Under a Painted Sky

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, attempted rape, murder, child abuse, suicidal ideation, and anti-gay bias.

Samantha “Sammy” Young is the protagonist and first-person narrator of the novel. When the novel opens in medias res, she is a 15-year-old teenager in the middle of a nightmarish situation. Her father has just died in a fire, and she just killed the man who tried to rape her. From the start, Lee creates a resourceful character, since Samantha is the one who suggests she and Annamae disguise themselves as boys. Samantha hence exhibits some typical characteristics of action-adventure heroines in episodic narratives: resourceful and adventurous in the face of adversity.

In addition to being quick-witted and intelligent, she is also more formally educated. She is a classically trained musician and has been helping to support her family of her father and herself by giving violin lessons. Her dream, in fact, is to open a music conservatory. She knows several languages, including Latin, French, and Portuguese, and is constantly making references to art and literature throughout the story, such as the artist Michelangelo. She hence demonstrates cultural capital through which Lee contrasts her to other oppressed people on the trail—such as Annamae, who has liberated herself from enslavement.