Z for Zachariah

Z for Zachariah	Atheneum
Written by Robert C. O’Brien	1975
Contemporary Realism	249 pages
Reading Level age 14-17	Young Adult

Summary

Nuclear bombs have been dropped on almost every major city in the world. Ann Burden is sixteen and alone. Her parents went with her older brothers out of their valley and never came back. She expected everyone else to be dead as well. She tends the small farm and walks to the store that was all in the deep areas of the valley. Somehow the small valley has stayed green and the water clear, while everything she sees from the top of the trees is dead and lifeless. She writes in her journal marking the days. There is no electricity, so her days are counted by her wristwatch which she winds meticulously. She milks her cow, feeds the chickens and plants a small garden, with questions of what is outside of her small green valley. One day she sees a person in a green suit pulling a wagon. The person stops often and looks around, as if searching for something. The person enters the valley and takes off the suit. It is a man. He sets up a tent he pulled from the wagon and sleeps by the house. She is thrilled someone else is alive, but attempts to make it look like no one has lived in her house, to be on the safe side. She let the cow and chickens out, pulled up her vegetables and hid in a small cave hidden from view. She watches the man the next few days, exploring her valley. He isn’t as careful as he was at first and bathed in the stream that came from outside the valley instead of the spring that starts within the valley and flows into the lake. After a few days, she checks of he is dead from the poisoning in the water. She decides to help him recover. She returns to the house and starts again on her chores, all the while nursing him back to health. She learns that he was working on scientific material and created the suit he was wearing, which is self sustaining against radiation poisoning. He walked out of the underground lab and has continued searching for life ever since. He has suggestions for the farm, tells her how to get gas from the electric pump at the store, and has an idea for an electric generator using the running spring. He becomes overbearing and sees the farm as his own and always telling her to not use things from the store to save for later. One night she was trying to get to know him better and make sense of his ramblings of the suit he said when he was delirious. He scares her by coming into her bed that night and she moves into her secret cave. She continues working of the farm and doing the chores but loses the ability as he slowly takes away her access to the house and the equipment. She watches as he trains her dog to hunt her down. Every day her dog brings him closer to her cave. She realizes that she has to kill her dog in order to save herself. She winds her trail all over the valley and through the contaminated stream. Her dog, not knowing better, jumps through it and searches the banks for her sent. The man lets the leash go, the dog is too infected to survive long. Ann stays up holding her dog and crying for her parents, her dog and everything she has lost. That long night she comes up with a plan to escape, he won’t take anything else from her. She sends him on a goose chase away from the house. She sakes the suit, wagon and supplies and waits for him to return. She bids him goodbye and leaves him in the valley he took from her and sets off for somewhere she knows in her heart are survivors.

Response

I thought this was well written and very engaging. I could not put it down. The suspense and fast moving plot kept me interested and puzzling out the solution. It was thought out and all the details were pertinent. The characters were believable and faced an extreme dilemma that could be possible and challenged the reader to think of their reaction if in that situation.

Potential Problems

This is about surviving after a war has caused radiation poisoning. The man tries to rape Ann and then hunts her down because he sees her as a threat to him, since she won’t comply with his demands. In the end, she leaves him there and walks out of the valley.

Recommendations

I would recommend this book to an older audience and very cautious to whom I would recommend this book to. Those interested in the nuclear threat during the Cold War might read this to get an interpretation of life after a nuclear attack.