Z For Zachariah Literary Elements

Science Fiction

During the Cold War, most likely shortly after a devastating war has killed almost the entire population

The narrator is Ann, a teenager living by herself in what seems to be a valley untainted by the radioactive weapons and broader conflict of a great war that has wiped out most of the population. She tells the story from the first-person perspective through a compilation of diary entries that begin a year after the protagonist's family has disappeared, though she recounts her past in the diary.

The tone and mood are complicated and fluctuate throughout the story. The tone oscillates between happy, uncertain, and terrified. Ann is at many points quite happy, particularly when Mr. Loomis begins to feel better, when she farms, when she visits the church, and when she picks flowers. These activities take her mind off of the difficult reality she lives in. On the other hand, she is quite terrified at many points in the story, primarily because of Mr. Loomis. Mr. Loomis, after recovering from his sickness, begins to make Ann feel quite uncomfortable: he talks condescendingly to her, orders her around, and even forcibly grabs her hand. His hostility climaxes when he attempts to rape Ann, and later when he attempts to shoot her. Ann's ambivalence arises from these complex interactions with Mr. Loomis. She feels as if Mr. Loomis is someone that she can talk to and interact with because she has not seen a human being in so long, but she also feels at other points regret that he ever came to the valley.

The mooc is quite similar: there is a sense of sorrow for Ann, particularly because she does a great deal of work to help Mr. Loomis feel better and shows enormous generosity and kindness towards him. The reader also experiences anger towards Mr. Loomis - someone who Ann has helped recover from a life-threatening disease (which he contracted due to his own carelessness) but who completely violates her sense of self, her sense of security, her sense of belonging , and her general self-esteem.

Protagonist: Ann | Protagonist: Mr. Loomis

After healing Mr. Loomis back to health, Ann is faced with his newfound (or more likely revivified) sense of hostility. Whereas Ann wants to live in peace with Mr. Loomis (at one point, even expressing a desire to marry him), Mr. Loomis wants to control Ann (and at one point, attempts to rape her).

There are effectively 2 climaxes:

1. When Mr. Loomis attempts to rape Ann, Ann manages to hit with him hard enough to run out and away from her house. This indicates an official break in the relationship between the two, and the pinnacle of Mr. Loomis' domestic hostility towards Ann. She makes many attempts at comforting herself after Mr. Loomis begins to become more possessive, rude, disrespectful, and aggressive. However the violent and physical confrontation the two have - particularly at a point in time and space when Ann is quite vulnerable (the dead of night when Ann is sleeping in her room) - reveals how ruthless Mr. Loomis has become, despite Ann having resuscitated him back from (what seemed like) the dead.

2. After Ann tricks Mr. Loomis by stealing his safe suit and confronts him, he demands the return of his suit. Ann does not return it, and instead tells him that she is leaving the valley, and walks away. That Mr. Loomis does not shoot Ann as she walks away is significant as he comes to realize that he has nothing to gain from it. After putting Ann through so much pain, inconvenience, and horror, letting her walk away leaves the possibility that she might actually be successful in finding life elsewhere. In fact, Ann leaving to look for life elsewhere may become a net benefit to Mr. Loomis: if she stays then he must share the valley with her. If she leaves, then he will get the valley to himself. If she leaves and is successful, then there is a chance that she will bring people back to the valley, and there is some hope of establishing a colony.

Mr. Loomis' increasingly difficult behavior alludes to the challenges that Ann eventually faces. But that Mr. Loomis poses many problems also points to the possibility that Ann will overcome them, which she does.

Mr. Loomis' use of Faro to locate Ann also points to the inevitable: that her hiding spot in the cave will be found. It forces Ann to ask herself what she will do afterwards. Eventually Mr. Loomis finds it and destroys all of her resources and food, and this is what pushes Ann to formulate an exit plan from the valley. She can no longer tolerate the danger that Mr. Loomis poses and the mayhem his erratic behavior causes.

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O'Brien gives a very vivid account of the valley, cave, woods, church, pond, and different roads in particular. The detailed description of space is incredibly important to the beginning and the end of the stories: Ann is hiding from Mr. Loomis at both points, but for different reasons. The strong imagery evoked is actually quite necessary in order to give the reader a good idea of Ann's vantage points: where she builds her fires so that she cannot be detected at night, and the location of the pond and church in relation to her path to the cave. In fact, one could even say that O'Brien does not give enough detail - or rather, provides it in a particular way that may seem inadequate to understand what is going on. At some points, the dizzying complexity of the spatial description of the valley can leave the reader somewhat confused.

At one point in the book, Ann notes that she dreads Mr. Loomis' fever more than he does. It some ways, the author gives the impression that Mr. Loomis is quite fatalistic about his sickness. Ann nonetheless is much more hopeful, but it is precisely her hope that leaves her in a more emotionally volatile position. The paradox also comes out in the sense that Ann has had to go through great inconveniences and shift her daily routine (which to a large degree she does not mind doing, particularly because she has not seen another human in such a long time) only to have Mr. Loomis betray her.

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