Characterization - Terabithia

Here is a list of the characters in Bridge to Terabithia. Following that, there is a brief description of each of the main characters.

Jesse Aarons a fifth-grade boy

Leslie Burke the new fifth-grade girl
Daddy/Mr. Aarons Jess’s father
Momma/Mrs. Aarons Jess’s mother
May Belle Jess’s six-year-old sister
Ellie, Brenda, and Joyce Ann Jess’s other sisters
Miss Edmunds the music teacher
Mrs. Myers the fifth-grade teacher
Janice Avery a seventh-grade bully
Prince Terrien the puppy Jess gives Leslie
Bill Burke Leslie’s father
Judy Burke Leslie’s mother

Jesse Aarons: Jesse, also called Jess, the main character in

the book, is a ten-year-old boy who feels lost and lonely in a
family and community that, for the most part, does not
understand him. Jess is artistic, sensitive, fearful, kind, and
hardworking.
It is clear from the beginning that Jess wants desperately to
belong. He has gotten up every morning all summer to run so
that when he goes back to school he can be the fastest kid in the
fifth grade. Being the fastest will win him the approval of his
peers; they will stop thinking of Jess as “that crazy little kid that
draws all the time.”
Jess also wants to be fastest to win the approval and attention of
his father. Jess wants and needs his father’s attention. In a house
full of girls—four sisters, two older and two younger, as well as
his mother—Jess feels very lonely. The only family member he
feels at all close to is May Belle, and she’s not even seven.
What Jess loves to do more than anything else is draw. “Jess
drew the way some people drink whiskey. The peace would start
at the top of his muddled brain and seep down through his tired
and tensed-up body.”
Drawing is Jess’s comfort, but it is also what sets him apart.
When he was in first grade and told his father he wanted to be an
artist when he grew up, his father was furious. His teachers, all
but Miss Edmunds, don’t like his drawing either. Because Jess
doesn’t draw traditional subjects—he usually draws animals in
crazy predicaments—the teachers complain that he is wasting
time, talent, and supplies. Even his mother looks at Jess’s
drawing as a waste of time when he should be doing chores.
Because Jess is sensitive, these criticisms hurt. He tries to hide
his love of drawing from everyone but Miss Edmunds and Leslie.
But Jess’s sensitivity is not limited to his own feelings. He
feels sorry for Leslie when she joins his class. “It must be
embarrassing to sit in front when you find yourself dressed
funny on the first day of school. And you don’t know anybody.”
Jess is also sensitive to the people in his family. He gets “mad
at himself for cutting her [May Belle] down,” when he knows she
worships him. And Jess tries to make his father feel good about
the racing-car set he gave Jess for Christmas.
In addition to being very sensitive, Jess is also fearful. He
is afraid of being different, of deep water, of the dark pine forest,
and of Janice Avery, among other things. But during the course
of the book, Jess learns to stand up and face the “whole mob of
foolish little fears running riot inside his gut.”
Jess is also kind. He feels sorry for Janice Avery after he and
Leslie send her a love letter and pretend it’s from Willard Hughes.
And when Leslie says she found Janice crying in the girls’ room,
he talks her into going back in to see what’s wrong with Janice.
Finally, Jess is hardworking. Although his mother calls him lazy,
he seems anything but and is often helping around the house.
In fact, over the course of just one day, Jess milks Miss Bessie,
picks beans and helps his mother can them, then makes himself
and his little sisters peanut butter sandwiches for supper. And he
does all this after having gotten up early to run.

