The Measure

Although Maura is in a committed relationship with Nina, that commitment is tested when she discovers her short string. Maura’s journey is about how to move forward in her life with Nina, despite the knowledge that her life will be a short one. Maura also struggles with wanting children, a desire that only manifests after she learns about her short string. She keeps it a secret, as Nina keeps a secret of her own, illustrating the theme of The Impact of Secrets. However, they are able to overcome their fears and enjoy their life together. Maura is strong and thoughtful, and so she and Nina manage to make a life together in spite of her prognosis.

Although she joins reluctantly, Maura is also a valuable member of the support group. As a queer Black woman, she has already faced discrimination all her life, and she understands how pervasive and unyielding it can be. More than some of the other group members, she knows how slowly change happens, and how hard one has to push. Maura is a fighter, although she struggles with her exhaustion at being “forced to keep fighting for [her]self, over and over again” (195). Maura admires Venice, the sinking city, thinking, “The odds are against it, the water always rising. But still it stands, […]. A fighter” (197). Like Venice, she recommits to the fight, over and over again, no matter how exhausted she feels.

Maura is also one of the main characters through which the other characters intersect. She is in a relationship with Nina, whose sister, Amie, will become involved with Ben, a man in Maura’s support group. In fact, Maura is the impetus for them meeting at last, as she gives Ben the keys to their apartment, where Amie is staying. At the end of the novel, she is the person at the Johnson Foundation that helps Jack tell his and Javier’s story.

Nina is Maura’s partner and Amie’s sister. Where Maura is passionate and headstrong, Nina is controlled. She doesn’t like to lose control, as it brings back memories of being outed in high school, and so the strings, and specifically Maura’s short string, make her feel powerless: “Everything was too murky, too gray. She needed things in black-and-white” (38). However, Nina also shows admirable strength and bravery in her struggle to set aside her need for control and accept the reality of her and Maura’s situation. She commits fully to the relationship, despite knowing that they only have about 10 years together, and she continually recommits, even in the face of Maura’s uncertainty.

Nina is a media editor, and as such, she often receives information before the general public. Nikki Erlick uses Nina’s profession to keep the reader updated on the global context of the strings. In addition, Nina’s position as an editor highlights the media’s role in, and responsibility for, shaping the string narrative. As Nina considers how the media frames the public’s understanding of the mystery, she recognizes how powerfully the media shapes public discourse on a whole range of subjects. Nina’s job also gives her a different perspective on events, and as the novel continues, this perspective increasingly allows her to set aside her need for control.

Amie, Nina’s younger sister, teaches fifth grade in Manhattan. Through anonymous correspondence, she develops a relationship with Ben. Amie is a notable character because she never opens her box. She is the only major character to make this choice, and as such she presents a unique perspective, almost an outside perspective, on the struggles the other characters are going through:

Amie still hadn’t opened her own box, so she could see the world through unsullied eyes, and though she would never admit this in front of anyone, there was something almost…thrilling…about the strings’ arrival. Frightening and confusing, of course, but also, perhaps, wondrous? (35).

She notes, however, that because she doesn’t know the length of her string, she sometimes acts like a long-stringer, particularly in the way she distances herself from Ben upon learning about his short string. Amie’s refusal to look at her string is one way to balance the opposing forces of Fate and Choice. Realizing that she has no power to alter the length of her string, she decides to take back some power by choosing not to know.

At the beginning of the novel, Amie lives through books and understands the world through the filter of her reading experience. She also sees relationships through the same filter, which is the reason she struggles with Ben’s revelations and with her love for him. She has a rich fantasy life and has developed very specific ideas about her future, represented by the Van Woolsey building. Her transformation is complete when she sees the Van Woolsey building again, at the end of the novel, and is able to let go of what she thought her life would be like to embrace the life she is living. Amie’s struggle and growth represent what so many people went through after the boxes arrived and their expectations for their lives were upended. At the end of the novel, when Amie dies with Ben, and Nina at last opens Amie’s box, she is thankful that Amie had never looked inside, as she might not have lived her life with Ben and had the two children that Nina has now adopted.

Ben learns about his short string not through his own volition, but because his girlfriend, Claire, looks in his box without his permission, tells him what she finds, and breaks up with him as a result. In this way, Ben’s story serves as a counterpoint to that of Amie, with whom he begins an anonymous correspondence that ultimately becomes a romance. Taken together, Ben and Amie illustrate the tension between Fate and Choice. Amie chooses not to look in her box, thus preserving her sense of possibility and asserting some measure of power at a time when everyone has been made painfully aware of how powerless they are to control their fates. Claire takes that choice away from Ben, a betrayal that ultimately has much more profound consequences than her choice to leave him because of his short string.

Ben’s romance with Amie develops as he is still processing his heartbreak over the end of his relationship with Claire. His journey is one of healing from that break-up, but it is also about coming to grips with his short string and finding a way to move forward and have a full life with Amie, despite knowing that he only has about 14 years left to live when he meets her. In this way, he has much in common with Maura, who chooses to marry Nina even though she knows their time together will be short. He also struggles with revealing his string status to his parents. This is another way in which choice figures in the experience of living with the strings. Having been robbed of the chance to choose for himself whether to know his own status, he can still choose whether to share that knowledge with others. Ultimately, he decides to tell his parents, reasoning that to keep the secret from them would be to deny himself comfort and support.

Ben is a thoughtful character who immediately considers the larger implications of the strings when, in Grand Central Station, he reflects that knowing the length of one’s life “would mean the world had flipped around, like the ceiling above him, the humans now seeing from God’s perspective” (10). When he reveals his short-string status to Amie, he waits patiently and hopefully for her response, and even when she wavers, doubting her ability to make a life with him, he never does. Not only does Ben overcome his short string, but he also patiently helps Amie do the same.

Jack Hunter is from a prominent family with a strong military tradition that goes back to the Revolutionary War. He has always unthinkingly followed that family tradition, and is fresh out of military academy when the boxes arrive, yet doesn’t open his until the military forces him to—another example of choice being stolen, and an institutional version of the personal harm Claire does to Ben by telling him about his string without his permission. When Jack does look at his string and is faced with the discrepancy between his long string and Javier’s short one, he is proposes that they switch. Although on the surface, his proposal seems like an act of generosity, Jack also sees it as a way to avoid the active duty he has been dreading without incurring the disapproval of his family.

Jack’s arc over the course of the novel is one in which, slowly, reluctantly at first, he breaks completely free of his family’s influence. He thinks he has done so when he switches the string—he cannot be given the duties he wants to avoid. However, when Anthony Rollins uses Jack’s short-string status to his own political advantage, Jack is pulled back into the family. When Javier confronts him, asking him to do something about Anthony’s discriminatory policies, Jack is reluctant. However, eventually he realizes that not only must he forgo his allegiance to his family in order to do right by Javier, he must also use his platform as Anthony Rollins’s nephew to push back against his uncle in a very public way. This conflict, too, is ultimately about choice and self-determination. Jack chooses not to allow himself to be used as a prop for someone else’s political agenda. It’s not an easy choice to make since it means disappointing not only his powerful uncle but his entire family. When he publishes Javier’s letter and publicly admits his actions in switching his string with Javier’s, he completes his arc. He has fully broken from his family in a way that can never be mended, and has taken action for the sake of Javier, his true family.