CHARACTER
The Troopby Nick Cutter

Max Kirkwood

Max Kirkwood

Quick Facts

  • Role: Troop 52 Boy Scout; primary point-of-view and moral center
  • First appearance: Early chapters on Falstaff Island with Troop 52
  • Age: 14–15
  • Family: Son of the town coroner
  • Key relationships: Ephraim Elliot (best friend), Newton Thornton (ally), Tim Riggs (Scoutmaster/mentor), Shelley Longpre (antagonist)
  • Core theme: A tragic arc of Loss of Innocence

Who They Are

Calm, observant, and quietly stubborn, Max Kirkwood is the troop’s steadying hand as their world disintegrates. The son of a coroner, he knows death in the abstract, but Falstaff Island forces him to encounter it viscerally, morally, and up close. His wholesome, “Rockwellian” look—“stouter—not fat, solid” (p. 55), with bristle-brush red hair and a spray of freckles (p. 99)—works as a deliberate counterpoint to the novel’s escalating grotesquerie. He embodies the reader’s conscience: compassionate but capable, reluctant yet resolute, and ultimately marked by what he endures.

Personality & Traits

Max’s defining quality is composure under pressure. When others spiral, he slows down, tries to see the whole picture, and acts to protect the group’s fraying humanity. His calm isn’t passivity—it’s an ethical stance that fights panic, cruelty, and despair.

  • Calm under duress: Holds a “preternatural state of calm unusual for his age” (p. 55), de-escalating conflicts and thinking practically even when terror mounts.
  • Loyal: Declares Ephraim his “Forever friend” (p. 59) and later partners with Newton for survival; his final, desperate efforts to save Newton show loyalty that persists beyond reason.
  • Moral and empathetic: Feels immediate, lasting guilt after killing the sea turtle; questions whether locking up Tim is right, even when the group leans toward expedience.
  • Observant: Reads the room—and the rot—keenly, noticing Tim’s subtle declines and the quickening madness in Ephraim and Kent Jenks.
  • Resilient and pragmatic: Assists in the grisly “surgery” and returns to the cave for the spark plugs, confronting horror without surrendering to it.

Character Journey

Max begins as a typical fourteen-year-old: secure in the troop’s hierarchies, buoyed by friendship, and confident adult supervision will keep danger at bay. That illusion breaks when he helps Tim operate on the infected stranger, Thomas Henry Padgett—his first irrevocable step into adulthood and into the novel’s universe of Body Horror and Biological Corruption. As Tim deteriorates, the protective shell of authority collapses, and Max must navigate a world where every choice is a moral compromise.

Hunger pushes him and Newton to kill the sea turtle, a slow, agonizing act that stains Max’s conscience and clarifies what survival will now cost. Ephraim’s unraveling and self-destruction fracture Max’s last emotional anchor; his grief detonates into violence when he stabs Shelley, a moment that terrifies him precisely because it reveals who he could become. Even then, he clings to purpose, risking himself to retrieve the spark plugs as a final bid to save what’s left. He survives, but the epilogue’s description—“the oldest-looking fifteen-year-old you’ll ever see” (p. 425)—makes survival itself feel like a scar he will carry indefinitely.

Key Relationships

  • Ephraim Elliot: Max and Ephraim’s bond is the emotional core of the novel’s first half—“FFs,” with shared secrets, jokes, and unquestioned loyalty. The Breakdown of Civilization and Social Order hollows their friendship from the inside: Ephraim’s rage metastasizes, and Max’s love can’t pull him back. Ephraim’s horrific death leaves Max bereft, accelerating his shift from mediator to survivor.
  • Newton Thornton: What begins as casual teasing turns into a partnership built on mutual trust and grim necessity. Their turtle-killing ordeal becomes a crucible that bonds them—and brands them—with the knowledge of what they’re willing to do to live. Max’s repeated risks to protect Newton show his commitment to decency even when the island incentivizes selfishness.
  • Tim Riggs: Max admires Tim and believes in the stability he represents, which is why assisting the “operation” becomes a formative wound. Watching Tim’s body and judgment fail forces Max to accept that adults can’t always save you—and that doing the right thing sometimes means doing the unthinkable yourself.
  • Shelley Longpre: Max’s early unease hardens into clarity: Shelley thrives in the island’s moral vacuum. After Ephraim’s death, Max’s confrontation and stabbing of Shelley marks his most frightening moment—where moral outrage and grief almost turn him into what he hates.

Defining Moments

Even before the island claims lives, Max’s choices begin reshaping him. Each decisive act pulls another thread from his innocence, and each refusal to give up affirms the core of who he is.

  • The “surgery” on the stranger: Chosen by Tim to cut into Padgett, Max witnesses the parasite firsthand. Why it matters: It initiates him into adult horror and responsibility; Max learns that knowledge won’t protect him from what it reveals.
  • Killing the sea turtle: Driven by starvation, Max and Newton club the trapped turtle until it dies. Why it matters: The prolonged brutality (“Please won’t you just die.” p. 279) becomes a moral fracture point—Max understands survival may require acts he’ll never forgive in himself.
  • Confronting Shelley: Reeling from Ephraim’s self-immolation, Max channels grief into action, stabbing Shelley with his own knife. Why it matters: It’s the moment he teeters on the edge of becoming a different person—violent, retaliatory—before pulling back toward conscience.
  • Retrieving the spark plugs: He reaches into Padgett’s corpse and later returns to the cavern to reclaim the plugs after Shelley steals them. Why it matters: These risks reveal a purpose-driven courage that refuses despair; Max acts not out of bravado but responsibility—to Newton, and to the thin line of humanity he’s guarding.

Essential Quotes

“Forever friends, man. Until the very end of time.” (p. 59)
Max’s credo with Ephraim frames the novel’s early emotional stakes. The collapse of this promise measures the island’s moral toll: when “forever” dies, Max’s innocence dies with it.

“He could never, ever be hungry enough to kill something if this was what it meant.” (p. 280)
This line captures the immediate recoil after the turtle’s death—the sickening recognition that survival has demanded a betrayal of self. Max’s revulsion is less about the act than about the person he had to be to commit it.

“You hold on to life until it gets ripped away from you. Even if it gets ripped away in pieces. You just hold on.” (p. 426)
By the epilogue, “holding on” has shifted from optimism to endurance. The line reframes survival as a stubborn, painful act—Max’s mantra for living with what he’s seen and done.

“I killed a turtle,” he says simply. (p. 426)
A flat confession, devoid of excuse, that distills his self-judgment. Of all the atrocities, this is the one he names—because it was chosen, not inflicted—exposing the moral wound that lingers beyond the physical horrors.