LS 5623 Mod 4

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The Dead & the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer


Module 4 Fantasy and Science Fiction


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Pfeffer, Susan Beth. The dead and the gone. Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 2008. ISBN 9780152063115

CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Seventeen year old, Alex Morales and his sisters, Briana and Julie, are left on their own in New York City to survive after an asteroid collides with the moon and positions it closer to Earth. The world is now plagued with volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, tidal waves, earthquakes, famine caused by food shortages and disease. Alex must take care of his sisters in the absence of his mother and father. He is forced to raid dead bodies for valuables he can trade for food. The siblings struggle with their religious convictions and faith while trying desperately to survive. They fight desperate thoughts and hopelessness as conditions worsen and they begin to come to grips with a reality that is too dreadful for their adolescent psyches to completely accept. Gradually they concede that there will be no “getting back to normal” and that their parents will never return. Although Alex believes that it is his role to protect what is left of their family, his sisters prove their own strength and value as they sacrifice and care for one another.

Alex blames himself for all of the things happening to his sisters and feels that they are not mentally or physically tough enough to survive without him. However, when he becomes sick with the flu, he lives through it due to his youngest sister’s (Julie) determination and attention. Julie is a typical thirteen year old girl who is forced to mature very quickly in order to aid in the family’s survival. Briana is a gentle, sensitive fourteen year old girl who develops asthma when she goes away to an abbey in the country. Throughout the entire book, she holds within her a strong, overwhelming belief that her parents are still alive and will come back to save them. Ultimately, her unwillingness to accept the truth is what leads to her death.

This novel is a very realistic look at how difficult it would be for survivors of a catastrophic event to endure a live without any of the necessities and luxuries our society takes for granted. It causes readers to consider their dependence on the most basic needs for safety, nourishment and companionship and how valuable these essentials would be to their perseverance.

BOOK HOOK/EXPLEMPLARY OR FAVORITE LINES

Inside cover: Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Life as We Knew It enthralled and devastated readers with its brutal but hopeful look at an apocalyptic event--an asteroid hitting the moon, setting off a tailspin of horrific climate changes. Now this harrowing companion novel examines the same events as they unfold in New York City, revealed through the eyes of seventeen-year-old Puerto Rican Alex Morales. When Alex's parents disappear in the aftermath of tidal waves, he must care for his two younger sisters, even as Manhattan becomes a deadly wasteland, and food and aid dwindle. With haunting themes of family, faith, personal change, and courage, this powerful new novel explores how a young man takes on unimaginable responsibilities.



Author’s Blog: http://susanbethpfeffer.blogspot.com/



EXTERNAL ASSESSMENTS



From School Library Journal

An asteroid knocks the moon closer to Earth, and every conceivable natural disaster occurs. Seventeen-year-old Alex Morales's parents are missing and presumed drowned by tsunamis. Left alone, he struggles to care for his sisters Bri, 14, and Julie, 12. Things look up as Central Park is turned into farmland and food begins to grow. Then worldwide volcanic eruptions coat the sky with ash and the land freezes permanently. People starve, freeze, or die of the flu. Only the poor are left in New York—a doomed island—while the rich light out for safe towns inland and south. The wooden, expository dialogue and obvious setup of the first pages quickly give way to the well-wrought action of the snowballing tragedy. The mood of the narrative is appropriately frenetic, somber, and hopeful by turns. Pfeffer's writing grows legs as the terrifying plot picks up speed, and conversations among the siblings are realistically fluid and sharp-edged. The Moraleses are devout Catholics, and though the church represents the moral center of the novel, Pfeffer doesn't proselytize. The characters evolve as the city decomposes, and the author succeeds in showing their heroism without making them caricatures of virtue. She accurately and knowingly depicts New York City from bodegas to boardrooms, and even the far-fetched science upon which the novel hinges seems well researched. This fast-paced, thoughtful story is a good pick for melodrama fiends and reluctant readers alike.—Johanna Lewis, New York Public Library

From Booklist

In Life as We Knew It (2005), veteran writer Pfeffer painted a terrifying picture of what happened in a rural Pennsylvania town after an asteroid hit the moon and cataclysmic changes on land and sea caused familiar life to grind to a halt. For readers who wondered if things were any better in a bustling city, here is the horrifying answer. On the night the moon tilts, 17-year-old Alex and his younger sisters are alone; their mother is at work, and their father is visiting Puerto Rico. No matter how the kids wish, hope, and pray, their parents don’t return. It’s up to Alex to do what’s best. At first that means bartering for food and batteries and avoiding fighting with the rambunctious Julie—especially after sickly Bri is sent to live at a rural convent. Later it means rescuing Julie from rapists and steering her away from the corpses that litter the street, providing food for rats. Religion is one of the strong threads running through the novel. It would have been interesting to see Alex wrestle more with his staunch Catholicism, but in many ways, the Church anchors the plot. The story’s power, as in the companion book, comes from readers’ ability to picture themselves in a similar situation; everything Pfeffer writes about seems wrenchingly plausible.