
A Goodreads user
asked
Michelle Hodkin:
So, the burning question, what IS Mara Dyer's real name? I have read The Retribution by now, but did it somehow pass me by?
Michelle Hodkin
This answer contains spoilers…
(view spoiler)[It did not pass you by. I never told you.
This is far and away the most frequently asked question I’ve been getting since the book came out, and I’m not going to answer it now or ever. What I will tell you is why I’ll never answer it. (Here be Retribution spoilers--you have been warned.)
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In the first sentence of the trilogy, Mara writes, “My name is not Mara Dyer, but my lawyer told me I had to choose something.” The last sentence of the first paragraph is: “This is what I remember.” And then she signs it as “Mara Dyer,” with a redacted date and specific location—all you know is that she’s writing it from New York City. The letter is written by her in present tense.
In The Unbecoming, Mara never visits New York City, and the story is told in first person past tense. Same with Evolution. And in Retribution, you find out how she got to New York, why her lawyer wanted her to write her story under a pseudonym, and why she chose the pseudonym she did. The trilogy ends with her writing the epilogue in the present tense, and telling you why she chose to write down her story at all.
Think about that for a few seconds. If Mara, at any point in the trilogy, told you her name was, let’s say, “Mary Dickenson,” there would be no point—none—to the letter that she writes that frames the entire trilogy. So too, if she were to write (as she tells her story in the past tense), “Ms. Dickenson,” the teacher called out,” - then she would no longer be anonymous. Same goes every time someone says her name, including her family.
She tells you she needs to stay anonymous. She explains, in her story, why she needs to stay anonymous. If she told you her real name, after everything that went down, it wouldn’t make sense! It would mean that the letter, the pillar of her entire frame narrative, was a mistake. And it was not a mistake.
There are other questions left unanswered at the end of the trilogy, loose ends left untied. That wasn’t a mistake either. There’s this interview with Chris Nolan I once read where a reporter asked him, for the hundred thousandth time, whether the top stopped spinning or kept spinning at the end of Inception. This is what he said:
"There can’t be anything in the film that tells you one way or another because then the ambiguity at the end of the film would just be a mistake,” he says. “It would represent a failure of the film to communicate something. But it’s not a mistake. I put that cut there at the end, imposing an ambiguity from outside the film. That always felt the right ending to me."
The real point of the scene, he explains, is that Cobb is looking at his kids and not the top. “He’s left it behind,” says Nolan. “That’s the emotional significance of the thing.”
The choices Mara makes throughout the trilogy are what lead her to the place she is at by the end of Retribution. Some of her choices have ambiguous consequences by design—was fate responsible? Was it coincidence? Could things happened along the way have happened by chance? Until Retribution, that’s a definite possibility—Noah voices his skepticism more than once. He sees the best in her, and doesn’t want to believe it. Mara sees the worst in herself, and so she does. It doesn’t matter which one of them is wrong or right, which is why I never told you. Mara feels responsible for things she thought and felt, and so she takes ownership of the consequences. That belief is part of what propels her to take physical action in Retribution, for better or worse. The point was never whether Mara was right to feel responsible for the things she thought and felt early in the trilogy—the point was always that she made the choices she made because of how she felt. She writes:
Thinking something can make it true. Wanting something can make it real. And I didn’t regret it anymore. I’d wasted so much time wishing I could be different, wishing I could change things, change myself. If given the chance, I would’ve shed myself and become a different girl. Slipped on a name like Clara or Mary, docile and gentle and smiling and kind. I thought it would be easier to be someone else than to be who I was becoming, but I didn’t think that anymore. The girl who wanted those things had died with Rachel, buried under the asylum I brought down. And I realized now, for the first time, really, that I didn’t miss her.
And her grandmother writes:
Sometimes I wonder, if I had chosen a different name for myself, might I have grown into a different person? Might I have become someone else?
It doesn’t matter whether Noah was wrong or right about Mara, because it doesn’t matter what other people believe about you. What matters is what you believe about yourself, and what you choose to do next. It doesn't matter what Mara's real name is--what matters is what she chose to be, and by ending her story where and how she did, she told you exactly as much as she wanted you to know about her, and left it up to you to decide what you want to believe. (hide spoiler)]
This is far and away the most frequently asked question I’ve been getting since the book came out, and I’m not going to answer it now or ever. What I will tell you is why I’ll never answer it. (Here be Retribution spoilers--you have been warned.)
