76 pages • 2 hours read
Gabrielle ZevinElsewhere
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “The Nile”
Prologue Summary: “In the End”
Liz’s pet pug, Lucy, mourns her owner’s recent death, wondering what the purpose of her short life was. She begins to dig at the floor in Liz’s room in an attempt to console herself, only to be picked up by Liz’s younger brother, Alvy. Alvy reassures her that the family will continue to care for her and talks about his hope that Liz is now in heaven: “Likely story, Lucy thinks. She doesn’t believe in the happy hunting ground or the rainbow bridge” (4).
At the dog park the next day, Lucy sits disconsolately on a bench. A few of the other dogs ask her what’s wrong, but they don’t understand why Lucy is so depressed, noting that 15 years is a long life from a dog’s perspective. Left alone, Lucy thinks, “In the end, the end of a life only matters to friends, family, and other folks you used to know […] For everyone else, it’s just another end” (6).
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “At Sea”
Liz wakes up in a bunk bed in a strange room. She sits up, jostling the bed above her, and sees that it’s occupied by a girl roughly her own age. Liz asks her where they are, and the girl—gesturing out the porthole—says they must be on a boat. When Liz looks out the window, she sees her family standing on a boardwalk that is disappearing into the distance.
Liz gets up and begins searching the room, fully waking her bunkmate, who introduces herself as Thandi and asks if Liz is a skinhead. Confused, Liz looks at herself in the mirror and sees she’s essentially bald; vaguely, she begins to recall someone shaving her head while she lay immobile on a bed.
Although Liz has by this point concluded that she’s dreaming, she begins looking for a hat. Thandi reassures her that she’s “got weird things, too” (12), lifting up her braids to reveal a wound at the back of her head; she can’t remember how she got it, but says that it seems to be healing. Although both girls are wearing nightclothes, they decide to go exploring.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Curtis Jest”
Liz and Thandi emerge into a hallway and follow a sign directing passengers of the SS Nile to a dining room. Nearly all the other passengers are elderly, and three of them approach to girls and ask what happened to them. Liz is confused, but Thandi says she’s just remembered that she was shot in the head: “[I]t’s nothing special. Happens pretty regularly where I’m from” (16).
As the girls have breakfast, a young man with blue hair and a British accent approaches them. Realizing that he’s Curtis Jest, the lead singer of her favorite band, Liz gushes, “This is the coolest dream ever” (18). However, when she asks when Curtis’s next album will come out, he says that it never will, rolling up his sleeve to reveal extensive track marks.
Feeling sick, Liz runs out onto the deck and tries to wake herself up from the nightmare she believes herself to be having. Thinking back to how the dream started, she recalls riding her bike to the mall to meet her friend Zooey, being hit by a cab, and flying through the air. Liz wonders what happens to someone who dreams their own death.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “In Memory of Elizabeth Marie Hall”
Days pass, but Liz doesn’t wake up. One night while Thandi is talking about missing her boyfriend Slim, Liz goes to the mirror to gauge her own attractiveness, and for the first time notices a line of stitches over her left ear.
Explaining that she thinks she might have dreamed about a traffic accident, Liz presses Thandi for details on being shot. Thandi says she remembers Slim yelling and then woke up on board the boat; she’s certain, however, that she isn’t dreaming. When Liz insists that only a dream could explain Curtis Jest’s presence, Thandi delicately alludes to the track marks on his arm.
As Liz grows angry and Thandi grows frustrated, a message arrives: it instructs Liz to go to the observation deck. Liz does so, locating her assigned pair of binoculars and inserting the coin she’s been provided with (an “eternim”). When she looks through the binoculars, Liz sees a church crowded with her family and classmates. As she watches, her school principal addresses the crowd, talking about the importance of traffic safety. Now realizing that she’s watching her own funeral, Liz forces herself to look inside the open casket.
As Liz is returning to her cabin, she comes across Curtis looking through his own pair of binoculars. He asks how her funeral was, and he invites her to watch his own, which features performances by his bandmates and a juggling bear.
The two continue to chat, and Liz begins crying. When Curtis tries to console her, Liz retorts that he “chose this” (34). Curtis calmly explains that that isn’t true, but he accepts Liz’s apology. Liz then asks whether the boat itself is the entirety of the afterlife. Curtis says he doesn’t think so, noting that he can see a shoreline in the distance.
Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 3 Analysis
Elsewhere opens with several questions about mortality; as Lucy surveys the objects left behind in Liz’s bedroom, she wonders, “In the end, what does it all mean anyway? And what does it matter? Is a person just a pile of junk?” (4). This question of what gives life meaning in the face of death is both important and complex, and it is the subject of a great deal of philosophical, religious, and scientific debate. It’s also a topic that surfaces frequently in literature, particularly in stories set during late childhood or adolescence—a period of time when a person is not only beginning to think more deeply about their place in the world, but may also be having their first experience of real loss (of a grandparent, a childhood pet, etc.).
In its depiction of a teenager struggling to make sense of life’s transience, Elsewhere is thus a fairly typical example of the coming-of-age genre; what distinguishes it is the fact that the death in question is the protagonist’s own and has occurred before the novel begins. That being the case, it might initially seem as though the questions Lucy poses in the Prologue are resolved by the very next chapter; some sort of afterlife clearly exists in Elsewhere, so Liz is not left wondering about the ultimate fate of her loved ones in the same way someone on Earth might. Nevertheless, Liz’s experiences are still very much those of someone grappling with loss for the first time. As she herself observes, the fact that she predeceases everyone she knows means that her experience of being dead is essentially the same experience as outliving all her friends and family. As the novel progresses and the nature of existence in Elsewhere becomes clearer, these parallels to life (and death) on Earth become even clearer.
The fact that Elsewhere details Liz’s experiences of the afterlife also allows Zevin to explore the way humans cope with death and with loss of all kinds. Liz may “survive” her death, but nothing else from her life does. Most notably, Liz’s young age at the time of her death means that she must let go of her onetime hopes for the future and radically reconsider what she wants from life. Liz quite naturally doesn’t want to have to do any of this, which explains much of her behavior throughout Part 1. Although Liz will later claim she acted “like a real dunce” while aboard the Nile (52) the problem isn’t so much that she’s slow to understand her situation as that she actively (if subconsciously) resists admitting it. Here, for instance, is how Liz responds when Thandi tries to draw Liz’s attention to Curtis’s drug use, explaining that her cousin died of an overdose: “I don’t want to know about that. Curtis Jest is nothing like your cousin Shelly from Baltimore. Nothing at all!” (27). Accepting change as a normal part of human existence is something Liz will continue to struggle with after arriving in Elsewhere.
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