Final Girls: A Novel

Content Warning: The source material for this study guide depicts or references death by suicide, drug addiction, and sexual abuse, and it includes descriptions of gore. There are also scenes depicting violence against unhoused people. Finally, the novel briefly hints at damaging stereotypes about mental illness and psychosis in order to ultimately subvert those stereotypes.

Quincy Carpenter is the main protagonist of Final Girls. The events of the novel are filtered through her unreliable perspective, which allows Sager to complicate the reader’s knowledge of the novel’s events. This unreliability is established through Quincy’s central character trait—her repressed memory—which prevents her from fully committing to the resolution of her trauma.

Quincy’s characterization is developed across two parallel storylines. In the interlude narrative, she is portrayed as a naïve, innocent girl who is conscious of her status as a virgin. This allows her to fulfill the tropes of the Final Girl archetype, though she willingly chooses to have sex with Joe Hannen, which goes against the trope.

In the present narrative, Quincy is portrayed as a woman who has seemingly reclaimed her normalcy.