This World We Live In

“Somewhere there must be a place where people are eating eggs and drinking milk. I don’t know where, or how they get the food, but I bet somewhere in what’s left of America, there are places with food and electricity and lots of books to read.”

Miranda must also maintain hope, not just gratitude for the little that is left. The dream of utopian spaces—where food, warmth, and culture are plentiful—keeps her focused on the future rather than mired in the past or miserable in the present. This specific fantasy reveals an important aspect of Miranda’s character: For her, books are as nourishing as food.

“‘I’m sorry,’ I said, even though I wasn’t. Sometimes I think Mom and Matt make all the decisions and don’t care what I think.”

Miranda is chafing against not only authority but also her liminal position between childhood and adulthood. This transitional stage characterizes the novel as a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story. Miranda’s primary challenge, beyond physical survival, is navigating The Tension Between Responsibility and Independence.

“I started by going down Howell Bridge Road, but I knew I didn’t want to end up in town. So after a couple of miles, I turned on to Bainbridge Avenue, and then I turned again and again and again. I avoided streets I knew, because every one had a memory and I didn’t dare face my memories.”

After Miranda and Mom have an explosive fight, Miranda takes off on her bike. In her fury and hurt feelings, she pedals off in random directions, eventually getting lost. Delving too deeply into the past is hard at present; Miranda remembers her town as it once was before the disaster. Even happy memories cause pain—though her avoidance is also a sign of her immaturity.

“I thought about how unlikely it was I would ever meet any guy, fall in love, get married, have babies.”

This foreshadows the improbable arrival of Alex Morales, along with Dad, Lisa, and their new baby, Gabriel. It likely explains the swiftness with which Miranda and Alex come to be romantically involved, despite their differences: In these circumstances, the prospects for achieving such milestones are slim. Still, though Miranda yearns for love, she shies away from the thought of giving birth; this world is too grim a place.

“Syl looked straight at Mom. ‘I have nothing,’ she said. ‘My family is gone. Everything I used to think was important is gone. Matt says he loves me. How can I not love someone who says he loves me?’”

Again, even love itself has been altered by the disaster. In a post-apocalyptic setting, love is as much about security and stability as desire. Clearly, Matt adores Syl—almost certainly, at least in part, because she is very different from his family—and Syl needs Matt’s protection.

“But you can’t get used to losing people. Or if you can, I don’t want to. So many people in the last year, people I’ve loved, have vanished from my life. Some have died; others have moved on. It almost doesn’t matter. Gone is gone.”

Miranda’s yearning for love, and her inability to let it go, speaks to her desire to hold on to a part of her humanity that the deprivations of the last year have threatened to destroy. As she eventually explains to Mom, she takes pride in her ability to display emotional attachment despite the trauma she continues to experience.

“I thought about the earth then, really thought about it, the tsunamis and earthquakes and volcanoes, all the horrors I haven’t witnessed but have changed my life, the lives of everyone I know, all the people I’ll never know. I thought about life without the sun, the moon, stars, without flowers and warm days in May. I thought about a year ago and all the good things I’d taken for granted and all the unbearable things that had replaced those simple blessings.”

On the anniversary of the disaster, Miranda reflects on the global scale of the catastrophic events. Though her outlook above is grim, she eventually understands that she and her family are some of the luckier survivors (especially once she meets Alex, whose experience has been more harrowing). This recognition of her own comparative good fortune is an important step in her coming-of-age process. Rather than pitying herself, she sheds tears for the people and places that have been lost.

“For the first time ever I hoped there was no Baby Rachel. I don’t know what happened to Dad and Lisa, if the baby was ever born. It must be so hard now to have a baby. Lisa could have miscarried or had a stillborn baby. Horrible though that is, it might be for the better.”

Miranda’s ambivalence about bringing a child into this world is first directly expressed here. Though she grows to love baby Gabriel when he finally arrives, she still worries about his future. He will never know the ease and abundance that Miranda enjoyed as a child. Metaphorically speaking, this ambivalence reflects the fears of a younger generation about the challenges of bringing children into a world of climate change.

