51 pages • 1 hour read
Ann BrasharesSisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Carmen Lowell
Carmen Lowell’s narration bookends the novel. She is the one to introduce her four friends and the traveling pants in Chapter 1, communicating the importance of their bond to the reader. Carmen self-identifies as “the one who cares the most” (10) about keeping her friends together. She recognizes the rarity of their bond and is devoted to maintaining it even when they are apart. Though Carmen fits each of her friends neatly into archetypes, she struggles to find where she fits in. She is half Puerto Rican, and her darker skin tone and curvier figure make her stand out from her friends. Carmen’s parents are divorced. She lives with her mother in Bethesda but covets her limited time with her father, whose approval and love she craves.
Carmen’s coming-of-age journey involves learning to communicate her needs and emotions maturely. Her character is perhaps the most prominent embodiment of the theme The Complexity of Familial Relationships. Unlike the other characters, her primary conflict revolves around family. Her fear of not fitting in is realized when her father surprises her with the news of his engagement. Carmen instantly feels out of place next to her thin, blonde stepmother and stepsiblings. Fearing that conflict will jeopardize her relationship with her father, Carmen hides her hurt and anger from him. She instead directs her emotions toward Lydia, Paul, and Krista. She acts out in an impulsive and childish manner, with a series of escalating outbursts culminating in her throwing a rock through the kitchen window while the family eats dinner without her. In the wake of each outburst, Carmen is ashamed of her behavior. She knows that her temper can be problematic but can’t control it during moments of distress. She flees back to Bethesda, unable to stand being around her stepfamily any longer.
Once she is back with the people who know her best, Carmen gains a better perspective on her emotions. It takes several conversations with Tibby and her mother to make her realize that she is misdirecting her anger. She finds it easy to confront the people she trusts most, but because she is insecure about her bond with her father, she holds back all negative emotions from him. With this new insight, she gains the courage to call her father and confront him about her hurt and anger. He apologizes, and they mend the rift in their relationship. Carmen attends his wedding and mends her relationship with her stepmother and stepsiblings, displaying her growth into a more mature and emotionally centered person. In the Epilogue, Carmen once again narrates as the friends come together after their formative summers. She reprises her role as the person who holds the group together, but she is now more secure in the lasting power of their bond and excited to continue the ritual of the pants the following summer.
Lena Kaligaris
Lena Kaligaris is known to her friends as “beautiful Lena.” While her looks capture people’s attention, Lena is a withdrawn and self-conscious person who struggles to form close relationships. While Lena’s friends make her feel seen, she worries that most people don’t bother to look past her physical beauty and get to know her true self. Lena envies people like Bridget, Kostos, and Effie, who aren’t afraid to take risks and bare their hearts.
While visiting her grandparents in Oia, Lena learns lessons about speaking up for herself and taking risks. She initially rejects Kostos because she mistakenly assumes he only cares about her looks. Simultaneously, she yearns to connect with her equally shy grandfather, but worries that she is making their relationship awkward because she doesn’t speak any Greek, When she accidentally leads her grandparents to believe that Kostos has assaulted her, her timidity makes her delay telling them the truth, escalating the situation to the point of violence. Lena realizes that she has feelings for Kostos but is too shy to admit this to him.
Eventually, Lena overcomes her fear and tells her grandparents the truth. Along the way, she realizes that she’s fallen in love with Kostos. Lena gathers the courage to apologize and confess her feelings to him, and the two share a kiss. By the end of the novel, Lena is more secure in herself, accepting her introversion as a positive quality but knowing that she can step outside of her comfort zone for the things that matter. Her growth prominently focuses on the theme of Love and Vulnerability, as she must live out of her comfort zone in order to find love with both Kostos and her grandfather.
Tibby Rollins
Tibby Rollins’s nickname is “Tibby the rebel,” coined for her wry, sarcastic personality. Tibby’s cynical worldview is informed by the fact that her parents had her when they were young and living an alternative lifestyle, before assimilating to a more mainstream lifestyle and having two more babies. Tibby feels like she was an “experiment” or an “accessory” for them before they got serious about being parents. Despite her self-ascribed outsider status, Tibby can be superficial in her judgements of others. She is quick to dismiss and mock anyone she perceives as uncool. Her friends are the exception to this attitude, as Tibby treats them with unwavering compassion and understanding.
Starting at Wallman’s, Tibby immediately distances herself from her coworkers, whom she looks down on as losers. She plans to film a satirical “suckumentary” that mocks its subjects and highlights the misery of her summer. Tibby’s plans are interrupted by the arrival of Bailey, a 12-year-old girl with leukemia who bonds with Tibby despite her initial reluctance.
Through her friendship with compassionate, optimistic Bailey, Tibby learns to take an interest in people she would otherwise have written off. In a platonic take on Love and Vulnerability, Bailey helps Tibby learn how to be honest and caring toward herself and toward others. Under Bailey’s influence, the “suckumentary” evolves into a genuine documentation of the lives of others, mirroring Tibby’s growth past her superficial judgements of others. Tibby extends this new, nuanced understanding of others to her own friendships, no longer blindly supporting her friends but encouraging them to think about how their actions affect others.
Tibby’s greatest challenge is confronting Bailey’s impending death. Though she initially shuts herself off from reality as a coping mechanism, she eventually finds the strength to visit and support Bailey before her passing. By the end of the novel, Tibby has become a kinder and more open person. Her arc highlights the importance of friendship in personal growth.
Bridget Vreeland
The most confident of the four girls, Bridget is headstrong and impulsive. She is a star soccer player and approaches both the game and her life with the same voracious energy. Everything about her character is big, from her appetite to her stature to her talent on the field. Bridget’s thrill-seeking nature makes her a foil to Lena. She is relentless in pursuit of her desires and often lacks the “good sense” to anticipate the consequences of her actions.
Bridget’s confident exterior belies her tragic past. She lost her mother as a young girl—though her cause of her death is never revealed to the reader, Brashares implies it to be a suicide. The narrative also hints that Bridget doesn’t have a particularly close relationship with her father and brother; she is often at her friends’ houses and usually reaches out to them over her family when she needs something. Brashares uses the character of Bridget to most prominently show the concept of chosen family. Though all of the girls are extremely close, Bridget effectively replaces familial relationships with her friendships. Bridget stands in for those distant from their biological families who have found equally meaningful relationships in their stead.
Bridget seeks out thrilling experiences in part to distract from her internal turmoil. She is shown to disregard the consequences of her actions—she pursues the attractive, older Eric doggedly despite his several attempts to keep the relationship platonic. She is single-minded in her goal to seduce him, but after they sleep together Bridget feels lost and upset. All her energy comes crashing down, and she experiences mixed feelings that make her feel estranged from herself. In her moment of greatest need, Bridget reaches out to Lena, who flies all the way to Mexico to comfort her.
By the end of the novel, Bridget has learned to temper her energy and think twice about her actions, while receiving reassurance that she can always turn to her friends for help when she needs it.
