65 pages • 2 hours read
S.A. BodeenThe Compound
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2008A 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-Chapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
Eli, the story’s narrator, says the world ended when his family entered the Compound. He was nine years old. His parents are there, as well as two sisters: six-year-old Terese and eleven-year-old Lexie. When they escaped to the Compound before a nuclear attack destroyed the world above ground, Eli’s father had to close the hatch before Eli’s grandmother—called Gram—could get in. Eli’s twin brother, Eddy, had gone with Gram and failed to enter the Compound.
Eli’s father is Rex Yanakakis, an innovative, entrepreneur billionaire. During the Prologue, Eli broods in his room, which has a red door. The ceiling comprises a pattern of bulbs that mimic the sunrise, sunset, and constellations. Eli blames himself for Eddy not being there. He feels that “all was not right in our new world” (8).
Chapter 1 Summary
Eli exercises constantly, running on the treadmill in the Compound’s gym and lifting weights. During the time in the Compound he has grown as big as Rex. His sister Terese, whom he refers to as Little Miss Perfect, speaks French and plays the oboe.
On a basketball court in the Compound, she tells Eli that she might hate their father, and she believes there are still people alive outside the Compound. Eli doesn’t believe her, but it is irrelevant; they are not allowed to question Rex. Gram was the only one who could ever argue with him. Eli worries that Rex goes for days without sleeping.
During the first four years in the Compound, Eli didn’t look at Terese because she reminded him of Eddy. The family adores her in the same way they adored Eddy, and she is as kind as Eddy was.
Eli remembers vacationing in Hawaii. He had nearly fallen off a cliff while playing near a waterfall, but Eddy had saved him.
Eli’s father comes into the gym and watches Eli shoot free throws. He says that Terese has quite an imagination. Eli is unsure of whether Rex heard their conversation.
Chapter 2 Summary
Eli’s family celebrates his fifteenth birthday. During the party and dinner, he doesn’t allow anyone to touch him. He never does. Eli’s father made them all experts on nuclear war. July 16 is Eli’s birthday, the anniversary of the nuclear explosion of the Trinity test site, and also the day they entered the Compound. This means it is also the anniversary of when Eli lost Eddy.
Eli receives a copy of the novel On the Beach, a classic story about the world in the aftermath of a nuclear war. On the inner flap, his father has inscribed the date and nothing more.
There is no birthday cake because three weeks prior, Eli’s mother showed him that the flour was going bad. Even though flour doesn’t spoil, they could see that something had been mixed into it, turning it gray. His mother said she wasn’t going to stop giving it to his father because he likes bread so much, but she said she would stop if he got sick.
Eli remembers a birthday party when Rex paid the Seattle Seahawks to come play football with the guests. Throughout the party, Eli saw that everyone liked Eddy better than him. Out of jealousy, Eli switched the tags on their presents, guaranteeing that he would get better gifts, since people were more generous with Eddy. A clown saw him doing it and said, “You’re obviously the evil twin” (29).
Eddy didn’t notice and was happy for Eli when he got such good presents. Their father gave them state of the art laptops, prototypes not yet available to the public.
Chapter 3 Summary
What was meant to be Eddy’s room in the Compound is across from Eli’s, behind a blue door. Eli goes in for the first time. There is no dust in his room, which surprises him. Eli finds Eddy’s laptop, which they received on their birthday. His mom comes in and says she cleans the room occasionally. She lets him keep the laptop, but tells him not to tell his father.
He looks in Terese’s room next. It is dusty and he realizes that she has moved out, even though he doesn’t know where she is sleeping. As he moves down the hall, he skips a room with a yellow door, not wanting “to acknowledge, let alone set eyes inside, that room. Knowing what was inside was bad enough” (41).
Eli goes to the library and reads.
Chapter 4 Summary
Eli investigates the infirmary and beauty salon. He sees Lexie practicing ballet in the dance studio. Lexie is adopted, which is why she will never go against their father.
