Plot details follow. Caution is advised!
“ | Being Adam Parrish was a complicated thing, a wonder of muscles and organs, synapses and nerves. He was a miracle of moving parts, a study in survival. The most important thing to Adam Parrish, though, had always been free will, the ability to be his own master. This was the important thing. | ” |
Adam Parrish is a scholarship student at Aglionby Academy. He is friends with Richard Gansey III, Ronan Lynch, Noah Czerny, and Blue Sargent. He highly prioritizes his education as a means of escape from Henrietta.
Biography[]
Adam attends Aglionby Academy on a partial scholarship. He works three jobs in order to pay the remaining $18,423 a year of tuition. He lives with his mother and father in a trailer in the Antietam Lane trailer park, but after pressing charges against his abusive father, he moves into the apartment above St. Agnes church.
He would frequently choose to skip school to avoid questions about the clear evidence of his father's abuse. Gansey and Ronan would cover for him, knowing what he was going through. He finally decides to press charges to keep Ronan from going to jail after he defended Adam from Robert.
He is described as "very loud" by Maura, Persephone, and Calla when he came for his reading, along with Gansey and Ronan. They meant this in terms of psychic energy rather than literal volume of voice.
Adam is the first person to go into the Dreaming Tree in Cabeswater and have a vision. In it, he sees himself having killed Gansey, while Blue looks on in shock and Ronan shouts at him grieving and furious.
Adam's feelings of exhaustion and anger after pressing charges against his father lead him to go and seek the ley lines on his own. Adam sacrifices his free will to Cabeswater, promising to to fix the ley lines and help restore Cabeswater. In return, Cabeswater will waken the ley lines. With Cabeswater now rooted in his physical and spiritual self, Adam is granted a psychic boost that allows him to use tarot cards and other magical artifacts to communicate with Cabeswater effectively.
After he becomes Cabeswater’s “hands and eyes,” Persephone begins teaching Adam how to become a magician. She shows him how to scry and gives him her pack of tarot cards. She often reminds Adam to search outside himself while scrying as he tends to retreat inside himself while divining. Adam is the last person to see Persephone alive.
Personality[]
Adam is a bit melancholic and quite cynical. Most people identify Adam by his friendship with Gansey, but he is desperate to set himself apart from others, even his best friends. He's lived his whole life under the shadow and control of other people. He refuses to move in to Monmouth because of his principles, saying he doesn't want to "belong" to someone else. Adam's pride and inability to take charity from his friends creates a kind of chasm between him and Gansey. Adam firmly believes that he needs to do things on his own terms. He'd rather go through something difficult or painful than give in to being someone else's charity case. Adam aspires to be a self-made man and accordingly refuses everything he perceives as pity or charity. He struggles with feeling inadequate even when he's with his friends.
Adam is very intelligent, and is at the top of all his classes, except Latin, at Aglionby. He is a pragmatic and analytical person who tries to base his decisions on logic rather than emotion. But he has moments of thoughtfulness and is extremely perceptive.
Adam struggles with contrasting feelings of contempt for the arrogance and privilege of his fellow Aglionby students, and an intense desire to belong in their world. His horrible home life is the driving force behind his ambition to pull himself out of Henrietta and toward a future where he is free to pursue whatever he wants without the constraints of money or fear. He assiduously separates his school life from his home life. He does not speak of Aglionby or his wealthy friends to his parents, and avoids discussing his father's abuse with his friends. He struggles with the belief that he owes his parents something despite their cruel treatment of him. When Adam finally presses charges against his dad, he feels no relief. Instead, he feels deflated and angry.
Adam is cautious and introverted. He often doubts his ability to interact with others without betraying what he considers a shameful and pitiable upbringing. He is overly concerned with making a good first impression by suppressing his Henrietta accent and trying to cover any other clues as to his background. He studies others' behavior in order to learn how to be more at ease with people.
After becoming Cabeswater's "eyes and hands," Adam grows noticeably short tempered and distant with his friends, due to both Cabeswater's new influence over him and his own unacknowledged trauma. Luckily, he recognizes this and gets guidance from Persephone in order to regain control over his mind. He also makes a deliberate effort to be more patient and understanding.
Physical Description[]
Adam is slim and tall with an angular build. His deep-set eyes are blue and "pretty enough to be a girl's." His hair is dusty in color and unevenly cropped. He is tanned and has a fine-boned face with a down-turned mouth. After a horrible beating from his father, Adam is rendered deaf in his left ear. Ronan finds Adam's hands to be especially beautiful and "boy-ish," with a "jutting thumb, prominent veins, and long fingers." His Aglionby uniform is secondhand, and when he wears it he hopes people do not notice the threadbare shoulder. He wore a worn Coca-Cola shirt to the first reading he went to at Blue’s house, and Calla identifies him by it throughout the series, despite him only wearing it once. Adam has a subtle Henrietta accent which becomes far more prominent when he is angry or afraid. He works hard to conceal it, to the point where Ronan describes his voice as a stranger's when he visits him at Harvard. He is described by many as elegant, beautiful, and fragile.