“Maybe if I’d gone, Mom, Matt, and Jon would have left before winter got bad. Maybe I never would have seen them again, and I’d be like Lisa, not knowing if my family was still alive, only without her faith. Or maybe I’d have her faith. Lisa hadn’t been particularly religious that I could remember.”

Miranda discovers that Dad wanted to take her with him last year when he and Lisa left for the West Coast. She speculates about how her experiences might have changed her. She does not have a natural affinity for religious faith, though neither did Lisa before the hardships she endured. She seems to suggest that suffering can engender faith.

“Alex looked down then or I looked up. I don’t know how it happened, but we made eye contact, and for a moment I was drawn into his soul. I could see everything, the depth of his sorrow, his anger, his despair.”

Miranda’s connection with Alex is forged via their mutual confessions—in this instance, Alex has just confessed the pride he once felt at being better than his family—and close proximity. Miranda had been reading Romeo and Juliet before the arrival of Alex—an allusion to another passionate but unhappy literary romance, though Miranda and Alex’s ultimate fate is not yet known.

“Because for the first time I really thought about Gabriel’s future. If he exists, other babies must also. But how many of them will survive the next year, the next decade? I’ve had sixteen good years and one horrible one, but for Gabriel, for all the Gabriels, their whole lives will be like my one horrible year. Only I had the good years to see me through. What will they have?”

Again, Miranda expresses her doubts about the value of subjecting a child to the horrors of this world. Choosing to have a child might be tantamount to cruelty, she posits. This foreshadows her decision to hasten Julie’s death to end her suffering.

“I don’t know how I feel about them staying. It still hurts me to look at Dad looking at them, seeing the pride and love in his eyes. It’s not that he looks at Matt and Jon or me any differently. Even Syl gets that same look. He loves all of us.

But he should love us more. He just should. We’re his children, not Alex and Julie.”

Miranda’s jealousy reflects the tension between individualism and communitarianism that runs throughout this novel. In this immensely challenging post-apocalyptic world, communal solidarity is greatly heightened, and Miranda’s dad has become closely bonded with all the people who share his life. At the same time, Miranda naturally interprets this closeness as a challenge to her individual relationship with her father.

“I had never thought about that before: all the life on all the other planets throughout the universe as unaware of our lives, our suffering, as we are of theirs.”

Miranda, Charlie, and Julie discuss faith. Miranda’s statement about life on other planets reveals another aspect of her maturing mind as she begins to extend her range of empathy and decenter herself in her image of the world.

“‘That’s not fair,’ I said. ‘Maybe I don’t understand, but you didn’t know if I would. You may know Latin and calculus and how to hot-wire a car, but you don’t know anything about me. I don’t think you know anything about anybody except yourself.’”

Miranda accuses Alex of being the exact kind of self-absorbed teenager that she is. Indeed, like Miranda, Alex does not always take the time to respond to others with empathy and patience. However, unlike Miranda, Alex has been tasked with caring for both of his younger sisters (and, tragically, he ultimately loses both). He has not been given the luxury to think beyond the immediate challenges in front of him. At this point in the novel, Miranda has not yet fully considered how much good fortune she enjoys in relation to others.

“He reached over, touched Lisa with his right hand and Syl with his left. ‘Our past is gone,’ he said. ‘But our future is in this house right now. Little Gabriel, sleeping peacefully in his crib. The children Syl will bear. Miranda and Julie, too. Their babies, born and unborn, are God’s gift to the future, just as the ark was.’

Dad squeezed Lisa’s hand. Matt squeezed Syl’s. I felt very much a part of something and very much alone.”

Charlie leads an impromptu Sunday service at the Nesbitt house. Miranda comes mostly for the food—and to see Alex—but she is drawn into Charlie’s words, at once heartened by the fellowship she feels around her and alienated by the religious aspect of it, not to mention her single status. Charlie also enlists her into motherhood, without her permission, a prospect about which she has repeatedly expressed ambivalence.

