Chapters 5-8

Everything we’ve read so far (chapters 1-8) have clearly been leading up to something terrible. Thieves come in, Lauren makes her emergency kit and becomes more wary of inevitable collapse, and now Keith gave up a key to the gate. It reminds me of apocalypse movies when the main character is hearing about a crazy disease spreading somewhere far away, and it seems like the next day the disease will be in the main character’s town. It also seems like some of the verse hints to the future - for example, one said “consider the consequences of your behavior”, and then Keith lost the key and Lauren’s dad reprimanded him. This makes me wonder what “a tree cannot grow in its parents’ shadows” means. Do you think Lauren will get separated from her family?

Comments

  1. L. MoffittApril 12, 2021 at 7:27 AM

    I take that quote to mean that overly protective parents can stunt a child's growth -- that the child needs to go on their own, probably (it's implied) by their own choice. The metaphor sort of fails there because it's not like a tree can go off on its own, but that's how I interpret it. Also ironic that this clashes with the aphorism "The apple never falls far from the tree."

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chapters 17-19

  There are a lot of interesting events in chapters 17-19, most notably Lauren’s “religion” Earthseed gaining more traction, but there were other things that I was focused on. The main thing that I noticed during these chapters was how most of the time, the world just seems like a place with a lot of crime but still some sort of unspoken rule that if you’re not crazy, act normal, sometimes help people out, but mostly mind your own business. I was surprised at how some of the people seemed so vulnerable to attacks - for example, the old men who fell during the Earthquake or the Douglas couple. I feel like with a baby, rare food, and nice supplies, they should’ve had a hard time defending themselves. The old men hardly even got defensive when Lauren motioned to help them up. It’s starting to make this book seem somewhat cliche: I feel like in real life, everyone in the neighborhood would have died, and if Lauren tried to let anyone join their group, they probably would have been back...
Read more

Chapter 24-End

  At the end of the book, there was a very slight plot twist: all of Bankole’s family members were dead, and all infrastructure was burnt. I was expecting Bankole to grieve a lot, but I guess he didn’t talk to them or see them much, and also the main characters in this book are too tough to grieve. It seemed like most of the characters generally didn’t care and wanted to keep going North, but it seemed like some were somewhat appreciative of the legally owned land. The main event in the book seemed like the gunfight. I feel like it was the first real conflict that they have had, because a semi-main character died and it showed that people in the group were trustworthy. There was one thing that irritated me during the gunfight: the fact that Lauren thinks she’s the most capable shooter. Yes, she has had the most experience, but she gets incapacitated every time she hits someone, and I can’t imagine it’s that hard to shoot a gun, so she should just give it to someone that isn’t a sha...
Read more