65 pages • 2 hours read
M. R. CareyThe Girl with All the Gifts
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Ten-year-old Melanie lives in an underground cellblock with a group of other children. The block is part of a larger base known as “Hotel Echo,” which is situated in “region 6,” 30 miles north of London. The children attend school but do little else. The outside world is forbidden to them, although Melanie listens to the grown-ups’ conversations and garners scraps of information about it: Hotel Echo is home to a “burn patrol” whose job is to clear the land of “hungries”—zombies that have ravaged the countryside. Further south is Beacon, a huge city with the sea on one side and “moats and minefields on the other three” (3). Melanie longs to see it when “the mission” is complete and the children are allowed outside.
Every day, Sergeant Parks and his staff prepare the children for class, strapping them into wheelchairs at gunpoint and wheeling them into the classroom where they learn math, spelling, and history. While trying to calculate the population of Birmingham one day, Melanie’s teacher, Mr. Whitaker, angrily tells her, “Jesus, Melanie, it’s irrelevant. It’s ancient history! There’s nothing out there anymore. Not a damn thing. The population of Birmingham is zero” (7). Classes are Monday through Friday; on Saturdays, the children remain in their cells all day, loud music playing to prevent them from talking to each other. Melanie once made up a secret language so the children could communicate over the noise, but an instructor named Miss Justineau forbids her from teaching it to the other kids for fear of reprisal from Parks. On Sundays, the children are fed live grubs—their only meal of the week—and then bathed in chemical “showers.”
Melanie’s favorite teacher is Miss Justineau, who entertains the students with music and stories, including her feminist spin on the Greek story of Pandora. Melanie’s memory of these classes helps her get through the rest of the week.
Chapter 2 Summary
One day Sergeant Parks interrupts Miss Justineau’s class, questioning her methods. He argues that she shouldn’t treat the children as “real kids,” and that too much empathy may cause her to drop her guard: “I don’t need to tell you what happens after that” (13). To illustrate his point, Parks rubs saliva on his arm and holds it in front of a student named Kenny, who salivates and tries to bite him. Soon, several children sitting near Kenny do the same, convulsing and drooling. Eventually Parks leaves, and Miss Justineau tries to calm the traumatized children.
When Miss Mailer assigns the students to write a story, Melanie ignores the vocabulary list she’s supposed to use and writes from the heart, telling a story about a little girl who saves a beautiful woman from a monster. The story is really about Melanie’s love for Miss Justineau and her desire to protect her.
Chapter 3 Summary
While discussing death one day, Miss Justineau inadvertently implies that death for the children would be different than for other people. When Melanie questions her on this, she backpedals, saying simply that the concept of death is difficult for children because they’re young. Melanie thinks she really meant something else. Melanie then asks about her parents, and Miss Justineau tells the children that all their parents are dead. The army has taken custody of the children without their parents’ consent.
Miss Justineau changes the subject—they recite the Periodic Table—but Melanie can’t forget that her parents are dead. At the end of class, Melanie asks what will happen to the children when they grow up, but Miss Justineau doesn’t answer. Melanie senses her sadness and tries to comfort her with words; Miss Justineau responds by stroking Melanie’s hair, a simple gesture that for Melanie means everything. Suddenly Parks appears, and Miss Justineau pulls back, afraid—a sharp transition that “changes the architecture of the whole world” (23). After Parks threatens her job, Justineau walks out, and the children are wheeled back to their cells.
Chapter 4 Summary
Back in her apartment, Justineau reproaches herself for falling prey to Melanie’s affection and for touching her in clear violation of the rules. She hardens her emotions, reminding herself that when these tests are over, she will leave: “She can walk out as clean as when she came in, if she just doesn’t let anything touch her” (26).
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
In the early chapters, Carey gives his readers a glimpse into a dark future—or perhaps an eerie, alternate present—in which military forces keep zombie children in cells or strapped into wheelchairs but also provide them with an education. The world outside “region 6” is thus far a mystery, and the story unfolds within the narrow confines of Melanie’s cellblock. The treatment of the children is harsh and abusive—out of necessity, Sergeant Parks would argue—but some, like Helen Justineau, cling to their humanity in the midst of this apocalypse. Dark and dangerous times can evoke the best or the worst in people, Carey suggests. Some will dehumanize anyone, even a child, in the name of security. Parks and his staff never enter a cell without guns at the ready, and perhaps their safety measures are justified. When Parks taunts Kenny with his saliva, the boy’s natural response kicks in and he turns feral, straining against his restraints to bite the sergeant’s arm. Maybe Justineau’s empathy truly is a weakness, and treating Melanie like a normal human girl with fears, doubts, and a need for affection and human contact is a mistake that could kill her. Carey doesn’t make it easy. He gives his apparent antagonist, Sergeant Parks, some validation for his abusive behavior and the empathetic teacher Miss Justineau cause to doubt her own sympathetic responses.
Through it all, readers witness this confined world primarily through the eyes of Melanie. She senses something vaguely different about herself, especially after the episode with Kenny, but in many ways she is like any other 10-year-old: bright, curious, and looking for adult validation. She is grateful for Justineau’s tenderness and humanity, seeking to live up to her teacher’s expectations and return her affection. She imagines herself as a character in a Greek myth, heroic and daring, able to protect Miss Justineau from dangers both imaginary and real. She intuitively understands that Parks is a threat to Justineau, and that not all adults are on equal footing. Parks has the power, and if he chooses to exercise it, Justineau could be in trouble. Melanie’s hero fantasies are one more part of her complex character—part scared prisoner, part inquisitive child, and part latent cannibalistic zombie—and all part of Carey’s narrative strategy to portray these children as both innocent and dangerous. With Melanie’s characterization, the novel asks profound questions about how much humanity people will trade away in the name of safety.
