Holding Up The Universe By Jennifer Niven: Character Analysis

Have you ever taken a moment to think, do I truly know my best friend, sister, or classmate? Well, as manifested in Jennifer Niven’s novel, Holding Up the Universe, you very well might not. Everyone knows 17-year-old Jack Masselin, one of the main characters in the novel, as the carefree, comical “cool kid” in school. However, what they don’t know is that behind all his swagger and charm is someone who suffers from prosopagnosia; the “inability to recognize the faces of familiar people” (Niven 3). This neurological disorder completely transforms the way Jack experiences life; he has to come up with strategies that allow him to recognize people, even his own parents, while simultaneously keeping it a secret. This veneer of confidence and indifference

According to Dr. Sarah Bate of Bournemouth University, prosopagnosic individuals often “avoid social interactions” and “experience problems with interpersonal relationships” (1), which directly effects their daily functioning. In order to subsist such repercussions, Jack has overtime subconsciously established a contrived persona for him to hide behind. This false front allows Jack to embed this illusory image of himself in people’s minds, allowing him to carry on with his life as normally as he possibly can. As of late, this method has proven itself to be reasonably affective for Jack, excluding a few close calls and points of humiliation. Fellow classmates and relatives see him as an overly confident and easy-going guy that has no care in the world, when, in actuality, it’s just a guise that is made to cover up his

“Look at him. He’s perfect. He’s never had a bad day” (143). In essence, this is the majority of Jack’s classmates’ idea of him. He knows that any form of unconventional behavior would lead people to look and treat him differently, consequently leaving him with nowhere to “belong”. What’s more, he is dating Caroline Lushamp, the most popular girl in his school, which further pressurizes him to try to fit in; otherwise he would be discarded and maltreated, even by his friends. This prevents Jack from voicing his own opinions and from taking action against or for certain things he believes in. For example, a few of his closest friends (friends that he would rather not be friends with but has to to avoid conflict) decided to participate in a game called “Fat Girl Rodeo”, where the player has to go up to a fat girl and hold on to her for as long as they can. As one of them decided to start and go up to a girl, “the whole time [Jack] was thinking to [himself], say something douchebag. But [he] doesn’t” (Niven 50). This problem occurs several times throughout the start of the novel and Jack feels terribly bad about it. However, he has also stated that the reason being is that he cannot survive without the approval of his friends, and according to him, it’s “always better to hunt than be hunted” (Niven