Susan Brooks
Susan Brooks is one of the most surprising figures in the hostage crisis that overtakes Room 16 of Placerville High School. A girl who normally speaks only when called upon, she is described as "very studious, very serious" and "a rather pretty but not terribly bright girl" — the kind who labors under the shadow of a brighter older sibling and is never allowed to give up the academic track. Yet within the sealed classroom, she becomes an outspoken advocate for psychological determinism, a defender of sexual frankness, and ultimately a participant in the group assault on Ted Jones, revealing a fierce moral certainty that her ordinary school life had never demanded.
Identity and Background
Susan Brooks belongs to a recognizable type at Placerville High: the diligent, overlooked student who tries hard but lacks the intellectual spark that teachers reward. Charlie Decker observes that she is "one of those girls who never say anything unless called upon, the ones that teachers always have to ask to speak up, please." Her family situation is marked by comparison to a "terribly bright older brother or older sister," whose academic reputation sets expectations she cannot meet. Charlie predicts that girls like Susan "usually marry truck drivers and move to the West Coast, where they have kitchen nooks with Formica counters" and write letters home as seldom as possible — a future of quiet, successful anonymity. In the classroom, she wears a "pale-jade-colored blouse" through which her bra straps show "like ghostly, half-erased chalk marks," a detail that captures her half-visible, half-erased presence in the social landscape of the school.
Role in the Hostage Classroom
Susan is the first student to offer a causal explanation for Charlie's violence. When the class is struggling to understand why he has taken them hostage, she speaks up suddenly: "It's your parents. It must be your parents." She grounds this claim in authority: "That's what it says in all the psychology books." Charlie notes that she becomes "aware of the fact that she was speaking (and in a normal tone of voice, and in class)" and then clams up — but the intervention has already shifted the room's direction. After Charlie tells the story of his father throwing him to the ground as a child, Susan looks "altogether radiant and vindicated," and Charlie reflects that he feels "like a farmer, spreading shit and growing corn." Later, when Carol Granger hesitates to raise the topic of sex, Susan "sprang to the ramparts," declaring: "Everyone thinks sex is so dirty. That's half what's the matter with all of us. We worry about it." She speaks "protectively" of Carol, positioning herself as a defender of honest discussion.
Participation in the Attack on Ted Jones
When the class turns on Ted Jones, Susan does not hold back. As the group closes in on Ted, she speaks "coldly": "I don't think you're being very helpful, closing yourself in and trying to be superior. Don't you realize that this could be the most meaningful experience of our lives?" This line — delivered while Ted is being physically and psychologically assaulted — reveals her capacity to reframe cruelty as enlightenment. She is among those who raise their hands when Charlie asks who knows "the final order of business," signaling her readiness for the collective punishment. During the assault itself, she is described as looking "sweetly sympathetic" while others act out their violence, a dissonance that underscores her ability to participate without appearing to abandon her moral self-image.
Thematic Significance
Susan Brooks embodies the paradox of the "good girl" who becomes an agent of mob violence while retaining a clear conscience. Her insistence on psychological explanations — "It's your parents" — and her defense of sexual openness suggest a mind shaped by the very therapeutic and liberal discourses that the novel treats with deep suspicion. She is not a rebel or a misfit; she is a conventional student who, when the structure of authority collapses, applies her conventional wisdom to justify the unjustifiable. Her participation in the attack on Ted Jones, framed as a "meaningful experience," shows how easily the language of growth and understanding can be co-opted by the desire to punish. Charlie's final image of the hostages — that their hands might still bear "black streaks" of ink — applies to Susan as much as to anyone: she emerges from the crisis with her principles intact, but the ink is on her hands all the same.
