28 pages • 56 minutes read
Megan HunterThe End We Start From
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary
Details about G’s death are sprinkled sparingly throughout Chapter 3 in staccato bursts: “Panic. Crush. G. Panicked. Crushed” (19). The narrator remembers a moment on a train platform when a man knocked her over. She felt awkward and vulnerable while heavily pregnant and remembers how she tried to convince herself that the man’s behavior was accidental. By connecting the circumstances of G’s death to her own experience, she understands how horrifying G’s death must have been.
R and N are unable to cope with the loss and both stop engaging in normal activities. As a result, the narrator feels that she now has three babies to care for and is the only responsible adult in the family. Z has his first smile and first laugh, but R and N cannot engage with the baby. As R and N withdraw, the narrator feels increasingly isolated from the rest of the world and connected to her baby. She finds pleasure, purpose, and fulfillment in nurturing Z.
After three weeks of living in a fog of grief, R begins to feel angry instead of sad, which propels him to support his family by taking more direct action. He attempts to grow vegetables in the garden and encourages the family to watch reality television instead of the news so they can focus on something else. When his gardening efforts prove fruitless, he insists that he and N go on another supply run together. The narrator is worried about them leaving, but the men ultimately leave.
Chapter 4 Summary
After days alone with the baby, the narrator falls into a peaceful routine. They are both asleep when “R is in the room like a man with a machine gun in a teenage bedroom in the middle of the night. He has no gun but somehow this is what he is like” (32). R shouts that they must leave immediately, and through a sleepy haze, the narrator realizes that there is no sign of N.
In a panicked rush, R, Z, and the narrator drive away, hoping to find refuge in the Scottish mountains. During the drive, the narrator takes note of the people they pass along the way. She thinks about the contrast between their gloomy circumstances and the bright colors of the other traveler’s coats, as she wonders if they will ever feel hopeful or happy again.
Shortly after they cross the border and begin camping out of their car, R says a few words about N: “tussle, squabble, slaughter” (37). From these descriptions, the narrator infers that N was also crushed to death in a stampede. Because both of his parents died this way, R is now afraid of large gatherings. When Z falls ill for the first time, R feels uncomfortable going to a hospital. However, when Z turns blue and struggles to breathe, “R drives at a hundred miles an hour” (40).
Chapters 3-4 Analysis
The Vulnerability and Resilience of Humanity are front and center in these chapters as R loses both his parents to violent deaths. These two traits are juxtaposed through smiles; Z “catches [the narrator’s] eye like a real smiler, like the first person who learnt to smile” while R and N sink into a deep sadness (17). Death and catastrophe lead to despair, but there are always new glimmers of hope, represented in Z and the next generations. Nonetheless, the narrator must embody a new type of resilience as she must nurture not only her newborn but also her grieving partner and father-in-law. This highlights how the gendered division of labor persists even during this crisis; the narrator cannot share her terror or sorrow, forced instead to prepare meals and keep the family going. Stretched so thin, she feels that there is little of herself left. There is a reprieve when the men finally revive themselves and go on a supply run, and she feels peaceful alone with Z. While the gendered division of labor burdens her in the broader familial context, she continues to find purpose in motherhood.
The narrator’s continued avoidance of the news highlights an issue at the core of the story’s climate disaster. Although the effects of the flooding are devastating and alter the characters’ lives forever, the flood is rarely given an overt description. The fact that no one wants to talk about how or why the crisis happened hints back to the narrator’s earlier reflection that climate disasters, like giving birth, can feel so surreal that people ignore it until the moment is upon them. People often disengage from the headlines as a form of self-preservation; desensitizing one’s self to global problems can make it easier to cope with daily life. However, this coping mechanism makes it impossible to take action and make changes. Just as no one wants the news to be relevant to them, the narrator does not want to think about what might be happening to R and N while they are gone on their supply run. Hunter continually asserts that ignoring reality and the climate crisis will not make it go away. These reflections are underscored by her sleepy oblivion when R crashes into the house a few days later, without N, insisting that they must evacuate immediately.
Even as the family makes a frantic run for the Scottish border, ordinary concerns like running out of diapers remain relevant. Without diapers, the narrator “imagines [Z’s] curly shit flowing through his clothes, gathering in [her] crotch” (18), reinforcing the parallels between motherhood, vulnerability, and the end of the world. By drawing parallels between mass trauma—the entire city of London being swallowed by flood waters—and the personal trauma of trying to care for a baby during a crisis, the narrator’s story evokes individual experiences of disaster. Because it can be tempting to disconnect from the news, to see large-scale disasters as a catastrophe of statistics, the horror of the narrator’s circumstances serves as a reminder that everyday fears and crises do not stop during catastrophes.
Just as the world appears to be ending due to a cataclysmic disaster, so has the narrator’s former life as a childless person come to an end through the birth of her son. This reinforces the theme of Motherhood as a Metaphor for the End of the World. Where she once had only herself and her partner to worry about, she is now gripped by a new sense of love, fear, and protective instinct for her son. Her old life, her old sense of self, has passed away, and as she navigates a flooded, ruined world, she is also navigating a new emotional world and sense of identity. This becomes especially evident when Z experiences his first illness and his parents try to navigate what’s left of the medical care system in Scotland.
