Genre
Fiction
Setting and Context
The setting of the story is in a dystopian America.
Narrator and Point of View
The narrator is third person.
Tone and Mood
The tone of the story is sad and the mood is somber. This is because it is a story about death and destruction of the world.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonists of the story are Malorie and her family who want to survive the onslaught of the world by the creatures that drove people mad. The antagonists of the story are Gary and Athena who used people as guinea pigs to test the powers of the creatures in driving people mad.
Major Conflict
The major conflict of the story is that in the Indian River, Gary and Athena sacrificed others to get more information about the creatures. They often lied to others to get them to look at the creatures.
Climax
The climax of the story is arrived at when Gary is killed. Gary was immune to the effects of the creatures, and he used others as guinea pigs to gather more information on the creatures.
Foreshadowing
When Malorie read about Athena Hantz and how people lived freely at the Indian River, she was afraid that when her son Tom read the same passages, he would want to go and live there.
Understatement
Tom says to his mother, "You were wrong. That’s all there is to it. You were wrong.” This is an understatement because his mother, Malorie was delusional and thought that everyone wanted to kill her children.
Allusions
n/a
Imagery
The creatures are described as follows: “Others claim there’s only one creature, in all the world, and that it’s many shadows stretch across the planet like dark fingers.” The use of the simile builds imagery in their description.
Paradox
It is paradoxical that Malorie tells the teens to continue walking when they hear a creature. This is because in the past, she had warned them to stop walking when they saw one to ensure that they were safe.
Parallelism
The narrator builds a parallel between Athena Hantz and Malorie. Their perceptions about the creatures are very different. Malorie is afraid of them because she has seen the destruction that they have caused in the world. Athena embraces these creatures and claims that they are no longer harmful to the human world.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
n/a
Personification
The road where Malorie and her children were travelling has been personified in the following sentence, “She can hear the open road going in either direction.” The road has been given the human ability to speak yet it is an inanimate object.
