The Compound by S.A. Bodeen

Bodeen, S.A. (2008). The compound. New York: Feiwel & Friends.

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-57860-2

Plot Summary

Fifteen-year-old Eli and his family have been living underground for six years in a sprawling, luxurious shelter built by his brilliant billionaire father, Rex Yanakis, to keep them safe. Rex, Eli, his mother, and his two sisters are the lone survivors of a nuclear war, or so they believe. Rex had the foresight to build the compound years earlier, and it is able to keep his family alive for fifteen years; that is how long they must wait for it to be safe to emerge. Unfortunately, it seems his grandmother and twin brother, Eddy, didn’t make it to safety. Their lives are routine and dull, and after six years of this carefully planned existence, Eli begins to make discoveries that cause doubt and make Eli wonder and suspect his father’s sanity. Furthermore, Eli learns that his twin still lives. Questioning the safety of the compound and his father’s bizarre experiments, and with the help of who he hopes is Eddy, Eli tries to save his family from Rex and the compound.

Critical Evaluation

Before the novel begins, before even the Prologue, we read perhaps the most quoted stanza of all of T.S. Eliot’s poetry, the final stanza of “The Hollow Men:”

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Without analyzing “The Hollow Men,” and assuming these lines allude to war and the H-bomb, the mood is set to dismal, cheerless, and unhopeful. They are underground, after all. In fact, while Eli, the narrator whose point of view becomes ours (Eli, Eliot?...just thinking…) says “T.S. Eliot was wrong. My world ended with a bang the minute we entered the Compound and that silver door closed behind us,” we continue reading expecting the eventual whimper. And it does not take long. The stage is set for a character obsessed with nuclear war, Rex, and the experiment his compound houses.

The allusions throughout the novel create a very real world. Eli and Eddy were born on July 16, which is the anniversary of the first successful nuclear bomb test in New Mexico, 1945. Rex has made sure his wife has enough Tully’s coffee to last fifteen years. Eli chooses a DVD, The Matrix, to watch from his father’s extensive catalogue. As Eli drinks his powdered milk, he imagines, “it is an icy gallon jug of Land O’ Lakes 2 percent” (92). Details such as these help create believable characters and situations and enable us to connect with them. Furthermore, the extensive descriptions of the compound itself emerge us within this world, just as Eli and his family are. The plot is full of twists and surprises as we, through Eli’s eyes and narration, learn more about the compound, Rex, and what exactly he is doing there.

Rex’s experiment is a mad scientist attempt to prove his point: “People will do anything to survive” (89). This theme becomes even more apparent by Eli’s actions. His escape is a way to survive. Readers might ask these questions: what things in life make a person truly happy, what does it mean to survive, and how far are you willing to go to survive?

 

Reader’s Annotation

 

Eli and his family have been living in a luxurious underground compound for six years and have nine more to go before it is safe enough to breathe air above ground again; their father has made sure they have everything they want. When Eli begins to question his father’s motives, he begins to want the only thing his father is determined not to give him: escape.

 

Author Information

 

Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen (S.A. Bodeen), born in 1965, was raised on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, and even though she always enjoyed writing, it was not until her children were born that she decided to take up writing as a career. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin at River Falls, she joined the Peace Corps and moved to Tanzania as a volunteer. Her experience in Africa was the inspiration for her first book, Elizabeti’s School, a picture book.

 

After her time as a Peace Corps volunteer, she became a teacher and has taught junior and senior high school. She has lived in seven states and on a remote Pacific island. Bodeen enjoys spending time with teachers and students when she visits schools for speaking engagements. She currently lives in Oregon, and in her biographies, she states she is a big fan of cheese. Oregon is a great place for cheese.

 

S.A. Bodeen has won many awards for her children’s books, Elizabeti’s Doll (1998), Mama Elizabeti (2000), Elizabeti’s School (2002), and Babu’s Song (2003).

 

Her website can be found here:

http://www.rockforadoll.com/index.html

 

S.A. Bodeen keeps a blog:

http://latteya.livejournal.com/

 

For more information and lists of awards, please visit:

http://www.answers.com/topic/stephanie-stuve-bodeen

 

Genre

Young Adult Fiction

Science fiction

Post-apocalyptic

Suspense; psychological thriller

Survival

Father-son conflict

Curriculum Ties

Significance of "The Hollow Men" poem

Book Talking Ideas

Nuclear war, bomb shelters, World War II, scientific experimentation

Reading Level/ Interest Age

Appropriate for ages 14 and up. The protagonist is 15.

Challenge Issues

N/A

Why did I include this title?

At about the same time that I did the Hunger Games project for LIBR 265 (If you liked The Hunger Games, then you’ll love these books…) an eighth grade student in my 7^th period had this book on her desk. I recognized its cover as one I was looking for to be part of my Hunger Games project, and I couldn’t find it in any of the libraries. And there it was on her desk! I asked her if I could borrow it and she happily handed it to me, saying it was a really good book. She was right. Thank you, Emily!