CHARACTER
Ungiftedby Gordon Korman

Noah Youkilis

Noah Youkilis

Quick Facts

  • Role: Resident super-genius and lead programmer on the Academy for Scholastic Distinction robotics team
  • IQ: 206; processes information at a speed that stuns teachers and peers
  • First appearance: Introduced at the Academy as the team’s prodigy programmer
  • Core desire: To escape the “gifted” label and experience the unpredictability of a normal life
  • Key relationships: Donovan Curtis; Abigail Lee; Mr. Osborne; Katie Patterson

Who They Are

Noah Youkilis embodies the far edge of intellect—so brilliant that life feels too predictable to be meaningful. He’s capable of solving anything except the problem of his own boredom, which isolates him from his classmates and from ordinary joys. Drawn to chaos as if it were oxygen, Noah discovers freedom not in harder work but in the messy, unquantifiable spontaneity of regular life—a world first opened to him by Donovan. Through Noah, the story probes The Nature of Giftedness and Intelligence and the search for Identity and Belonging, suggesting that being “smart” is useless without curiosity, risk, and connection.

Personality & Traits

Noah is a paradox: the sharpest mind in the room and the least equipped to read it. His intellect allows him to master any curriculum instantly, yet his literalism and social misfires keep him at a remove from other people. When something finally fascinates him—especially randomness—his curiosity becomes joyful, even reckless.

  • Intellectually unmatched: With an IQ of 206, every subject is “easy.” He blazes through problems, then manufactures difficulty by intentionally answering incorrectly; teachers like Ms. Bevelaqua still catch him in the act.
  • Socially awkward: He avoids eye contact, speaks to the air over people’s shoulders, and misses sarcasm and subtext, which isolates him even in a school full of high achievers.
  • Literal-minded: Hearing that Katie’s husband is “in Afghanistan,” he assumes it means he died; he initially believes YouTube features “brilliant actors,” not understanding candid footage.
  • Unchallenged and apathetic: Because school can’t surprise him, he grows listless and even self-sabotaging—until randomness offers the challenge he craves.
  • Intensely curious (when engaged): Once he discovers YouTube, he dissects it from every angle and lets it reshape his tastes, humor, and risk-taking.
  • Visually out-of-place: Chloe Garfinkle calls him “skinny” and “needle-nosed,” while Donovan pictures a “four-foot-eleven praying mantis” with Truman-era glasses—descriptions that underscore his otherworldliness and social remove.
  • Desires normalcy: He’s fascinated by unpressured students and calls Donovan a “human YouTube,” admiring unpredictability as the one thing his mind can’t pre-solve.

Character Journey

Noah begins in stasis: a genius so bored he’s trying to fail just to feel something. Donovan’s arrival jolts him awake by introducing YouTube—an endless stream of the unexpected that his algorithms can’t tame. He starts experimenting with unpredictability in real life: dressing as a WWE wrestler at the Valentine Dance and attempting a dramatic “takedown” from a speaker tower. His liberation crystallizes when he misreads Katie’s sonogram and predicts the wrong sex of the baby. Instead of shame, he feels delight; being wrong proves that life still contains genuine surprise. Newly convinced that real challenge lies beyond the Academy’s walls, Noah engineers his own exit by falsely confessing to cheating for Donovan on a retest. Choosing expulsion is his first act of true agency—rejecting the gifted label in favor of the open-ended, risky education of normal life at Hardcastle Middle School.

Key Relationships

  • Donovan Curtis: Noah sees Donovan as a living conduit to unpredictability—“a human YouTube.” Donovan doesn’t make Noah smarter; he makes him freer, showing him that randomness can be a path to meaning. Noah’s loyalty culminates in a sacrificial, calculated act: confessing to cheating so Donovan won’t be punished.

  • Abigail Lee: As Noah’s intellectual equal, Abigail reflects what he could be if he were driven by fear of failure. Her perfectionism contrasts with Noah’s apathy, and when Noah reveals she cheated for Donovan, he punctures the gifted program’s facade of meritocracy—valuing honesty and humanity over status.

  • Mr. Osborne: The robotics teacher recognizes Noah’s brilliance but keeps trying to funnel it back into achievement. His well-meaning frustration exposes the limits of a system that can’t imagine intelligence wanting anything other than harder problems—precisely what Noah rejects.

  • Katie Patterson: Katie provides the crucible for Noah’s most important discovery: joy in fallibility. His wrong prediction about her baby’s sex becomes the hinge of his arc, reframing “being wrong” as a door to real growth.

Defining Moments

Noah’s story turns on the moments where his intellect meets unpredictability and he chooses chaos over control.

  • Discovering YouTube — Donovan introduces him to content that is “astonishingly simple and utterly random.” This becomes Noah’s laboratory for surprise, teaching him to value unpredictability rather than eliminate it.
  • Predicting the baby’s sex (and being wrong) — He confidently calls “boy” and is stunned—then elated—when a girl is born. The joy of being wrong reframes error as freedom, not failure.
  • WWE-fueled robotics rampage — Channeling wrestling videos, he smashes Pot-zilla with a folding chair. It’s reckless, loyal, and symbolic: Noah choosing belonging and passion over sterile excellence.
  • Engineering his own expulsion — He fabricates evidence to “prove” he cheated for Donovan. This radical act of self-authorship rejects the gifted label and wins him the challenge he actually wants: a normal, unpredictable life.

Essential Quotes

You know what’s hard? Trying to control your own destiny. It’s not just hard; it’s impossible.

Noah voices the core paradox of his life: unlimited brainpower but no satisfying control. The line foreshadows his solution—not to dominate outcomes, but to embrace uncertainty by choosing situations where he can’t predict everything, even if that means breaking from the Academy.

I was wrong about Katie’s baby, and that means I can be wrong about anything. Challenge isn’t going to come from any curriculum, no matter how hard they make it. It’s going to come from life.

This is the thesis of Noah’s transformation. Error becomes possibility; curriculum becomes constraint. He reframes intelligence as the courage to enter unscripted experiences, which is why he seeks out normal school as a harder, truer test.

I’m not sure how the clip made it to YouTube... I would have called it “The Second-Most Fantastically Awesome Blow for Justice Ever Struck by an Automaton (after the Terminator Turned Good).” But that might have been too long.

The joke reveals his blended identity: hyper-analytical diction fused with giddy delight in randomness. By celebrating a chaotic moment as “justice,” Noah shows how his moral compass now privileges heart, humor, and spontaneity over tidy correctness.