Vicious

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2013

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Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

Victor and Sydney, two ExtraOrdinary individuals, are at Merit Cemetery. The two met only a few days before, right after Victor broke out of jail and Sydney was shot by Eli, Victor’s former friend. Now partners against Eli, Sydney, age 12, looks up to Victor, and Victor feels protective of Sydney. Victor uses his EO ability to search the area for other living people. When he finds none, he and Sydney dig up an unidentified grave so Sydney can bring the corpse back to life. Sydney worries that she will accidentally resurrect all the bodies in the cemetery. Victor reassures her only the one they exhume will respond, and they continue to dig.

Chapter 2 Summary

Chapter 2 takes place 10 years earlier. Victor is a pre-med student at Lockland University. His roommate and only friend, Eliot Cardale (Eli) is also a pre-med major, and both boys are at the top of their class. Victor takes great pleasure in blotting out passages of the self-help books his parents authored so the remaining words advise the reader to give up. To Victor, the destruction is “a kind of meditation” (18).

Victor and Eli declare topics for their senior theses. Victor chooses adrenaline—what causes it and its effects on the body. Eli picks EOs (ExtraOrdinaries), intending to make an argument “for the theoretical feasibility of the existence of Extraordinary people” (22-23). After a tense moment, the professor allows the topic. After class, Victor interrogates Eli about his choice, but a call from Eli’s girlfriend interrupts the conversation.

Chapter 3 Summary

In the present, Sydney and Victor continue to dig up the body at Merit Cemetery. Sydney is anxious, but Victor insists that a message needs to be sent. Sydney returns to digging, reveling in how she feels almost alive again. Meanwhile, Victor thinks about the message he will send—that he’s coming for Eli “just as he’d promised he would” (26).

Chapter 4 Summary

In the past, Victor and Eli meet Eli’s girlfriend, Angie Knight, at the cafeteria. Victor thinks about how he lost Angie to Eli when he introduced them. Victor now dislikes Angie because Eli is more restrained when she’s around. When Angie leaves for class, Victor asks Eli about his thesis topic again. Eli asks if Victor believes in EOs. When Victor gets caught up in the religious implications of belief, Eli asks if “part of [Victor] wants to believe in [EOs]” (31). Victor jabs that Eli wants to believe superheroes are real. Eli gets mad and storms away.

Later in their dorm, Victor finds Eli with a stack of books and print-outs of stories about people who may have exhibited ExtraOrdinary abilities. Eli explains that the real-world theories about EOs match those found in comic books: EOs are either born with their abilities or gain them. Eli means to discover which theory is true. While the theory interests Victor, he is more fascinated by Eli’s barely restrained emotion. Eli looks as if he “found God and wanted to keep it a secret but couldn’t” (33).

Chapters 1-4 Analysis

The opening chapters introduce some of the main players of the novel (Victor, Eli, and Sydney) and set up the back-and-forth between the two primary time periods of the novel. Schwab begins the novel in media res, a literary technique in which the author starts the story in the middle of the action, rather than at the chronological beginning of the plot. Through the non-linear timeline, Schwab intentionally withholds information from the reader, such as the exact details of Victor and Sydney’s powers and whose grave they dig up. While the specifics are kept from the reader, Schwab drops enough hints to their backstories to garner curiosity but not enough that the reader can piece together what happened. The withholding of information coupled with the timestamps at the beginning of each chapter create suspense both as to what is happening at any given moment in the story and what context may be revealed from the past timeline to inform the unfolding events of the present.

The chapters set 10 years ago while Victor and Eli are in college sets the novel up to subvert superhero fiction tropes. Vicious nods to comic book superheroes with discussions of origin stories and extraordinary abilities. Though Eli never gives a reason for wanting to study EOs, his theoretical curiosity prior to becoming an EO matches that of a college student who enjoys reading about superheroes, suggesting his wonder could have stemmed from reading comic books. In the chapters that follow, however, Vicious departs from the standard superhero narrative to explore how the lines between Good and Evil (hero and villain) are not as clearly drawn as they are in comic books.

The juxtaposition of the theoretical curiosity from 10 years ago and the gritty reality of the story’s present adds to the subversion of superhero tropes. Rather than glorified heroes or villains hunkering in a secret lair, Victor and Sydney dig up a grave in the middle of the night. Their EO abilities have not led to a traditional comic book role as savior or supervillain, which supports the idea that Good and Evil are more complicated concepts.