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.
Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary
Eli, Lexie, Terese, and their mother play a Beethoven song together. Eli plays trumpet. In the middle of the piece, Lexie accuses Eli of messing up, but they keep playing. Playing music with his family is one of the only times Eli feels as if they belong together.
Rex asks Eli to help him take inventory of their food stores and households products. He finds a plastic tub that says Eddy on it. It’s full of jerky, Eddy’s favorite food. Eli shares it with the family.
Terese tells Eli she read a book on picking locks, which is how she got into his room. Eli’s mother tells him that Terese has moved into the yellow room, which has improved her attitude.
When they are alone, Eli’s mother tells him that she has never been so miserable. She is no longer sharing a room with Rex. Eli wants to hug her, but can’t make himself touch her. She tells him that Gram didn’t want her to marry Rex, and that she had thought he was arrogant and controlling.
Rex takes Eli to a laboratory that he has never seen. He proposes that they clone a human. He says that Lexie has agreed to act as a host, since his mother is already pregnant. They are waiting on Eli to agree.
Chapter 12 Summary
Eli’s mother takes him to room with the yellow door. A young boy who looks like Eddy takes Eli’s hand. His name is Lucas. Eli plays Chutes and Ladders with him, and then Lucas shows him a hidden nesting doll that he claims contains a mystery. Lucas tells Eli that Eddy is going to come and get them out.
Lucas asks if Eli hates them, because he never comes to visit them. Lexie holds Quinn and then gives him to Eli. Eli enjoys playing with them, and wonders, “Had we become Godless?” (137). He believes that Rex’s solution is wrong. He decides to do the right thing for what he believes is the first time in his life.
Chapter 13 Summary
Eli visits Lexie. She has painted murals in her room. Lexie believes that if they make clones, they can save the Supplements, because clones will grow faster. He says that he thinks he can find a way to connect to the Internet. Then he can prove to her that the outside world is still there, and that Rex lied to them. She gives him one day to find out whatever he can.
Eli runs into Rex in the hall and tells him that he met the Supplements. He is surprised when Rex says that he is the one who minds the Supplements while the others play music. Eli then takes his laptop to the hall outside Rex’s office. He connects to the Internet. He sees a message that the username “TwinYan1” is online. He thinks it is Eddy.
Chapter 14 Summary
Eli chats with Eddy online. Eddy tells him that there was no attack. In fact, everyone thinks that the family died after they were told that the RV burned down. Eddy is in Seattle with Gram. There was a funeral for the family, but no bodies to bury.
Gram gets online and chats with Eli as well. Then she rants about his father and how the tabloids were right about him. She says that Rex’s biological mother was insane. Rex comes into the hall and sees the laptop. He says it is obsolete and takes it. Eli knows that his father is lying, that he is his enemy, and that he can’t let him know that he knows.
Chapter 15 Summary
Eli asks his mother if she knows the code to the door. He is worried about what will happen to them if Rex dies. When tells her that he talked to Eddy, she feels that she has no choice but to confront Rex.
She tells Eli that his father is not crazy, and that the rumors about his biological mother are untrue. She finds it more frightening that Rex is lucid.
Lexie overhears them and her mother says they were talking about the code. Rex hears them yelling. Eli confronts him and says he wants the code. He reveals that he talked to Eddy and that he knows Rex is lying. When his mother asks if it’s true, Rex relents. He says that leaving Eddy out was not in the plan.
He wanted Gram left behind, however, which is why he left the kitten for Therese to find, so that Gram would run back for Eddy’s medicine.
Eli’s mother slaps Rex, who then reveals that he sabotaged the bulbs in the gardens to force him to come up with an alternate food source, part of a process he calls the Donner Effect. He wanted to find out if they had what it took to survive. He’s working on a more affordable version of the Compound so he can sell it after they leave.
He says the Supplements are lucky that they have never experienced anything bad, and that he never would have actually used them. He got the idea for the Compound after a Christmas trip to the Rockies. Eli had turned off the valve on the propane tank that was used to heat their mile-long driveway. Rex always kept it clear so that he could get to the helipad if he had to leave for work quickly. By turning off the valve, Eli was able to keep Rex home instead of leaving for work. That is when Rex got the idea for the Compound. He says, “I wanted to be with you all the time. Like you wanted to be with me, son” (170).
Eli punches him in the face. Rex falls off his stool and his head hits the ground. Eli is not sure if he’s still alive.
Chapters 11-15 Analysis
Chapters 11 through 15 gradually reveal the true nature and purpose of the Supplements. Eli has always thought of them as sharing the same purpose as their name: they are Supplements to a proper foundation, but not part of the family unit. As he spends more time with Lucas, he understands that not only are they not mere Supplements, they are literal members of his family.
When Rex protests that he would never have used them as food, the family cannot trust him. However, he freely admits that the Supplements were the result of their time in the Compound. Rex views the ever-dwindling food and resources as an extreme form of pressure testing his ideas. When he refers to the Donner Effect, he does it with admiration. The Donner party resorted to cannibalism under the gravest circumstances. Rex views their resourcefulness and will to survive as an example of courageous innovation.
Perversely, Rex’s perception is distorted to the point where he sees the Compound as an experiment that will bring the family closer together, and to give his children the gifts of bravery and perseverance. The father who works too much at the expense of his family bonding is a common trope in literature. Rex attempts to break out of that role through the enforced together time at the Compound. When he tells Eli “I wanted to be with you all the time. Like you wanted to be with me, son” (170), it is difficult to argue that he didn’t mean it. Rex has gone to extreme lengths in the novel to prove the conviction he has in his ideas.
These chapters show Eli’s shift away from a survival-at-any-cost mentality, to asking himself whether mere existence is worth pursuing. His conversation with his mother reveals that she wanted more for her children than the life in the Compound, even though it might have been the safest place, at least temporarily. She and the children do not have a chance to thrive while in confinement, and Bodeen uses their conversation to raise the question of whether a life without freedom and opportunity is worth living.
Religion does not play a large role in the story, but Once Eli meets the Supplements, he wonders if he and his family had “become Godless” (137). When confronted with the reality of Lucas, Quinn, their laughter, and their touch, Eli senses the larger moral implications of using the Supplements as a food source, and of using Lexie to clone more of them. When he finally lashes out at Rex physically, Eli is not only fighting to save his family from a hideous situation; he is also fighting against Rex’s amorality, particularly since he worries that he is just like his father.
For all of Rex’s talk about the importance of family, he knows that Eddy and Gram are still alive, he knows that Eli is despondent without his twin, and yet he still thinks it is better to continue with the experiment than to reunite the entire family unit. Bodeen’s portrayal of Rex illustrates the potential downsides of scientific zealotry. There are greater goods than progress for its own sake, and innovation can be used to immoral, reckless ends.
