Who Are The Main Characters In 'The Fountains Of Silence'?

Author Ruta Sepetys creates very realistic main characters in The Fountains of Silence. While Fuga and Faina are developmentally complex in their own right, the characters of Daniel, Ana, and Rafa are layered in a way that helps readers see many different angles in every scene. In this excerpt we see Ana stealing contraband in a museum, she looks so alive, a true contrast to the obedient servant girl that everyone believes her to be.

The slow descent into opposition by Rafa, a worker apolitical until now, is very well drawn as is his friendship with the bullfighter, a studious insight into the masculinity of the time and how it is wrong in some fundamental ways. Puri’s sections were also really great as she believes blindly in the regime of the time until the slow revelations of how she has been fooled by the nuns’ threats to her and her family.

Each of the secondary characters brings a richness to their interactions with the three main characters. Fuga, the homeless bull fighter, is a beautiful representation of the many discarded souls of Spain in the 1930s. Fuga wants nothing more than to be accepted and loved. Ben, the father of the two American brothers, is the embodiment of the corporate greed of America working in collusion with dictators to maintain their power.

The core of The Fountains of Silence is made up of four very different characters. Daniel Matheson, the young American oil heir and photographer, has traveled to 1950s Madrid as a ‘tourist’ but soon reveals himself to be on the lookout for truth. Ana Torres Moreno is the hotel maid with big dreams. Her courage allows her to risk everything to help the young tourist, and their story becomes one of love in the midst of the regime’s brutal purges of suspected enemies, and children stolen from their families. Rafa, Ana’s brother, is as angry with the regime as his friends are, but in his own, secret world. Puri, the cousin of the two brothers, works in the maternity of a maternity home, but there all is not as it seems. He is hiding secrets. In terms of representing different aspects of silenced Spain, the four characters embody the role of outsider, the dreamer, the rebel, and the believer.

Like many others, I bonded immediately with the two newlyweds Daniel and Ana, but as I became more invested in the story I started to like the underground journalist Julia the most. Julia ties together all the main characters by managing to send them messages via her (dummy) laundry service. As the only one documenting the appalling reality of the babies’-snatching going on by the collaborator’s and the police she’s very brave, and that scene in which she hides the microfilm in soap bars was great.

However, within the novel the couples are very mirrored and so we see hope of people crossing borders in Daniel and Ana, and then brotherly love in the resistance figures of Rafa and Fuga. Puri and Sister Hortensia demonstrate how even within a supposedly ‘holly’ environment religion can be used to oppress. And then we have the rather ordinary-seeming Hotel manager, Señora Matos who is in fact an obscure and faceless arm of the totalitarian regime.

Their individual flaws make historical circumstances relatable and even help to make readers care about the main characters almost as if they were part of the author’s family. For example, Daniel first appears to be rather blind to politics, Ana occasionally hesitates and changes her mind when she should be acting sooner, and Rafa has a very short temper which gives rise to many problems throughout the novel. For example, I was more shocked by Puri’s sudden, explosive confrontation with the nuns than by any action scene throughout the novel.