While he listens to his mother playing the cello, he remembers Gram. After her husband died, she remarried someone abusive. Eli knows that they all inherited their mothers looks, although he isn’t sure about “the ones in the yellow room” (50).
He visits the chapel. Their father makes them go to church on Sundays in the Compound, but their father had quit going one day without explanation. There is a Bible on the pulpit. Eli finds a piece of paper in it. It is a list his father made, with the word “Tell Phil” (52) written at the top. Phil is his father’s accountant, and the date is only a few months earlier.
Eli’s job is to run the produce at the Compound, grown in the hydroponic garden. He calculates that by the time he is eighteen, there will not be enough bulbs to grow produce.
Chapter 5 Summary
Eli does his schoolwork. Although he is only sixteen, he is on his first year of college studies. He goes to his father’s office to ask for help with a calculus problem, then goes inside when he sees that it is empty. His father finds him in his office and is angry. Eli doesn’t understand why there is such a need for secrecy in the Compound.
Eli briefly recounts Rex’s business history. After being orphaned at age nineteen he had gone on to receive a computer science degree from MIT and start his own company. He pursued and married Eli’s mother when he was twenty-seven and his company was already a massive success.
On the night they came to the Compound, they had been on their land in Washington. They stayed in a cabin and had traveled there by RV. He remembers that Terese smuggled a kitten into the RV, which aggravated Eddy’s allergies. Gram went back to the cabin to get his medicine. Eddy went with her without anyone knowing, and then they had left them.
Eli says his mind censored the worst part of his memory: “The part where I was selfish” (62). He wishes his dad had been the kind of father who played with his kids, normal, instead of building a shelter.
Prologue-Chapter 5 Analysis
The first chapters of the book introduce the purpose of the Compound, the general makeup of the family unit, gives brief biographies of Eli’s parents, and hints at the tensions that will result in the books most climactic moments. The yellow door and Eli’s revulsion for whatever lies within the room is the biggest question.
Bodeen uses flashbacks to show the events that have led to Eli’s current emotional state. In particular, the flashbacks show that Eli has occasionally been a spiteful, jealous, insecure brother to Eddy, who was in turn generous, kind, and beloved. People often acquire a rose-colored hue in retrospect, however, and so the reader is left imagining how Eli’s conception of Eddy may change over the course of the book.
Eli struggles with guilt and shame over whatever it is that he refers to as his secret. He blames himself for Eddy’s absence in the Compound, which he equates with Eddy’s death, but the reader does not yet know why. Eli also has a tense relationship with his father. His time in the Compound have aged him beyond his sixteen years, and he navigates his relationships like an adult. His wish that they could have all died in the nuclear attack rather than only move some of the family into the Compound shows his wish to revive some of his childhood and build a more loving, more typical relationship with his father.
Secrecy is a major theme in the first five chapters. Eli questions his father’s need for secrecy in the context of being barred from Rex’s office. His mother asks him to keep the secret of the spoiled, or contaminated flour.
Terese does not believe that the nuclear attack was real, and therefore cannot trust Rex’s logic for bringing them to the Compound. The yellow door hides secrets behind it from which Eli recoils.
These secrets bring some members of the family closer to each other while isolating other members. The family is also physically close within the Compound, but emotionally distant. In Eli’s case, there is also the absence of physical contact; he imposes a distance on himself, forbidding the physical contact that could help him feel more bonded with his siblings and parents. Eli continually punishes and distracts himself with exercise and the lack of physical connection. The complex web of relationships foreshadows increasing tension as the novel moves forward.
The discovery of Eddy’s laptop overlaps with Terese’s doubts about Rex’s claims regarding the nuclear attack. As the initial chapters end, Eli has found a purpose: he intends to explore his father’s secrets, rather than to dwell on his own. The suggestion that Rex might be lying to them, or that his mother might not be as devoted to Rex as he had thought, gives Eli something new to do.
