80 pages • 2 hours read
Hugh HoweyWool
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapters 1-4
Part 1, Chapters 5-7
Part 2, Chapters 1-5
Part 2, Chapters 6-9
Part 3, Chapters 1-5
Part 3, Chapters 6-10
Part 3, Chapters 11-13
Part 4, Chapters 0-5
Part 4, Chapters 6-10
Part 4, Chapters 11-15
Part 4, Chapters 16-21
Part 5, Chapters 1-5
Part 5, Chapters 6-10
Part 5, Chapters 11-15
Part 5, Chapters 16-20
Part 5, Chapters 21-25
Part 5, Chapters 26-30
Epilogue
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Part 5, Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 5: "The Stranded"
Part 5, Chapter 1 Summary
Many of the people from Mechanical and Supply are badly wounded. Their leaders Knox and McClain are dead. They retreat downward, pursued by relentless gunfire from IT. Marck notes that IT’s guns are much better than theirs, capable of firing many shots at once, while Mechanical’s only fire one at a time.
Marck, who has been shot in the arm, is desperate to find his wife, Shirly, but the doors to the farm are locked. Further down, he meets three members of Supply, one of whom is gravely wounded with a chair leg sticking out of his abdomen. The wounded man is given a bomb and left behind. Marck and the others continue to run downward. A blast above them shakes the stairwell as the bomb goes off. The silo continues “its spiral into dark madness” (332).
Part 5, Chapter 2 Summary
Hours later, Marck and the others rest in Supply. The explosion on the stairway has impeded IT’s pursuit, but no one knows for how long. Supply is unsettled by McLain’s death. Tensions run high between Mechanical and Supply. Supply makes Mechanical to go back to their own level to treat their wounded.
Marck reunites with Shirly, who seems more scared than he has ever seen her before. They leave Supply and continue downward. On the top Mechanical floor, they find a commotion outside the entrance, which is being sealed up with steel plates. People are clamoring to get inside through a small hole while they are being shot at from above by Security. Marck runs back up the stairs and starts shooting upward to give them a chance to get through the hole. He kills three men. As he runs back downward, he is shot and killed. Shirly, screaming, is pulled into the hole behind the barrier into Mechanical.
Part 5, Chapter 3 Summary
Three weeks later, Walker cowers in his room, listening to the now familiar sounds of gunfire coming from the entrance to Mechanical. Jenkins, who has filled Knox’s role, bursts into the room and demands that Walker fix their radio. Harper, a worker from the refinery who has replaced the dead Pieter, watches from the doorway. Walker tells Jenkins that he believes he has fixed the radio but that nothing is coming through. Jenkins worries that there is a spy among them, saying “shit’s been fallin’ apart” (343).
Jenkins and Harper leave. Alone in his room, Walker thinks that he is solely responsible for starting the uprising by secretly helping to engineer a better cleaning suit for Juliette. Filled with regret, he contemplates suicide.
Part 5, Chapter 5 Summary
Lukas is reading about the American Civil War in the secret den when Bernard comes, bringing him a meal of pork ribs. The silo is on rations, but Bernard tells Lukas that this pig was caught in some crossfire at the bazaar and that most of the meat was donated to the spouses of the eight people from IT who have died.
Bernard asks Lukas if he has been studying the Order, and Lukas lies that he has. Bernard tells him that after the resistance is over, he will be full-time mayor and Lukas can run IT. They are startled by a call on the server. Bernard is agitated by the “constant ringing” (354) and asks Lukas to create an LED panel that shows a red light if it is Silo 17 calling. Lukas mentally compares Bernard to his angry, alcoholic father. Bernard tells him that he has arranged a visit from his mother and reminds him never to answer calls from the server. Bernard leaves, locking Lukas in the server room.
As Lukas goes to the open server and contacts Juliette in Silo 17, it becomes clear he has been secretly talking with her for a while.
Part 5, Chapters 1-5 Analysis
Walker’s internal conflict reflects an overarching theme of the novel, the conflict between the wellbeing of the individual and the whole. Walker regrets his role in starting the rebellion, which has already led to many deaths. Replacing the parts of the cleaning suit, however, saved Juliette’s life. While Walker is torn, Bernard has made his decision—he will kill individuals without remorse in order to save the entire silo from “dying” like Silo 17 has done. This theme of “the greater good” also appears in these sections in the wounded Supply worker’s suicide bombing of the stairs and in Marck’s self-sacrifice.
Walker’s internal monologue also expresses the theme of humans inevitably reenacting tragic events:
Screw the silo, the people above and the machines below, just fight over this worthless patch of ground, pile the bodies on either side until one gives, do it because it was yesterday’s cause, and because nobody wanted to remember any further back then yesterday (342).
Walker, as an older character, sees the pointlessness of the violence, but he is also shy and a poor communicator. Appropriately, he is the one tasked with figuring out the problem of communicating via the radio. While Walker is surrounded by his comrades in Mechanical but barely able to speak, Juliette, in a juxtaposition, yearns to communicate with others but finds herself in a “dead” silo. As other characters have done, she worries about going insane.
Even though Supply and Mechanical went into the battle together enthusiastically, a rift develops after their loss. Supply blames Mechanical and casts them out, sending them back to the bottom of the silo’s hierarchy again.
At the beginning of Part 5, Lukas’s allegiances are still unclear. His casual use of the term “greasers” (355) for the mechanics and luxurious dinner of pork ribs during a time of rations highlight his privileged connection to IT. He seems to be a complacent resident of the upper-mids who regards Juliette’s class of mechanics with disdain. But Lukas is defiant, secretly talking to Juliette from the forbidden server. Bernard’s direction to Lukas never to answer the calls to the server seems ironic by the end of Chapter 5. Lukas and Juliette’s connection shows the ability of love to bridge different circumstances.
