The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013

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Character Analysis

Dorrigo Evans (“Big Fella”)

Dorrigo Evans is a child in Australia when the novel begins. He is raised in an era where men are not supposed to cry. As a teenager, he enlists in the war and ships out shortly after a summer-long affair with a woman named Amy, who will be an obsession for most of his life. In the POW camp, he is forced to serve as a doctor and a leader over the other men, who respect him and his judgment, despite his disregard for himself. Dorrigo makes choices that look altruistic to the men, but he is always aware that he does so in order to try to become the persona they have already formed of him. After the war, he marries a woman named Ella, but continues to have a string of affairs during his entire married life.

Dorrigo is always lonely and feels that his life has no meaning, except for his brief time with Amy. He compares himself to Sisyphus and love to another form of never-ending hell. These feelings worsen when he returns from the war and understands that the constant death of war gave his life the most meaning it had ever had. He becomes a celebrity and a famous surgeon, the subject of documentaries and biographies, but he never grows comfortable with himself. Near the end of the novel, he manages to save his family’s life from a firestorm, but there is no sign that his heroic act changes his opinion of himself. He dies after a car of drunken teenagers hits his vehicle.

Amy Mulvaney

Amy is married to Keith Mulvaney, making her Dorrigo’s aunt. She carries on an affair with Dorrigo the summer before he leaves for the war. Amy views herself as a wicked woman, but also as a brave one. She is restless and expresses a desire to keep moving and never stop. Her passion for Dorrigo startles them both. She is never certain of her initial reasons for approaching him in the bookshop where they met.

Amy and Keith conceived a child before they were married, and Keith convinced her to abort it. They will later cite this as one of the causes for the death of their marriage, and for her affair with Dorrigo. Amy dies of cancer late in the novel, never having spoken to Dorrigo again after he left for the war. She asks to be buried with a pearl necklace he gave her.

Major Tenji Nakamura

Nakamura is the most prominent Japanese officer in the POW camp. He is addicted to a drug called Shabu and is often afflicted with delusions of being covered in ticks. He becomes friendly with Dorrigo, but primarily because Dorrigo is the ranking officer among the POWs and must be shown a measure of respect from his Japanese equivalent. After the war, Nakamura goes into hiding, to avoid prosecution as a war criminal. His thoughts about the war, and the suffering he visited upon the POWs, are the author’s window into the Japanese mindset during World War II. Nakamura never believes he acted inappropriately. Rather, he was strong enough to perform his duty, even when it was personally distasteful to him, such as the beating of Darky Gardiner. He eventually remarries and dies of throat cancer, convinced that he has lived a good life and will die as a good man.

Choi Sang-min (“The Goanna”)

The Goanna is a formidable guard who terrorizes the POWs. He initiates Darky’s beating, and after Nakamura chastises him, the Goanna administers more savage blows to the prisoner. As a Korean guard, the Goanna functions as a violent tool for the Japanese. After the war, the Americans successfully convict the Goanna for war crimes due to Colonel Kota’s testimony against him. The Goanna grapples with fundamental questions regarding what it means to be an instrument of war—he wonders why the Japanese leaders are not strung up to hang as he will be. He recognizes that he has never had an original thought of his own and is not remorseful for the crimes he committed as a guard: “His only regret was that he had not killed many more” (287). He feels justified in his actions, maintaining that he himself had caused neither disease nor war—the two predominant elements which ended POWs. The Goanna represents the mentality of WWII soldiers who did as they were told without qualm or question. His motivation to join the war was simply money and an appreciation for inflicting death. In his final hours, the static character acknowledges that he has no resolve and continues to long for the feeling of freedom that ending another life afforded him.

Darky Gardiner

The brutal death of Darky, a fellow POW in a Japanese camp, haunts Dorrigo for the course of his life. Although Dorrigo had the opportunity to spare Darky from the severe beating which led to his demise, he chose to continue operating on Jack Rainbow, who had little chance of survival. Dorrigo’s misguided attempt to save Rainbow—and other POWs, via a deal he made with the commanding officer—represents his inability to do good and be a good person. Darky, as an optimistic, generous, and light-hearted solider, is the fundamental opposite of how Dorrigo views himself. Darky’s death symbolizes the extinguishing of hope and redemption for Dorrigo, who later discovers that Darky was his biological nephew, the illegitimate son of his brother Tom’s affair.