103 pages • 3 hours read
Rodman PhilbrickThe Last Book In The Universe
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000A 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 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “Attack of the Monkey Boys”
Little Face has followed them through the Pipe; he picked up a walking stick like Ryter’s and is using it to make the sound that frightened Spaz. It’s too late to bring him back to the stacks, so the child will be accompanying them. When it is light out and they leave the Pipe, only Little Face is able to scamper down the side easily, showing them the way.
In this latch, the skyscrapers were built all the way out to the Edge. These buildings have crumbled at this point, but Spaz knows they were once made of glass. By the time just before the Big Shake, people spent their whole lives inside of them without worrying about earthquakes or what could happen, never stepping foot outside. After a few hours of walking, Spaz senses he is being watched. They have come to the other side of the Pipe when the howling starts—a wild, almost human sound. The Monkey Boys surround them.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Mongo the Magnificent”
The Monkey Boys control this latch, like the Bully Bangers in Spaz’s latch, but their demeanor is entirely wild and inhuman. They are behaving like animals, with sharpened teeth and long yellow claws for fingernails; Ryter knows something has gone wrong. The Monkey Boys pick up the trio and carry them separately into the Pipe and far down underground, past starving prisoners, to a room with a hologram of a fierce-looking Mongo the Magnificent guarded by teks in full gear. They are trying their best to make the space intimidating, decking out the space in parts from the skyscrapers, but there’s no plumbing, everything smells foul, and the "holo" of Mongo is only capable of repeating one phrase: HEAR MONGO AND OBEY.
Ryter forms a plan, demanding the teks bring him to “the real Mongo” (70). The tek boss admits Mongo lives but seems confused about why he is engaging with Ryter and not killing him on the spot. Taking off his mask, the tek reveals he is just a young man, round-faced and worried. No one has the authority to bring the trio to Mongo, but Ryter convinces the young man to do it despite his fear, to try to help his boss. They’re led up a set of stairs to an overhead hatch, which Ryter climbs up with Spaz behind him.
Chapter 12 Summary: “The Problem with Looping”
A terrible smell emanates from Mongo’s room, and before they even see him they know it will be bad. Mongo is hooked up to a probe, skeletal, and near death. His hair has all fallen out, as have his teeth, and he has gone blind. Gray liquid oozes from a needle thrust into his skull. The tek boss explains that he has been “looping” (78) in a trendie called Forever Eden for over a year—that is, a probe that keeps repeating in endless variation so that you never have to come out. Mongo believes he is a proov living in Eden. The longest probe Spaz has previously heard of was 24 hours. If they shut off the probe, he will die; the brain stimulation is what is keeping his heart beating. No one will take care of him because they are all terrified of the man he once was.
Ryter convinces the tek it is necessary for a new boss to step in and calls this man to become “The Great Gorm,” helping him envision himself as a leader. He requests two things: let the prisoners go free and banish the trio from the latch, giving them safe escort into the next one. Gorm agrees, already lost in preparation for the responsibilities that will lie ahead.
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
Chapter 10 establishes Little Face as a key character. Whereas before the reader may have only seen him as a feature of the stackboxes, a conduit between Spaz and Ryter, or an access point for the symbolic nature of the choxbar, here he grows into a character in his own right, even as a 5-year-old. His reintegration with Spaz and Ryter as an ongoing member of their partnership places him on equal footing with the older adventurers due to his capabilities: his ability to frighten the duo with his walking stick on approaching them in the Pipe; his singular ability and lack of fear when descending the Pipe’s outer rim; and his ability to silently help his older comrades safely navigate down from the Pipe to ground level.
The trio navigate into their first new latch in this series of chapters, finding themselves under the leadership of Mongo the Magnificent and his henchmen, the Monkey Boys. Unlike in Billy Bizmo’s latch, however, the Monkey Boys are out of control. They immediately present our narrator and his troupe with a sense of unease based on animalistic qualities that are played up to quite a high degree. Their teeth have been filed into points and they have long yellowed claws rather than fingernails. Ryter’s suspicions that something is gravely wrong with the leadership in this latch begin when he first sees the Monkey Boys waiting for them in the Pipe.
As the book progresses, it becomes more evident how probes are problematic: for leadership, for memory retention, and for building and keeping a cohesive community in one’s own latch and across the Urb as a whole. In this chapter sequence, the consequences of a leader who has become dependent and essentially trapped in a mindprobe is illustrated. Mongo’s year-long loop has subjected his mind and body to severe waste and has compromised his position as an effective leader, while also managing to devastate the social and financial structure of his latch. The Monkey Boys are a caricature of their former selves, and the latch is in desperate need of a good leader. The last time Spaz saw Billy, he too was probing, and Billy's reaction to being pulled out of the probe was negative. Of course, his latch is currently in much better condition than Mongo’s, but it is never ruled out that Billy could end up like Mongo if he were to become addicted to probing or looping.
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