*
*
*
In the first sentence of the trilogy, Mara writes, “My name is not Mara Dyer, but my lawyer told me I had to choose something.” The last sentence of the first paragraph is: “This is what I remember.” And then she signs it as “Mara Dyer,” with a redacted date and specific location—all you know is that she’s writing it from New York City. The letter is written by her in present tense.
In The Unbecoming, Mara never visits New York City, and the story is told in first person past tense. Same with Evolution. And in Retribution, you find out how she got to New York, why her lawyer wanted her to write her story under a pseudonym, and why she chose the pseudonym she did. The trilogy ends with her writing the epilogue in the present tense, and telling you why she chose to write down her story at all.
Think about that for a few seconds. If Mara, at any point in the trilogy, told you her name was, let’s say, “Mary Dickenson,” there would be no point—none—to the letter that she writes that frames the entire trilogy. So too, if she were to write (as she tells her story in the past tense), “Ms. Dickenson,” the teacher called out,” - then she would no longer be anonymous. Same goes every time someone says her name, including her family.
She tells you she needs to stay anonymous. She explains, in her story, why she needs to stay anonymous. If she told you her real name, after everything that went down, it wouldn’t make sense! It would mean that the letter, the pillar of her entire frame narrative, was a mistake. And it was not a mistake.
There are other questions left unanswered at the end of the trilogy, loose ends left untied. That wasn’t a mistake either. There’s this interview with Chris Nolan I once read where a reporter asked him, for the hundred thousandth time, whether the top stopped spinning or kept spinning at the end of Inception. This is what he said:
"There can’t be anything in the film that tells you one way or another because then the ambiguity at the end of the film would just be a mistake,” he says. “It would represent a failure of the film to communicate something. But it’s not a mistake. I put that cut there at the end, imposing an ambiguity from outside the film. That always felt the right ending to me."
The real point of the scene, he explains, is that Cobb is looking at his kids and not the top. “He’s left it behind,” says Nolan. “That’s the emotional significance of the thing.”
The choices Mara makes throughout the trilogy are what lead her to the place she is at by the end of Retribution. Some of her choices have ambiguous consequences by design—was fate responsible? Was it coincidence? Could things happened along the way have happened by chance? Until Retribution, that’s a definite possibility—Noah voices his skepticism more than once. He sees the best in her, and doesn’t want to believe it. Mara sees the worst in herself, and so she does. It doesn’t matter which one of them is wrong or right, which is why I never told you. Mara feels responsible for things she thought and felt, and so she takes ownership of the consequences. That belief is part of what propels her to take physical action in Retribution, for better or worse. The point was never whether Mara was right to feel responsible for the things she thought and felt early in the trilogy—the point was always that she made the choices she made because of how she felt. She writes:
Thinking something can make it true. Wanting something can make it real. And I didn’t regret it anymore. I’d wasted so much time wishing I could be different, wishing I could change things, change myself. If given the chance, I would’ve shed myself and become a different girl. Slipped on a name like Clara or Mary, docile and gentle and smiling and kind. I thought it would be easier to be someone else than to be who I was becoming, but I didn’t think that anymore. The girl who wanted those things had died with Rachel, buried under the asylum I brought down. And I realized now, for the first time, really, that I didn’t miss her.
And her grandmother writes:
Sometimes I wonder, if I had chosen a different name for myself, might I have grown into a different person? Might I have become someone else?
It doesn’t matter whether Noah was wrong or right about Mara, because it doesn’t matter what other people believe about you. What matters is what you believe about yourself, and what you choose to do next. It doesn't matter what Mara's real name is--what matters is what she chose to be, and by ending her story where and how she did, she told you exactly as much as she wanted you to know about her, and left it up to you to decide what you want to believe. (hide spoiler)]
More Answered Questions
Shannon
asked
Michelle Hodkin:
Hi Michelle! I have a couple spoiler filled questions! So 1. Does Mara ever get her period again or did Kells mess with Maras ability to reproduce because she couldn't? And also is kells really married? And if not, how did she get pregnant so many times? Just random men or sperm donors (whered she get the money if she did a sperm bank?). Thanks for answering these questions and signing all pur books!!! :)
Michelle Hodkin
12,460 followers
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