“We’ll protect her. And don’t use Carlos as an excuse anymore. He’s thousands of miles away. You’re here. I’m here. Explain why getting Julie to the convent is more important than you and me. Because I try to understand, Alex. I hear the words, but I don’t get the meaning.”

Miranda points out that Alex and Julie are part of the family group now; they will protect Julie. There is no need to send her to a convent, much less for him to join a monastery. This honors one of the enduring tropes of romance, that obstacles must be overcome in order for the couple to realize their union. With tragic irony, it also presages Julie’s death: There are no safe spaces in this world. Nobody can protect anyone with complete certainty.

“‘Nothing’s a crime anymore,’ he said. ‘There are no cops, no jails. It’s a sin, and I’ll be damned for it. But I’ll deserve damnation. I deserve it now.’”

The social breakdown is complete, and lawlessness abides. However, Alex—like others in the group—still feels a moral and ethical responsibility to his loved ones. He would rather kill Julie than watch her suffer, even if that is a sin. His moral ethos demands that he be damned. His insistence on this paradox—that God will condemn him for making what is clearly the morally correct choice—suggests that for him, the comfort of faith is that it offers moral certainty. Even as earthly morality has been turned upside down, God’s law remains absolute and unchanging.

“We drove ninety miles without seeing another car, and the scariest thing was that seemed normal.”

In this world, the concepts of normalcy and ordinariness have been irrevocably redefined. There are no longer traffic jams, or many moving vehicles, because there is no longer much fuel or many people. Over the course of a year, Miranda has become acclimated to this emptiness.

“I knew he was dying. I think Jon knew it, too. But Horton should have been allowed to die in his own home. It was more his home than Syl’s.”

The death of Horton the cat disrupts both households. Jon refuses to come home, instead staying at the Nesbitt house. Alex wants Miranda to take him home, fearing that the relationship between Jon and Julie is becoming too serious. Horton represented one of the few links to the former world; he comforted his family and brought them joy. He was an integral part of the family in a way that the newcomer Syl—who ushered him out the house to die—is not.

“I don’t like going into town. It’s a reminder of everything that isn’t anymore. It was never a big town, but there were places to eat and to shop and to hang out. And now it’s dead, except for City Hall, open on Mondays to hand out food. For as long as that lasts.”

Howell becomes a symbol of loss for Miranda, representative of the uncertain future. There is no guarantee that the food from City Hall will last even one more week, much less one more year. In this scene, Miranda also goes into the local library, a place once so familiar and now so empty that it reminds her of the loss of Horton.

“Of course when you can’t be really sure you’ll be alive a year from now, postponing decisions is the same as making decisions.”

Miranda hesitates to tell Alex what she has found: the likely location of a safe town. She does not want him to leave, but she knows that, ultimately, she cannot keep the information from him. What she wants does not outweigh what he and Julie need. She shows understanding and unselfishness, which demonstrates her hard-won maturity.

“All around me I could sense the house collapsing, and I felt like a sparrow being sucked into an airplane engine. The sound was ungodly. But the stairwell held, and the tornado passed, and I was still alive.”

As the Nesbitt house collapses around Miranda during the tornado, this phase of her life collapses in its aftermath. As in the simile above (“like a sparrow”), Miranda is buffeted by forces beyond her control. They will have to leave Howell. Nevertheless, she survives, as do the remaining members of her immediate family; indeed, they are the lucky ones.

“I think she prayed. I think she said thank you. I think I heard her murmur, ‘brie’ and ‘poppy.’ I know I kissed her on her forehead and told her she would never be hungry or scared or lonely again.”

As Julie drops off to sleep after Miranda gives her the sleeping pills, she prays and thanks Miranda; it is as if she knows what Miranda plans to do, to end her suffering. Miranda, for her part, reassures her that the vision of heaven that Julie expressed earlier—where nobody is hungry or alone and everyone can see the many stars in the sky—awaits her. Miranda may not possess a strong sense of religious faith, but she demonstrates compassion, even if her actions are morally conflicted.