Molly Finch

— Excerpt from Molly's diary.

**Molly Finch** was the firstborn and the first daughter of Sven and Edie. On December 13, 1947, two days after her tenth birthday, Molly was sent to bed without dinner by her mother, and decided to eat various non-edibles until dying in her bed. She is the first member to have her story witnessed by Edith Finch.

## Personality

Molly was a little girl who seemed to love the color pink and her pets: a gerbil and a goldfish named Christopher. She was interested in nature and fantasy, as evidenced by several objects and decor in her room. She had a very active, yet disturbing imagination as expressed by her last diary entry that Edith reads and the player lives through.

Molly showed an interest in animal biology; she owned an ant farm, a Pacific Ocean depth chart, a starfish with a severed leg, a microscope with a butterfly underneath, and jars holding insects, as well as multiple animal plushies and masks. She also had a flag advertising the Orcas Island Calves and a trophy for being a Washington Invitational 1946 Participant, indicating that she had participated in sports; the trophy appears to depict either a runner or a diver.

## Gameplay

The player plays as Molly acting out the last day of her life in accordance with the diary entry she wrote. Molly starts by waking up in bed, unable to sleep because she was so hungry, and her mother made her go to bed without eating. First, she eats her gerbil's food and looks for her Halloween candy. She finds no candy so she goes to the bathroom. Here, she eats an entire tube of toothpaste before she eats the berries from the holly on her window sill.

From this point, Molly's story turns otherworldly. Molly sees a bird outside of her window and turns into a cat in order to chase it and eat it. After eating the bird, Molly turns into an owl in order to hunt rabbits so she can feed her bottomless hunger. After consuming rabbits, Molly turns into a shark that falls into the ocean so she can eat a seal. Afterward, Molly turns into a large, tentacled monster that lands on a ship. Molly eats every passenger on board before smelling her human self. She slithers through the pipes of her bathroom and under her bed where she wakes up as a human in her bed. She claims the monster is still under her bed where it is waiting for her to fall asleep so it can eat her.

## Molly's Diary Entry

*December 13th, 1947**Dear Diary,**I'll be gone soon, but I wanted to tell somebody about what's gonna happen. It started when Mom sent me to bed without dinner. I woke up and I was starving. So I looked around for something to eat.**[Optional: The gerbil food was dry, but I didn't mind it.]
[Optional: My Halloween candy was all gone.]
[Optional: I thought about eating Christopher, but I held back.]
[Optional: I kept eating and eating.]
[Optional: I ate a lot of things that night.]**Then I heard chirping outside my window. It was a barn swallow going back to her nest. I reached out for her, and suddenly... I was a cat! I tried to be quiet but the bird was really scared. Mom and Dad didn't even look at me. I jumped and I almost got her. I could tell she was getting really tired. Now I was up in the big tree. I promised dad I wouldn't climb it anymore. But all I cared about was eating that momma bird.**I gobbled her up... And suddenly I was an owl! First, all I heard was the wind. Then I heard little teeth nibbling in the grass. I imagined his face looking up and seeing mine, through my talons. I swallowed him up, and I didn't chew one bit. Then I flew off to find something bigger. She was almost too big to carry. I started choking, but I couldn't stop eating. And suddenly I was a shark!**I rolled off a cliff and into the ocean. Now I was hungrier than ever. I wanted fat, juicy seals. I tore off her flipper and it tasted really good. I grabbed on tight. But I was so hungry, I jumped out of the water. When I opened my eyes, everything had changed. Now I was a monster. and I smelled people everywhere. I was big, but I moved real quiet. I wanted to stop but also I didn't.**After the last passenger, I was still hungry. And across the water I smelled something new. Something I had to have. So I swam towards it. I slithered onto the sand and the good smell went into an old pipe. I got closer and closer. All my stomachs started growling. And suddenly, I was me again. I held my breath for a long time but I couldn't hear anything. I think it's waiting for me to fall asleep. But it's not going to wait much longer. It needs to feed. And we both know... I will be... delicious.*

## Trivia

* The animals Molly imagines herself as can be found within her room. Cat and owl masks can be seen on her door, and a drawing of an underwater monster can be seen on a chalkboard by her memorial shrine.
* Of the animals Molly hunts for during her transformation sequences, two of them are mentioned to be mothers (the bird and the second rabbit) and the final is mentioned to be female (the seal). This may be intended to portray Molly's frustration with her own mother for denying her food on the night of her death.
* Molly's collection of books consists of: *Beasts of Nature*, *Monsters of the Deep*, *The Weird Tale*, *Magical Realist Fiction*, *On Memory*, *Tales from the Beyond*, *The Jungle Book*, *The Princess & The Goblin*, *Mummification*, *A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush*, *The Magic Mountain*, *Birds of the Pacific Northwest*, *The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault*, *The Little Glass Slipper*, *Bed Bug*, *Nine Lives*, *A Tale of Tales*, *Shadows of a Fleeting World*, *White Fang*, *In Search of Lost Time*, *Alice in Wonderland*, *The Call of the Wild*, and *A Book of Memories*.
* The sparrow will arrive at the window so long as Molly has eaten two of the three items: the berries, the gerbil food or the toothpaste. While consuming an entire tube of fluorinated toothpaste is enough to kill a child, holly berries are only lethal when approximately twenty are consumed, while Molly is only seen eating three (enough to cause nausea, vomiting, stomach and intestinal pain, and diarrhea, which may lead to hallucinations due to excessive body stress and lack of oxygen and nutrients). It is possible that, if she hadn't done so earlier, Molly proceeded to consume the tube of toothpaste during her imagination sequence in a possibly hallucinatory state.
* The song from a sound source on the ship during the "monster" section is called "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear". The specific rendition used is performed by Burl Ives.
* Molly was only a newborn when her grandfather, Odin Finch, died, so the little girl never knew him.
* Despite wanting to move on from their family history, Molly's niece, Dawn Finch, would later name a stray cat she found "Molly".
* Interestingly, in the chalkboard drawing Molly drew, it shows that a dragon/sea serpent type creature is approaching a figure titled as "Daddy", which would be Sven. It's possibly Molly either had a VERY active imagination or was possibly prophetic, as during her younger brother Walter's 12th birthday, her father was crushed by a slide made to look like a dragon.
* In Sam's room, there is a taxidermy calico cat similar to the one seen outside Molly's window and in Lewis's coronation scene. This could possibly be the actual cat Molly, placed there by Edie or some other living family member after the cat died, or it could simply be a reference to her.
* It's likely that Edith Finch's son Christopher Finch is likely named after her fish Christopher.
* Molly said in her diary that she decided to not eat Christopher though as viewed in the pet cemetery he died in 1947 and Molly died on December 13, 1947 meaning Christopher died after she died or he died during December 14 through December 31, 1947.

## Gallery

Edie's portrait for Molly's memorial shrine.In-game shot of Molly's shrine.Edith's journal sketch of Molly.A photo of (most likely) Molly from the walls of the house.A photo of Molly from her memorial shrine.
## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Molly's gravestone in the Finch cemetery
2. ↑ ThoughtCo. - Poisonous Holiday Plants
3. ↑ California Poison Control System - Holiday Plant Safety

## Navigation

 Sam's Branch
 Edie's Branch
 Odin's Branch
 Other