40 pages • 1 hour read
Blake CrouchUpgrade
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A 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 1, Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary
Logan wakes up disoriented, and it takes him some time to realize that he has been placed in a cell made of ballistic glass. He will later learn he is being held at a remote farm. Edwin appears on the other side and informs Logan that he has been detained by the GPA on suspicion of genetic self-enhancement, which Logan asserts is ridiculous. He is given a high-tech polygraph test, which he passes, but because the agency sees Logan’s condition as potentially dangerous, they are holding him indefinitely.
He is soon visited by Dr. Romero, the scientist whom Logan reluctantly arrested for practicing genetic engineering. Dr. Romero is tasked with studying Logan’s new abilities; when Logan refuses to comply, oxygen is withheld from his cell, causing him to gasp for breath and nearly pass out. When Romero returns oxygen to the cell, he says, “It gives me no pleasure to hurt you […] but I’ve been tasked with studying what you are. What you’re becoming. You need to understand that your compliance is nonnegotiable” (88). Logan immediately complies and agrees to allow Romero to study him. Romero quickly finds that Logan’s IQ is literally off the charts. Logan learns how to read body language, and his skills of perception become highly acute. As time goes by, Logan also develops physically in incredible ways. He thinks that this might offer a potential escape, anticipating that his captors will take him out of the cell to examine his new physical abilities.
Edwin tries to interrogate Logan, but Logan can read the slightest facial expressions and even measure heart rate by looking at the vein in Edwin’s neck. After Logan insists that he has no idea who might be responsible for his genetic alterations, Edwin informs him that his mother is actually still alive and shows Logan proof. This devastates Logan, who has conflicted feelings about his mother that turn to rage now that he knows she’s alive. Logan asks Edwin to allow his family a visit and then senses that Edwin is withholding something: “Edwin was sad and nervous I had caught him out. And in that moment, I knew what he’d said to me my first day here had been a lie. He hadn’t told my family I’d been detained under suspicion of self-editing” (102). Logan asks Edwin if his family has been told he’s dead, and Edwin answers only, “I’m sorry” (102).
The next night, Logan is awakened by gunfire. He sees two figures, one in a mask. They kill off the men guarding Logan’s cell, fire into the glass walls, and break Logan out of the cell. Logan follows his liberators until they are clear of the facility, arriving at a waiting car. The disguised person removes their mask, and Logan realizes that it is his sister, Kara.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary
Kara drives them toward West Virginia. While en route, she explains to Logan that she has similarly enhanced abilities. Her transformation was triggered by a bee sting that made her severely ill; when she recovered, she began noticing her new powers. Logan notes the similarity between their stories. Eventually, they arrive at a motel in West Virginia. They are careful to hide their faces, realizing that the GPA will be scouring the region’s CCTVs, looking for them.
Kara and Logan discuss their shared circumstances, and Logan explains his suspicion that their mother is behind this. Kara tells Logan about her imprisonment in a torture prison somewhere near Myanmar while serving in the special forces. Logan has an idea that maybe his mother encoded a message in their genetic modifications. Logan sets to work deciphering this code, and eventually he discovers satellite coordinates for the Carson National Forest near Santa Fe, New Mexico. They decide to travel there to investigate. To disguise themselves, Logan injects dermal fillers into their faces and dyes his hair.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary
Logan and Kara leave West Virginia and travel to the coordinates that he deciphered. With his newly heightened sensitivity to sensory information, he finds being back in modern life daunting at first. As Logan drives, he relives the last memory he has of his mother. Kara and Logan track their way southwest, through Texas and finally into New Mexico. It is Christmas, which brings up memories of family, but Logan, as Kara already has, is learning how to compartmentalize his feelings, a helpful skill when he begins thinking of his wife and daughter.
Finally, Logan and Kara arrive at Carson National Forest. They begin closing in on the location, a remote and desolate area of the desert. They see an abandoned truck, and when they investigate further, they find a body inside in an obvious state of decomposition. Logan notices a unique necklace with a double-helix charm on the body and realizes that this is their mother. They are dumbfounded, but Logan reminds Kara that they have not arrived officially at the exact location. They begin searching a small grid and eventually discover a briefcase containing a laptop. They open it and watch a video message from their mother, who explains to them that because she is beginning to lose her intellectual capabilities, she has decided to take her life. Her message also reveals the purpose behind their genetic enhancements: She has lost faith in humanity, sees extinction as a real and looming threat, and has devised the genetic upgrade they received as a way of saving the species. She leaves disks behind with further information.
Logan immediately wants to forget the whole thing ever happened. Kara, however, wants to carry out their mother’s plan. With his new ability to read body language, Logan feels threatened by Kara, sensing that she is going to use her military capabilities to take him out. Logan runs off, and Kara pursues him, shooting at him. She hits him once, but Logan makes it to the abandoned truck, yanks his mother’s body out, and starts it up. As he drives off, Kara fires more shots at him. He shoots the tires out on their car to prevent her from following. As he continues driving, he begins to feel the effects of his injury. Finally, he passes out behind the wheel and only wakes up after driving into a tree.
Part 1, Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Chapter 4 begins with Logan held captive by his own agency, the GPA. Significantly, Logan is innocent of all wrongdoing, yet he is detained against his will. The false imprisonment Logan suffers exemplifies the kinds of coercive policing tactics common in science-fiction portrayals of dystopian police states. Edwin Rogers, Logan’s boss, explains that Logan’s exposure to the ice-sphere explosion necessitates his detainment; any constitutional rights Logan has are trumped by the need to keep him quarantined from the general population. However, his imprisonment takes place at a remote farm, which Logan calls a “black site” (77), used for such illegal purposes. The existence of these sites adds a layer of intrigue to the plot by suggesting a government conspiracy and raises the question of how much liberty a government should take in trying to protect its citizens.
This issue is further explored in the interrogation tactic described by Logan in which oxygen is withheld from his cell. This tactic is a form of torture, yet the GPA condones its use if it can yield information that could help a great number of people. Crouch escalates the ethical dilemma regarding the state’s power versus liberty and human rights—highlighting the theme of Restricted Freedom Versus Liberty as a Human Right—querying whether imprisonment and torture are ever justifiable, even if they are employed to save people from harm.
Logan then finds that his freedom has been impinged upon more than he initially realized: In addition to being physically imprisoned against his will, Logan learns that his wife and daughter have been told he’s dead, effectively permanently separating him from his family and society. Even when Kara breaks him out of the facility, he understands that visiting his family would inevitably put them at risk. Therefore, even after he is free, he must live with—and ignore—the constant temptation to see his wife and daughter again. This forced separation compounds the feelings of abandonment he is confronted with when he learns that his mother faked her suicide. Yet Logan doesn’t have the time or resources for Coping with Emotional Trauma; as the novel progresses, Logan becomes an increasingly isolated, solitary individual who cuts off his emotional connections to other people and even the world around him. The GPA, subversively and secretly, has severed Logan’s ties to his old life. The moment he learns that his family thinks he is dead is a turning point in the novel, in which he must leave his old identity behind and forge a new one as a lone-wolf figure.
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By Blake Crouch
