Adam Wright
Quick Facts
Adam Wright is a successful screenwriter in his forties and one of the primary narrators of Rock Paper Scissors. Plagued by prosopagnosia and the trauma of his mother's death, he embarks on an anniversary trip to Scotland with his wife, Amelia Wright, hoping to salvage their failing marriage. His key relationships include Amelia, his first wife Robin, and his literary idol, Henry Winter.
Who He Is
Adam Wright is a man defined by secrets and self-deception. A celebrated screenwriter known for adapting novels into blockbuster films, Adam's life is overshadowed by two significant burdens: his prosopagnosia, a neurological condition rendering him unable to recognize faces, and the haunting memory of his mother's death. His journey to Blackwater Chapel becomes a descent into a psychological thriller, forcing him to confront the carefully constructed lies he has built around himself. As an unreliable narrator, Adam's perception is skewed by his condition, his guilt, and the fictions he has crafted to survive.
Personality & Traits
Adam presents himself as a sympathetic, if flawed, protagonist, but his personality is riddled with deep-seated issues stemming from trauma and guilt. He is a man who has built a life on carefully constructed lies, both to protect himself and to maintain a facade of normalcy.
- Workaholic: Adam is consumed by his career, using it as an escape from his personal problems. As Amelia observes, he is a "writeraholic," and Adam himself admits, "My job just happens to be my favourite drug." This obsession creates a significant rift in his marriage, leaving Amelia feeling neglected and invisible.
- Secretive: Adam is intensely private about his prosopagnosia, fearing judgment and pity. More significantly, he harbors the monumental secret that he was the one driving the car that killed his mother, a truth he conceals from everyone, including himself, by rewriting the memory.
- Haunted and Guilt-Ridden: The death of Adam's Mother is a wound that has never healed. He is plagued by recurring nightmares of the accident, and his life is dictated by the guilt he feels over the event—a guilt whose true source is the novel's final, shocking revelation.
- Anxious and Insecure: His face blindness causes severe social anxiety, making parties and public gatherings a minefield. He is also professionally insecure, longing to create original work but finding success primarily through adaptations, which leads him to seek validation from figures like Henry Winter.
- Superstitious: Adam clings to rituals and lucky charms, such as saluting magpies and carrying a paper crane given to him by Robin. This reflects his need for control in a world he cannot fully perceive or trust.
Character Journey
Adam's journey is not one of growth but of unraveling. He begins as a seemingly sympathetic husband trapped in a difficult marriage, haunted by a tragic past. As the strange events at Blackwater Chapel unfold, the foundations of his reality are systematically dismantled. He is forced to re-evaluate his career, his relationship with Henry Winter, and his marriage to Robin. The discovery that Robin is Henry's daughter and that Amelia is the girl from the night of his mother's accident shatters his understanding of his own life story. The final twist reveals that Adam's entire narrative has been a lie: he was not a passive witness to his mother's death; he was the cause. This transforms him from a haunted man into a man hiding from an unforgivable truth. His ultimate decision to reunite with Robin, the only other person who knows his secret, is not a step toward redemption but a retreat into a new, shared fiction where his guilt can be managed rather than confronted.
Key Relationships
Amelia Wright: Adam's second wife, their marriage is a battleground of resentment and deception, a central theme of Marriage and Betrayal. He is deeply suspicious of her, and she feels unseen by him. The relationship is ultimately revealed to be built on a catastrophic lie, as Amelia is inextricably linked to the trauma he has spent his life running from.
Robin: His first wife. Adam's memories of Robin are tinged with nostalgia and regret over his infidelity. She represents a time before his life became complicated by lies. Robin orchestrates the entire weekend as an act of Revenge and Justice, manipulating Adam into confronting the truth about Amelia and choosing to return to her. Their reunion is a dark pact, built on the shared knowledge of their crimes.
Adam's Mother: The ghost who haunts Adam's life. He has built a shrine to her memory, idolizing her as a perfect figure. This idealized image is a coping mechanism to mask his profound guilt over causing her death. Her memory is the key to understanding his lifelong trauma and the theme of The Inescapable Past.
Henry Winter: A literary idol and surrogate father figure. Adam's career is built on adapting Henry's novels, and he desperately craves the older writer's approval. The revelation that Henry was his father-in-law all along forces Adam to question the entire trajectory of his professional life and the theme of Truth, Fiction, and Storytelling.
Defining Moments
- The Nightmare: Adam's recurring nightmare of a woman in a red kimono being hit by a car is a constant motif. It represents his repressed memory and overwhelming guilt, though its true meaning is hidden until the final pages.
- Discovering the Anniversary Gifts: Finding the anniversary gifts from Robin in Henry Winter's secret study is a turning point. It confirms that the chapel is Henry's home and that the weekend is an elaborate setup, directly connecting his past with his present danger.
- Reading Robin's Letter: This is the story's climax for Adam. The letter reveals Amelia's identity as the driver who killed his mother, forcing him to choose between his two wives. It is the ultimate act of manipulation by Robin, presenting him with a choice based on a partial truth.
- The Final Confession: In the book's last chapter, Adam's internal monologue reveals the ultimate twist: he was the one driving the car. This moment redefines his entire character and every action he has taken, cementing his role as a profoundly unreliable narrator.
Symbolism
Adam's character is rich with symbolism that explores the novel's core themes.
- Prosopagnosia: His face blindness is a powerful metaphor for his inability to see the truth. It symbolizes his emotional and psychological blindness to the real identities and motivations of the women in his life and, most importantly, to his own role in his past trauma. This ties directly to the theme of Identity and Misperception.
- The Screenwriter: As a screenwriter, Adam's profession is to shape narratives. This mirrors his psychological need to rewrite his own history, casting himself as a tragic witness rather than the guilty party. He lives in a world of fiction to avoid the unbearable reality he created.
- The Red Kimono: The red kimono his mother wore becomes a symbol of his guilt and trauma. Its appearance in the chapel is a direct and terrifying confrontation with the past he has tried to bury.
Essential Quotes
Just because I can’t recognise my wife’s face, it doesn’t mean I don’t know who she is.
This quote highlights the central irony of Adam's character. While he claims to know Amelia, his inability to recognize her face symbolizes his deeper inability to understand her true identity and the secrets she holds. It also speaks to his general struggle to perceive reality accurately.
All people are addicts, and all addicts desire the same thing: an escape from reality. My job just happens to be my favourite drug.
This quote reveals Adam's self-awareness of his escapist tendencies. He acknowledges that his work is a form of addiction, a way to avoid confronting the painful realities of his past and present. This admission underscores his unreliability as a narrator, as he is actively seeking to distort reality.
I love my wife. I just don’t think we like each other as much as we used to.
This quote encapsulates the state of Adam and Amelia's marriage. It suggests a deep-seated disconnect and a lack of genuine affection. The statement is both honest and evasive, hinting at the underlying issues that plague their relationship without fully acknowledging them.
The girl tasted like smoke and bubble gum, and she said that I could do more than just kiss her if we could find somewhere to do it... That’s why I did what she said when she told me to drive around the estate. I remember the sound of her laughter, and the rain bouncing off the windscreen making it almost impossible to see. Faster, she said, turning up the car radio. Faster! ... When I looked up, I saw my mother. And she saw me.
This passage is a fragmented memory of the night of the accident, revealing the circumstances surrounding his mother's death. The details are hazy and distorted, reflecting Adam's repressed guilt and the way he has rewritten the memory to protect himself. The girl's encouragement to drive faster foreshadows the tragic outcome and highlights Adam's culpability.