46 pages • 1 hour read
Nathan HillThe Nix
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 6 Summary: “Invasive Species”
We return to 2011. Pwnage faces a dilemma: It is Tuesday, which means the World of Elfscape servers are taken off line for updating, what Pwnage terms “Patch Days.” Left to his own devices, he recalls the day his wife left nearly a year ago and how then he turned to Elfscape, becoming a game master. He has a to-do list ready for Patch Day—buy heathy food, for instance, and read a great book—but the goals are unrealistic and reflect his dependence on the game world for purpose. However, also on his list is his resolution to help his new friend (his only friend) Samuel. He uses his online savvy to track down information on Samuel’s mother. He posts the 1968 photo of Faye from the campus riots that newspaper had run after her attack on the Wyoming governor on a message board. He asks for help identifying the woman next to Faye.
At Samuel’s college, Laura Pottsdam pursues her complaint because the alternative—paying attention in classes and actually doing the work—is untenable. Now she finds herself facing a Mediation and Conflict Resolution Conference. Desperate to avoid that, she coaxes a hapless (and horny) student also in Samuel’s literature class to hack into the campus Internet system to check Samuel’s online activity in his office for anything “embarrassing. Maybe even criminal” (429). She has sex with the kid in return.
Meanwhile, Samuel meets with his estranged father, Henry, to ask about Faye. Henry, more interested in talking about the frozen food business, only cautions Samuel not to pursue his investigation. Samuel momentarily feels sorry for his father—Henry worked hard to provide a comfortable life for his wife and son only to lose both and then, on top of that, his retirement money in the global stock market collapse of 2008. Samuel’s phone goes off. Pwnage has a lead: His Internet connections have identified the woman next to Faye in the photo. Her name, Pwnage tells him, is Alice and she lives in rural northern Indiana. He has already set up a meeting. Samuel has no idea how to thank his new friend; Pwnage says he is working on a manuscript of a mystery thriller and could use Samuel’s publishing connections.
We meet Alice. She lives with her life partner in a cabin along Lake Michigan. She has not lost her crusading zeal: She works to eradicate invasive mustard plants from the dunes, a menace as they have to be cut out by the roots. She happened to see Pwnage’s post and responded. When Samuel arrives, she is leery of his poking around in her past: “Was she, like, a radical hippie or something?” Samuel asks (451). Alice claims she barely remembers Faye, but when Samuel mentions the name of the judge who will preside over Faye’s trial—the Honorable Charlie Brown—Alice instantly reacts: “Your mom is in trouble […] You have to take her away” (455). Samuel is confused, and Alice begins to share the story of the summer of 1968.
Part 6 Analysis
In returning to 2011, the narrative returns to Samuel’s investigation into his mother’s past. However, against that unfolding dramatic story, Hill positions his indictment of the generation born within the reach of the Internet, video games, and social media.
The Millennials in this narrative will be contrasted with the generation of social activists that defined the college generation of the 1960s. In the storylines of both Pwnage and Laura Pottsdam, Hill reveals a generation without purpose, reliable anchorage in real-time, or moral compass. With the gaming world unavailable to him for what seems like an unendurable eternity, Pwnage resorts to drift: He makes to-do lists he cannot do; he surfaces long enough in his reality to see his alienation, his lack of purpose, and how his game world anesthetizes him from remembering the stress and emotional pain left from his estrangement from his wife. He spends an inordinate amount of time inventorying his near-empty refrigerator and recalls a disastrous trip to a health food store during the last Patch Day, in between rushed checks to see whether Elfscape is back on line.
Laura Pottsdam, for her part, offers a disturbing case study of indifference to education and an obsession with materialism and pop culture. She casually manipulates friends, lies, and uses people for what she can get from them, mindful only of her own limited goal of getting the most for the least effort. Unlike Laura, Pwnage offers a possibility of redemption—in his down time, after all, he decides to use the reach of the web to help Samuel track down information about Faye. His help proves critical—and later Hill will reward Pwnage with what he denies Laura, the opportunity to reclaim his identity and return to a healthy engagement with the real-time world.
In this section, Hill juxtaposes these lost and drifting Millennials against the strong figure of Alice, who decades after her involvement with the underground student movement that sought to bring real and radical change to American society, still maintains her commitment to making better the world around her. She diligently maintains vigilance over the endangered dunes of Lake Michigan, mindful of the steady impact of climate change, the job all the more heroic, we understand, because it is so futile. Unlike Pwnage and Laura, Alice embraces “love and generosity and empathy, and, yes, even peace and justice” (452). We are told, “the small true part of [Alice] was that she wanted something that deserved her faith and devotion” (452). She has ended her long charade to embrace her identity as a lesbian and has found a stable and loving relationship; she has rejected “guilt and regret” (454), the first character in the novel thus far to do so.
