51 pages • 1 hour read
Susan Beth PfefferThis World We Live In
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Parts 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “April” - Part 2: “May”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary
Miranda Evans writes in her journal. It has been nearly a year since the world was plunged into darkness and chaos: An asteroid hit the moon, pushing it closer to Earth and creating massive tidal waves, typhoons, volcanic eruptions, and other natural disasters. The electrical grid has been almost completely destroyed, and no food will grow without the sunlight that is now blocked by ash. This world is gray and cold.
Miranda records a dream she had about Baby Rachel, the imagined younger half-sister that her stepmother, Lisa, might have had with her father, Hal. Hal and Lisa left in search of Lisa’s parents out west while Miranda; her mother, Laura; her older brother, Matt; and her younger brother, Jon, stayed behind in Howell, Pennsylvania. In fact, Miranda does not know if Baby Rachel exists—the world is a dangerous place for a pregnant woman, not to mention a baby—or if the baby is, indeed, a girl. She is awakened by the sound of rain. This is unusual, as the environment has heretofore been too cold for rain; it has only snowed.
She does not want to wake the others, preferring instead to enjoy the rare moment of solitude. It rains again, during the daylight hours, and Mom spurs everyone into action, collecting rainwater for the household. When Miranda tells her that it rained a few nights previously, Mom is upset that she did not think to wake them to collect the precious rainwater.
Miranda retrieves a book from her mother’s room (she has read and re-read everything in her own room multiple times). In it, she finds a short grocery list, realizing that she has not been able to access any of the food on it in many months. She believes that there must be places where people have these foodstuffs—and electricity and running water. As she concludes her April diary, she notes that Sundays are particularly difficult to endure: Their food delivery from the town comes on Mondays, and the family is always anxious that these deliveries will eventually end.
Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary
The following Monday, Miranda’s fears are realized when the food delivery does not come. Mom allows Miranda and Matt to bike into town since they might be able to get answers at City Hall, which is occasionally open. During the trip, they discuss the possible future. