Character Analysis
Teachers' Lounge
The Center for Integrated Learning is a school centered on integrating learning. Clearly. This means that at the Center, they like to make connections across different subjects, like we do here at Shmoop when we compare Eleanor Roosevelt to Nicki Minaj. (Think about it.)
To do this at the Center, they teach a variety of classes. Rulan Geist teaches genetics, where he compares deciphering the human genome to being an explorer like Christopher Columbus.
Prof. Sangren teaches the pretentiously named "Civics: Profiles in Power and Realpolitik" class, which seems to be grooming these kids to be the future dictators of the world. Sangren, the Snape of the faculty, humiliates Will for being late and threatens him by saying, "You have five weeks to make the grade" (20.71). He must not have received the memo that Will, a late addition to the Center, is only auditing classes. And is in fact basically a superhero.
Dan McBride teaches a course on Emerson and doles out hippie wisdom like, "The red-eye [flight] has always symbolized for me how worship of money makes us behave with utter contempt for our own humanity" (10.16).
On the more physical side of the Center, we have Coach Ira Jericho, a "full-blood Oglala Lakota" (22.67) who is a descendant of Crazy Horse. He is a stereotypical Native American, speaking in weird animal metaphors, like "Tell me if you dream of bears…or weasels" (31.29), as if he smoked too much from a peace pipe.
Jericho is assisted in the athletic department by Jolly Nepsted, a "sociopathic dwarf" (30.36) in a wheelchair who is literally kept in a cage. We're in David Lynch territory, folks. Both Nepsted and Jericho are shape-shifters. Jericho is able to turn into a bear, Nepsted into some sort of tentacle monster. Nick notes that "the lock is on the outside" (41.84), suggesting that Nepsted is unable to control himself in tentacle monster form—yet we see him consciously help Nick, so we're unsure why he is locked away.
On staff, we meet Dr. Robbins, who is a female doctor Will immediately objectifies with his very first thought about her: "The doctor is smoking hot" (2.39). Will, honey, her M.D. is over there. There is also Eloni, a Samoan. All the bodyguards of the center are Samoan, and none of the white kids can tell them apart. Brooke believes they're "reformed gangsters from South Side Chicago" (12.74), for no other reason than the fact that they have a "warrior culture" (12.74).
Finally, there is headmaster Steven Rourk, who "looked like he could pick his teeth with a bowie knife and seemed as confident as a four-star general" (11.18). No frou-frou intellectual here. The headmaster of the school is dripping with what this book considers to be the most important trait for a person to have: masculinity.