Leslie Burke: Leslie Burke is the other main character in this

book. She is friendly, self-confident, a great runner, bright,
imaginative, and seemingly fearless.
Leslie is nearly ten when she moves to Lark Creek from
Arlington, Virginia. Her parents are both writers, and they moved
to Lark Creek because, as Leslie explains, “they decided they
were too hooked on money and success, so they bought that old
farm and they’re going to farm it and think about what’s
important.” Where Leslie was once surrounded by wealth and
open-mindedness, she is now surrounded by poverty and
narrow-mindedness.
From the moment we first meet her, we see that Leslie is friendly.
She is sitting on a fence watching Jess run. She tells him, “I
thought we might as well be friends. There’s no one else close
by.” Though Jess isn’t interested in being friends at first, Leslie
doesn’t give up.
Leslie’s self-confidence is also evident from the beginning of the
story. She comes to a new school dressed unlike any of the other
students and, despite the fact that they all stare at her, she
doesn’t seem to care. She also has the confidence to join the boys
at recess and race with them. When one of the boys tells her,
“You can run on up to the hopscotch now,” she refuses. “But I
won the heat,” she says. “I want to run.” And run she does,
winning the race.
Leslie is smart. She is such a good student that Mrs. Myers has a
smile just for her, the “Leslie Burke special.” Leslie is also
a wonderful writer and storyteller; her scuba diving essay is so
good that her words “drew Jess with her under the dark water.”
Leslie’s intelligence extends to her understanding of people. From
the beginning, she recognizes Jess as a good person although he
tries not to show it. “You’re the only kid in this whole durned
school who’s worth shooting,” she tells him. She knows what
makes the school bully, Janice Avery, tick, and is the person to
figure out a satisfying form of revenge after Janice steals May
Belle’s Twinkies.
Imagination is one of Leslie’s greatest gifts. It is the spark of
Leslie’s imagination that helps her and Jess escape the narrowmindedness
of the people around them and create a whole new
world for themselves. They are the rulers of Terabithia, and it is
there that they conquer enemies real and imagined; there that
they plot revenge against Janice Avery and use sticks to fight
off giants.
Finally, Leslie is seemingly fearless. She is not afraid of scuba
diving or Janice Avery; of swollen creek beds or dark pine forests.
Leslie’s fearlessness is an inspiration to Jess.

May Belle: May Belle is one of Jess’s younger sisters. “She

was going on seven, and she worshiped him, which was OK
sometimes.” May Belle is the only one of his sisters Jess can
stand to be around. His two older sisters, Ellie and Brenda, are
“cagey girls who managed somehow to have all the fun and leave
him and their mother with all the work.” His youngest sister,
Joyce Ann, “cried if you looked at her cross-eyed.” Jess has a soft
spot for May Belle. “She was a good kid. He really liked old May
Belle.”
May Belle looks up to, and looks out for, Jess. She looks up to
him and encourages him in his running. She thinks he can do
anything, including exact revenge on Janice Avery for stealing
her Twinkies. She looks out for him after Leslie dies by trying to
follow him to Terabithia. “I just wanted to find you, so you
wouldn’t be so lonesome,” she tells him.

Daddy/Mr. Aarons: Jess’s father is a quiet man who works

long hours in faraway Washington, D.C., and has little time or
energy for his son when he gets home from work. He is an oldfashioned
man who has clear ideas regarding what boys and
girls, men and women, should do. When Jess tells him he
wants to be an artist when he grows up, he is very unhappy,
worrying that his son is not manly enough. He worries about
Jess spending so much time playing with a girl. He never hugs
Jess; the only thing he might say to him all day is, “Mighty late
with the milking, aren’t you, son?”
But while he is old-fashioned, Jess’s father is not cold, as he
shows when Leslie dies. He goes after Jess when he runs away,
and carries him back to the truck. He also follows Jess when he
runs down to the creek and throws away all the art supplies
Leslie gave him. He pulls Jess onto his lap and comforts him,
knowing that his son needs his help to get through such a
terrible tragedy.

Momma/Mrs. Aarons: Jess’s mother, like his father, has

specific ideas of what people should and shouldn’t do; she also
has a dread of being treated with disrespect. Her narrowmindedness
is evident in her comments about Miss Edmunds
(“Sounds like some kinda hippie.”), Leslie (“tacky clothes,” hair
“shorter than a boy’s”), and Leslie’s parents (“hardly more than
hippies”). It is also clear in the way she treats Jess’s drawing as
unimportant: “Jesse Oliver!” she yells at him. “Whatcha mean
lying there in the middle of the floor doing nothing anyway?”
We see one example of Mrs. Aarons’s fear of disrespect after Jess
asks if Leslie can go to church with them. “I don’t want no one
poking their nose up at my family,” she says.

Miss Edmunds: Miss Edmunds is the music teacher at Lark

Creek Elementary School. She is young and free-spirited, and
Jess is in love with her. More than her “long swishy black hair
and blue, blue eyes,” Jess’s love is a result of Miss Edmunds’s
encouragement. Miss Edmunds is the only adult who has had
something positive to say about his drawings.
The music teacher is a friend to all students, especially those
who are different. Upon meeting Leslie, she leads the class in
singing “Free to Be . . .You and Me,” encouraging the students to
accept themselves as well as one another. It is this song that
prompts Jess to smile at Leslie, thus beginning their wonderful
friendship.