CHARACTER
The Troopby Nick Cutter

Kent Jenks

Kent Jenks

Quick Facts

Who He Is

At first glance, Kent Jenks is the troop’s natural leader: bigger, louder, and more certain than anyone else. His confidence comes prepackaged with a worldview borrowed from his police-chief father—control the situation, neutralize threats, keep the flock in line. But what reads as competence is really domination. When the island descends into panic, Kent’s physical bravado curdles into cruelty and fear, exposing a leader who can assert power but cannot sustain order. His infection strips him of the body that underwrites his identity, turning him into a walking proof that swagger and strength collapse the moment authority loses legitimacy.

Personality & Traits

Kent’s personality is built on presence: the body goes first, and the voice follows. He fills rooms, makes decisions, and expects obedience—until the crisis reveals that his authority is a performance, not a principle.

  • Authoritative and assertive: He reflexively takes charge, often by force. He challenges Tim’s choices, invoking a paramilitary logic of control—“neutralize the threat” (p. 48)—to justify action over deliberation.
  • Arrogant: Convinced he “knows best,” he drops formal respect early, calling his Scoutmaster “Tim” (p. 32) as a power move that signals his intent to set the rules.
  • Prone to bullying: He polices the troop’s hierarchy by targeting weaker boys, especially Newton—calling him “flapjack” (p. 42) and “bed-wetter” (p. 23)—to keep himself on top.
  • Insecure underneath: He’s rattled by Ephraim’s unpredictability and terrified of humiliation, so he doubles down on aggression whenever he feels his status slip.
  • Father-shaped: He parrots “Big” Jeff’s “sheepdog” ethos—strength, control, neutralization—treating leadership as enforcement rather than care.
  • Physical presence as identity: Described with “shoulders rounded like a wrestler awaiting his call to the mat” (p. 32) and a pungent “Jock-scent” of “groomed grass, crushed chalk, and the locker room funk” (p. 15), Kent’s dominance is inseparable from his body. Even his size has an uneasy softness: “tall and jarringly bricklike, yet burdened with an inner softness” (p. 59).

Character Journey

Kent starts as the troop’s ringleader, the boy who believes decisiveness equals leadership. After drinking from Tim’s scotch (p. 135), he’s infected, and the parasite exposes his power as hollow. The “crazy hunger” drives him to devour the troop’s remaining food in secret (p. 171–172), a betrayal that destroys morale and reveals his “leadership” as self-preservation. Beaten by Ephraim and jailed in the cellar, he begs instead of commands, his authority evaporated. Isolation reduces him to the animal he feared being seen as: he eats insects, accepts a piece of dead worm from Shelley, and clings to any mercy. By the time Shelley lures and drowns him (p. 297), Kent is skeletal, jaundiced, and covered in boils—no longer the alpha, just a vessel for the thing that unmade him.

Key Relationships

  • Tim Riggs: Kent mistakes Tim’s restraint for weakness and frames their conflict as a referendum on who gets to rule. Locking Tim in the closet shifts the troop from principle-based authority to brute force, accelerating the collapse that Kent claims to fear.
  • Ephraim Elliot: Kent sees Ephraim as a rival he can’t fully control—Ephraim’s volatility undermines Kent’s status-by-strength. Their clash after the food theft turns physical, exposing Kent’s limits once his moral authority (and the group’s trust) is gone.
  • Newton Thornton: Newton is Kent’s preferred target, a safe outlet for dominance. By humiliating Newton, Kent reinforces the troop’s pecking order and distracts from his own insecurity, weaponizing cruelty as leadership.
  • Shelley Longpre: Early on, Shelley echoes Kent’s mutinous instincts, but once Kent is weakened, Shelley becomes torturer and executioner. Their dynamic reveals how Kent’s power depended on health and numbers; without them, he becomes prey.
  • “Big” Jeff Jenks: Kent’s father is the blueprint—strength, control, obedience. But the island’s horror cannot be “policed,” and the parasite turns that creed into a death sentence, showing the limits of force when the threat is inside you.

Defining Moments

Kent’s turning points map the shift from dominance to desperation, and from person to host.

  • Challenging Tim’s authority: Urging the troop to “neutralize the threat” (p. 48) frames his creed: action first, justification later. It catalyzes mistrust and primes the mutiny.
  • The mutiny: “Lock him in the closet” (p. 132) is Kent’s coup—replacing legitimate authority with raw power. It marks the precise moment civilization gives way to rule by fear.
  • Drinking from Tim’s scotch (p. 135): A careless assertion of adulthood and superiority that seals his infection—his downfall begins with a performance of maturity.
  • Devouring the food (p. 171–172): The parasite exposes his core: when hunger hits, he chooses self over group. It annihilates morale and invites violent retribution.
  • Imprisonment in the cellar: Begging—“I’m sorry... Please. Don’t leave me out here” (p. 191)—reverses his power dynamic and strips him of the persona that kept others in line.
  • Death by drowning (p. 297): Shelley’s final act ends Kent’s suffering and broadcasts the worms into the sea—a grim epilogue to his failed attempt to control what cannot be contained.

Essential Quotes

“We need to neutralize the threat—or else . . . or else...” (p. 48)
Kent borrows his father’s rhetoric to claim authority, but the repetition—“or else”—reveals panic beneath the posture. The phrase reduces complex uncertainty to an enemy to be subdued, foreshadowing the choices that will destroy the troop’s cohesion.

“A Scout... obeys his Scoutmaster without . . . without question. Even if he gets an order he does not like, he must do as soldiers and policemen do; he must carry it out all the same because it is his duty.” (p. 49)
Ironically, the boy who quotes obedience soon orchestrates a mutiny. The appeal to institutional duty exposes how Kent understands power: not as responsibility, but as a chain of command he intends to seize.

“You’re sick,” he said in a trembling voice. “You’re infected. You’ve got the worms.” (p. 131)
Kent identifies the threat in Tim to justify removing him, masking ambition as concern. The tremor in his voice hints at fear—both of the parasite and of losing control—pushing him toward decisive, disastrous action.

Kent pinned Tim with that rifle-sights look. “Lock him in the closet.” (p. 132)
This order is the fulcrum of the novel’s social collapse. The metaphor of “rifle-sights” casts leadership as targeting; Kent isn’t guiding the troop—he’s hunting obstacles to his dominance.

“I’m sorry,” Kent whispered. “Just let me come down with you. Please. Don’t leave me out here.” (p. 191)
The plea strips away the alpha act. Reduced to whispering apology and begging for company, Kent reveals the human terror beneath the bully: he never learned how to lead without intimidation, and without it, he has nothing.