, Michael withholds information of Lucifer’s presence on earth in order to shield his depressed master from the painful knowledge, hoping to bring Lucifer to a final end before Yaweh ever discovers the truth about which he had lied—that Lucifer was not in hell, but on earth, having “joined the human race” (102).