Secondary Character Saturday (11)

I've started a new weekly meme here and I'd love for you to join me. Saturdays are now dedicated to honor the characters that don't always get their voices heard, who support (or work to destroy) our beloved protagonists. This is for the third wheel in the love triangle (can you have wheels on a triangle?), for the BFFs, the family members, or even just the kind and loving (or deceitful and creepy) stranger who shows up and changes the game. We all know these stories wouldn't hold up without support so I'd like to take the time to highlight the best secondary characters I come across. This is an opportunity to talk about what makes these characters special, maybe to speculate what their world would be like without them, or maybe cast them in their own primary roles. If you'd like to create a SCS post leave your link in the comments and I'll check it out!

So today it's all about:

Finn from In Honor


I just finished In Honor yesterday and I feel a little like I'm still grieving over the the pain Honor and Rusty are dealing with after Finn's death. So it only seems right to honor Finn today. I know he's dead and never makes a physical appearance, but he's so present that it felt like he was there. He's a beautiful person. He is honorable and he stands for everything worth loving in others. He's a hero for his country, he's a hero for his sister, and he's a hero to his best friend.
Without him this novel wouldn't exist and Honor's story would be so different. Even so it is his absence that gives the story depth and meaning. I never knew Finn, but I felt his loss so sharply.
I loved the stories that Honor and Rusty passed back and forth. They painted Finn as your All-American golden boy. But learning the ways he influenced Honor, the things he did for her without even knowing, the way he loved her and protected her so deeply - those were the things that made him extraordinary. Knowing he's such a purely good person makes the idea that he has no future that much more painful.

So I just want to share the passage where I felt Finn come to life and begin to breathe again in these pages -

"After a minute I leaned back, elbows on the table, and looked up for the twinkle of the first star in the evening sky. When we were little, it was a ritual Finn and I did on the front porch. He'd make his wish silently, and I would too, but I could never keep it a secret; and I'd tell him what I wished every time. He'd always tell me it wouldn't come true if I told, but I didn't believe him. I'd had plenty of them come true, from a new box of crayons showing up of nowhere to a bag of candy left on my bed. It had been a while, though, and the only thing I'd wish for now was impossible. I found the first patch of burnt-orange sky, above the crinkly purple mountains in the distance, and then I wished my brother back anyway" (42). 

I have chills again. There is nothing more noble than a man who will sacrifice himself for others, who will fight for his country, and he was a boy who did everything he could to give his sister the things she wished for.