Summary
Holston, the sheriff of a community living in an underground silo, climbs a staircase to the cafeteria, planning to be executed. There, he views a blurry screen depicting the post-apocalyptic wasteland outside the underground bunker he calls home. Holston feels emotionally empty, as his wife, Allison, was executed three years previously for expressing a desire to go outside.
The silo is industrial and decrepit, its architecture worn down by countless generations. Despite its decrepit appearance, the silo is technologically advanced, recycling and rationing resources to support a large population indefinitely. Holston reflects on his childhood in the silo, which he initially viewed as "a vast universe, a wide expanse one could never fully explore." Now, after Allison's death, he views his home as a prison he intends to escape.
In the cafeteria, Holston notices children laughing and playing, which forces him to recall how he and Allison did not create a family, which was their dream as a couple. According to the silo's rules, couples are only permitted to conceive a child if they win a "lottery" and get pregnant within the following year. Because Holston and Allison were unable to conceive in that time frame, they lost their chance.
Holston enters a prison cell, one wall of which is devoted to the same depressing view as the cafeteria screen. He orders his second in command, Deputy Marnes, to "get the mayor." When Marnes, confused, asks why Holston is in the cell, he replies that he wants to "go outside."
Mayor Jahns, leader of the silo, visits Holston's cell. She is an older woman, worn down by the emotional toll of her job. Mayor Jahns and Holston discuss "the cleaning," a form of capital punishment where condemned criminals are sent to the earth's toxic surface to clean the cameras that capture the silo's single view of the outside world.
During her term as mayor, Jahns, unquestioningly loyal to rules and traditions, sentenced more people to "the cleaning" than any of her predecessors, though she claims to take "no pleasure in it." Holston accuses Jahns of being "the first to watch a clear sunset tomorrow night," meaning she will quickly forget her guilt over his death once the view is restored.
Jahns explains that the silo's citizens are anxious Holston won't complete the cleaning simply because he is not protesting his execution. As Holston reveals, all other criminals, except Allison, attempt to change their fate and threaten to ignore the silo's orders. As sheriff, Holston himself sentenced many people to "cleaning" and is familiar with how the condemned typically behave.
Over the three years following Allison's death, Holston agonized over the "why," unable to understand why people receiving the death penalty performed a service for those executing them. He recognizes that this question compelled him to commit a crime to be sentenced.
Analysis
The text uses industrial imagery and mechanical terms, such as "walls of concrete and rebar," "old boots ringing out on metal treads," and "tangles of pipes" to evoke a dismal, oppressive atmosphere. Even the screen's image of the outside world is depressing and colorless, portraying a blurred, stagnant, "tan hill" with ruined remnants of human civilizations. This grim tone helps the reader sympathize with Holston and Allison's desire to leave and contextualize the cruelty of "the cleaning" in a post-apocalyptic, survivalist setting. This imagery also introduces the theme of technology and nature, contrasting the silo's high-tech yet dismal interior with the residents' collective desire to experience nature and suggesting that human technology destroyed the natural world.
The early sections of "Wool" introduce the theme of legalism by explaining the silo's strict rules and the citizens' unthinking acceptance of them. For example, the population is tightly controlled by a "lottery" system, where selected couples are allowed a year to try and conceive. Allison and Holston, unable to conceive within the year, lose their chance to create a family. Though worn down by her position, Mayor Jahns consistently enforces the rules without questioning their validity or approaching cases with compassion. She argues that "the law is the law" and that, as mayor, she is compelled to uphold traditions whether or not she understands them. This attitude results in dozens of lives lost to the cleaning.
"The screen" is a prominent image throughout the text that symbolizes the themes of distorted reality and the lure of the beyond. "The screen" is a computerized projection that supposedly depicts the earth's surface. Though the image is depressing and blurred with grime, the citizens flock to it, desperate for information about the outside world. The screen collects dirt and loses pixels, creating a sense of tension as the community knows someone will be sacrificed to clean it soon. Additionally, Allison suspects the screen is meant to deter the citizens of the silo from wanting to go outside after she discovers overwritten files about the uprisings and the software used to create false images.
In his cell, Holston notes the "stuck pixels" that break up the screen's image. Though Holston once considered these pixels an omen that the screen would break, causing upheaval and societal collapse, he now looks at the pixels with hope and interest. Ironically, to Holston, the portions of the screen that convey no visual information are the most compelling parts, as the dead pixels suggest that the screen could be an inaccurate recreation of reality. Holston views the pixels as a "square window to some brighter place" that "seemed to beckon toward some better reality."
In the initial chapters, the text explores the theme of control by exploring the community's deadly interdependence through Holston's conversation with Mayor Jahns. Holston accepts execution but is tormented trying to understand why the condemned criminals still go through with cleaning the camera lens. Mayor Jahns and Holston both agree that it makes more logical sense for prisoners to get revenge by refusing to "clean up for the people whose rules had killed" them; therefore, the criminals need "some reason" to undertake a task that benefits their executioners. At this point in the text, Holston considers that the silo's interdependence compels criminals to perform the cleaning out of the habit of obedience, and because they understand the screen's innate value.
