Character Profile and Back Story

Character Profile

Name: Matthew (Matt) Alton

Age: 25

Occupation: Schoolteacher

Hobbies: occasionally plays golf with friends, but spends a lot of the time with friends at the pub. However, he does not drink too much because he usually goes on week-days and has work the next day. He also has to plan his lessons for the next few days before going, so it reduces his time at the pub. He spends the weekends in his local church as he runs a kids club and enjoys feeling close to God (so helps out with as many events within the church as possible).

Personality: a very calm person – not much will affect him and he can always turn to God for the things that do affect him in a bad way.

Marital status: was engaged to his girlfriend (Madeline [Maddy]), but she committed suicide from jumping off a bridge into a road about six months before the riots started.

Back Story

Matthew was born on May 1st 1988 to loving, Christian parents. During his time growing up, he spent almost every Sunday at church and remained a devout Christian all the way through school life. Every now and then a peer would mock him, due to the depth of his feeling for Christianity, but his faith in God would overcome his feelings for them. However, every now and then, he would ‘talk’ to Satan as well as God to see the opposite view of the situation and to make sure he was doing the right thing.

He met Madeline at university as she was doing the same course as him. They quickly became attracted to each other and while she wasn't Christian, she could see his point of view of things. They both finished university with very good degrees in teaching in 2009. They quickly found work in the same secondary school and moved in together. However, Madeline had developed Major Depressive Disorder while they were are university (because of the work load) and found it hard to cope with going straight into working in a school after studying. She entered into a downward spiral of stressing about how much work she had, feeling bad because she didn't have the time to do it, feeling down because of that and then not actually getting much done due to the depressed mood she was in. She was often late for work and occasionally didn't plan her lessons for the day. Matthew noticed this and tried to help as best he could – but he had his own work of course and Madeline felt that he was interfering with her job role and didn't like his help too much anyway – making Matthew feel helpless, but again being able to talk to God about his fears in the hope that he will guide Madeline to the light. Halfway through the school year, the governing body of the school decided it was time for her to depart from her position. When she was told this she drove home, in the car she had an emotional breakdown and stopped on a bridge. She got out the car, went to the edge of the bridge, left a voice-mail on the phone at home for Matthew, and jumped to her death. Matthew didn't know about any of this until he arrived home later that night and got the message on his answer machine. Matthew was obviously shocked that it had happened; he also felt sad that she had died and angry at himself for not being able to help her. He turned to God to help him through this time – he took a few days off work and prayed for her safe arrival in heaven, hoping that God would allow her entrance, even though she wasn't Christian. Three years on and his belief in Christianity is stronger than ever; the riots didn't affect him much, until they started to get closer and closer to his home (and workplace), at that point he fled to his church, but when he arrived, it had already been attacked it in some sort of rage (maybe people blaming God for what has happened to them), due to this he went to the next nearest church (St Margaret’s). Due to no-one there being religious – he took up the role of reverend and took responsibility for the people inside. He did regular services to help keep people’s moods up – however, there were a couple that kept distancing themselves from the rest of the group. The woman in the relationship was very kind and helpful with anything he needed, but the man seemed quite anti-social and didn't like Matthew’s company as much. They were there before Matthew, and at first they were both against the idea of letting him in, but they soon saw that they needed to let some more people in to help them all live together.