Prophet Character Analysis

Image is the mirrored reflection of whatever a person wants to portray to the public. Most images are not realistic. A lot of times, the people working behind the scenes on the image want it to look flawless. Flawlessness is not realistic. Why would someone want to project a fictional reality into the public? Fictional realities encourage multiple personas. Frank E. Peretti’s novel Prophet, emphasizes the idea that having multiple personas will negatively affect close relationships.

Personas are images of a person’s projected reality. Most TV characters are projecting a fictional reality. Fictional realities are described as empty, and emotionless (Peretti 162). The characters that participate in these realities are portrayed as flawless beings. In Frank E. Peretti’s novel Prophet, Carl describes his father’s TV anchor persona by looking at a picture of him. Peretti narrates in the book,

[h]e looked smaller in the picture. And… whoa! He had makeup all over his face! Carl looked at the picture again, at that perfect, unblemished face. Well, maybe it was the makeup that made it seem so perfect (92).

Carl witnessed his father’s multiple personas when he sees his father’s picture. His father’s perfection was fictional

John Barrett was once married to a fashion model, but John’s image got in the way (Peretti 68). As a result of his multiple persona’s he developed a selfish ambition of wanting to keep his career because that is where his perfect identity was. Carl says to his father, “… and you were selfish; all you could think about was your career” (Peretti 295). As a result of John Barrett’s selfishness, he and his wife divorced. John Barrett poured so much into his career that he became very successful, but his successful career was the result of his failing marriage. John Barrett’s image was more important than his marriage, and that left him feeling