![]() I feel embarrassed and angry and flattered at the same time. He turns away quickly but not quickly enough. In the morning I wake up to blue: Julian’s eyes, staring at me. Julian keeps running his hand through my hair-twisting it around his fingers, curling it up and over his wrist and letting it drop onto the pillow again-and this time when I close my eyes and see the shining silver river I walk straight into it, and let it carry me down and away. Then he runs his fingers through my hair and I relax, and the squeezing goes away, and I’m breathing and alive and it’s all fine and everything will be okay. For a moment he leaves it there and again I hear that quick exhale, a release of some kind, and everything in my whole body goes still and white and hot, a starburst, a silent explosion. Softly, gently, he lowers his hand that final inch. “Can I?” he asks, so quietly I barely hear him, and I nod because I can’t speak. My chest feels like it is being squeezed. He is a long, curved shadow, frozen, like something made of polished wood. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, but doesn’t move his hand. I can feel his hand trembling ever so slightly by my right ear. “What are you doing?” My heart is beating very fast. ![]() He has rolled over to the very edge of his cot. Julian’s hand is hovering an inch above my head. I am passing under a branch and there is a tangle of leaves in my hair. I am walking the shimmering silver ribbon of a river winding through the forest, wearing shoes that sparkle in the sun as though they are made out of coins… We lie in silence for a bit, and I begin to float in and out of consciousness. Just that one line… ‘All you need is love.’” He sings the notes again. “Do you remember any of the other stories you read?” I ask. “That part must have come later, after the witch, and the shoes. “I never figured out why the book was banned,” Julian says after a bit. It is at this point in the novel where the Now and Then threads converge in Chapter 13.For a few minutes we breathe together, in tandem. Again, they are attacked at a southern homestead and Lena, Raven and Tack assume fake procedure marks and enter the regular world as part of the resistance. They flee, regroup and head south with little food or supplies. As the group is preparing to move south for the winter months, they are attacked. Food is scarce and the people are constantly on the lookout for attacks. Life on the Homestead is difficult and rudimentary. She lives with them for some time on the Homestead. Raven, Blu, and Lu nurse her back to health. Alex is killed as they cross the border and Lena wakes up in the Wilds being taken care of by Invalids. In the Then thread: Lena escapes from her neighborhood with a boy named Alex. Julian and Lena escape and Lena is brought back to Tack and Raven, but Julian is scheduled to be executed as a punishment for falling in love with Lena. They are captured by what they think are Scavengers - a rogue group that helps neither the DFA nor the resistance - but in reality they have been captured by the DFA. She finds Julian in an underground subway tunnel that has long been abandoned. ![]() He is kidnapped and it is her job to stay with him no matter what. She goes to a rally where Julian Fineman, the DFA organizer's son, is present. In the Now, Lena is working covertly with Raven and Tack, two of her friends in the resistance. She used to believe what all of the others believed, that the DFA was an organization that protected people and that everyone must have the procedure for society to go on. Throughout these sections there are brief flashbacks of what Lena's life used to be like. In the Now: Lena has begun attending a new high school. From this point the novel begins alternating between the Now thread and the Then thread. The first chapter is elusive but the reader knows that Lena is different and that she possesses a knowledge that the other high school students don't have. ![]() The novel begins with Lena who has just entered a new high school. This creates a clean and sterile world, with no people who aren't "perfect." Spouses are matched by the government and children are born out of a contract with the government. One's duty to country comes above one's loyalty to family. In this world, cleanliness is Godliness and everyone holds the same beliefs, feels the same non-feeling, and roles are performed dutifully with little feeling. Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver is a novel about a futuristic society that attempts to cure the people of love by forcing people to endure a medical procedure that prevents them from feeling. ![]()
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