Relationships[]
Romances[]
Adam and Ronan begin as friends. Their relationship is complicated, and they often fight over many things. Declan notices how Adam and Ronan bicker like an old married couple. Ronan helps Adam to get away from his abusive father, press charges against him, and find an apartment after being kicked out. Ronan considers Adam his “second secret,” referring to the romantic feelings he has for him. He has loved Adam from first sight. Adam begins to wonder if Ronan has a crush on him, especially after he discovers it was Ronan and not Gansey who paid his rent. He dismisses the thought as vanity, but the two boys begin to slowly take their friendship to a romantic level and share a number of personal and heartwarming moments. Ronan describes himself as being in love with Adam, and aware that he knows this. Ronan is shown to put Adam’s well-being above his own life. While Adam is equally protective of Ronan and is constantly worried about his safety. Ronan kisses Adam in his bedroom at the Barns, revealing his feelings for Adam. Later that night, Adam kisses Ronan on the porch of the Barns to show that he feels the same way. Upon acknowledging each other’s feelings, they begin dating.
Ronan would visit Adam at work, and had once gifted him dreamt hand cream for his dry, cracked hands.Upon meeting, both are attracted to each other. They begin dating. Eventually, they decide that they are better off just being friends. When Blue begins dating Gansey, she wants to keep their relationship a secret so that Adam doesn’t get hurt. When Gansey tells Adam the truth, Adam tells him that he already knew and is not jealous. Blue and Adam maintain their friendship. They are close friends and trust each other a lot.
Friends[]
Adam and Gansey become close friends a few months after Adam begins attending Aglionby Academy. Adam notices that Gansey's Camaro was broken down on the side of the road. Knowing how to fix cars, he stops and offers to help. Gansey readily accepts Adam's help and they become fast friends. However, their friendship can become tense and stressed at times. There are frequent misunderstandings and arguments between them because of their differences in privilege and upbringings. Gansey continues to offer money to Adam, which is something Adam despises. Gansey eventually accepts Adam's notion of independence. Adam seems to be slightly envious of Gansey. He admits to studying Gansey's mannerisms and easy-going gestures and it's the only master class that he has never gotten good at. Gansey also expresses a desire to be like Adam, noting how “real and true” he is. Gansey can’t quite understand why Adam would sacrifice himself to Cabeswater. But Adam sees it as his way of trying to lay claim to himself and his destiny.
Adam is able to recognize Opal's fear in the real world as a result of her trauma from the nightmares in Ronan's dreamscape. From his own history of abuse, Adam is able to use that shared pain as a bridge to help Opal realize that the real world is not such a scary place. Because of this, or because of Ronan's own love for Adam, Opal loves Adam dearly, especially when he is very sad or very happy or deep in his own thoughts. She is saddened at the thought that he will someday die. She is especially afraid of him leaving the Barnes for Harvard because of her fear of his death. Adam gives Opal his watch, which is a symbol of their trust and affection for each other.
TBW
Family[]
Possessions[]
- Hondayota: A tricolor car was given to him by Helen Gansey that requires constant upkeep. It's apparently made up of parts from at least three different cars, all of them different colors, and probably from at least three different makers too.
- Gold Watch: Ronan gave this to Adam as a gift. Its magical properties enable it to show the time wherever Ronan is.
- Motorcycle: Ronan dreamt Adam a motorcycle with his name stitched on the leather, engine running on wood, and a YES/NO switch that turned on and off the bike.
Appearances[]
- The Raven Boys
- The Dream Thieves
- Blue Lily, Lily Blue
- The Raven King
- Opal: A Raven Cycle Story
- Call Down the Hawk
- Mister Impossible
- Greywaren
Etymology[]
The name Adam is of Hebrew origin and means "son of the red earth". It comes from the Hebrew word "adamah" meaning "earth". Biblically, this refers to the first man, Adam, being formed out of the soil of the earth. It is possibly a reference to Adam's ties to Cabeswater and the earth.
Parrish is an Anglo-Saxon name derived from the Saxon tribe Parisii. It may also come from a Ulyrian name "Voltuparis" meaning "hawk".
Trivia[]
- His Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is INTJ.[1]
- He is often said to be a Type 3 in Enneagram.
- According to Maggie Stiefvater, Adam is a Slytherin.
- Adam is a Cancer.
- He hates flying.
- His favorite colors are green and orange.
- His hands are often very dry and cracked. When he was younger he would lick them in an attempt to soothe them.