Essay Questions

What is the role of women as portrayed in the book, “Malorie”?

The book, ‘Malorie’ by Josh Malerman portrays women in various ways. The women who are main characters in the book are Malorie, the mother of two teenagers, Olympia and Athena Hantz. These women are of different ages and they hold various positions in the book. Malorie is portrayed as a protective parent who is ready to sacrifice anything to protect the well-being of her children. She and Tom and Olympia fled the Jane Tucker School for the Blind. This is because the creatures had come there and they had caused people such as Annette to go mad and go on a killing spree. Malorie and her children established a home at Camp Yadin in Michigan where they were safe from Gary. Malorie had strict rules to protect the children from the creatures. These rules included the wearing of hoods and blindfolds.

Olympia plays the role of the voice of reason. She is sixteen years old. She is an avid reader who has read over one thousand books in the library at Camp Yadin. Olympia is immune to the madness that is caused by the creatures. She, therefore, leads her mother and her brother Tom, through the world as they are blindfolded.

Athena Hantz plays the role of a leader of the community. She leads the common mutiny at the Indian River which is very cavalier. The community wants to gather a lot of information on the creatures. The way that they do this is by carrying out human experiments to study how the process of going mad in people once they saw the creatures.

What are the differences between the old world and the new world?

The setting of the book, ‘Malorie’ is in a dystopian America where creatures that cause madness have come into the world. The old world is the world before the creatures. The new world on the other hand is the world where the communities were living with the creatures.

The old world is very much like the world today. The students went to school in school buses, there were cars on the road, and there was a train that was transporting people to the various destinations that they were going to. There was no danger to the creatures.

The new world set in when the creatures came to the world. Those that saw these creatures were engulfed in madness where they went on a killing spree. They had to wear blindfolds to avoid seeing these creatures. There was so much loss of life because people killed each other. There was no means of transportation apart from the blind train and walking. It was a destroyed world where people did not do anything else apart from striving to survive.

How would you explore the theme of work in the book, ‘Malorie’ by Josh Malerman?

In the dystopian world in the book, ‘Malorie’, human beings are forced to live with creatures that cause madness in people. Even in this world, people perform crucial roles to ensure their survival. The work that they do ensures that society continues to thrive despite the invasion by the creatures. Some of the characters whose work is highlighted are the census man and Dean Watts, the owner and driver of the blind train.

The census man takes on the dangerous work of counting the people who had survived the creatures. He had gathered a lot of stories from the different communities that he had visited. The stories from the Indian River were of progressiveness and experimentation whereas those of Michigan were of conservativeness.

Dean Watts is the driver of the blind train. He had been running it in the old world. The decision to reconstruct it and have it running in the new world was because his two children had died. The train transported people from one place to another. It also transported dead bodies and food from one place to another.