In Gone, we are first introduced to Mary and immediately told she has had issues with anxiety and eating disorders. She becomes the primary carer to the kindergarten of children left alone after the FAYZ started, resulting in the nickname "mother Mary."
Over the course of the first three books, we see Mary slowly descend into mental illness and starvation.
When I first read Gone, as a 14 year old, I immediately felt akin to Mary. She was falling apart, and hiding it so well, taking on the weight of the world while wasting away, mind and body. I thought her character progression and arc may be one of the most tragic in the series, and would list her as a top favourite character.
So why, when asked on twitter, did Michael Grant admit he "couldn't wait" to kill Mary off?
Mary has one strong characteristic that sets her apart from much of the main cast of Gone: she has no supernatural powers. But isn't she superhuman in her own way? Doesn't she, a 14 year old girl battling anorexia, take on an entire orphanage of young children? And who are the characters of Gone, or we, to blame her for slipping apart?
In the end of Lies, we see Mary on the cusp of her Great and Fateful 15th birthday, and she has fallen into the rumors of Orsay- that if you "poof" you will be back with family and loved ones, safe and sound. She takes a large group, possibly the majority, of the makeshift daycare, holding hands in a chain, and jumps off a cliff. Sam saves the children, but Mary "poofs" and the next we hear from her is when she is found on the outside, mutilated into an inhuman form.
Over the rest of the series, people refer to what happened to Mary as her 'going crazy' or 'endangering the kids' 'leading them on a suicide mission.'
Here's what I believe.
Mary Terrafino was a 14 year old anorexic girl, suddenly left by all adults in the world, and ended up taking on an entire daycare of extremely young children. Some were sick from pre-FAYZ conditions, some were otherwise malnourished from days of not being discovered. Mary saw these children die. She had to be weaned off her medication, due to lack of resources, until she was in a frame of mind that would have shattered her without the presence of the FAYZ. The only person who could properly make sure she was eating, was her little brother. So when Mary, whose mental state had already been weakened, heard the possibility of hope- is it any surprise that she grasped on to it? I remember being 14 and depressed, and the slightest thing as a lyric would be enough for me to have some hope, to hold on. Some encouraging words, an idea things might someday be better.
I know that given the majority of the characters are of similar ages, taking Mary being only 14 with all this pressure into account wouldn't necessarily seem so obvious to the other characters, as they were all 14\15 too- but in hindsight, I believe they must think of Mary. If Michael Grant meant what he said, we won't hear any more about Mary Terrafino in the spinoff series. But I know that Mary, though constantly overlooked and ridiculed, will always be remembered to these characters. She wasn't what many seemed to label her, though- a 'saint.' She was a 14 year old girl. And now she will only ever be a memory to look back on, and that is one of the biggest tragedies, to me, of this series. I believe she is one of the saddest stories to come from Gone, and I will always be saddened by Michael Grant's apparent ease in throwing her away.
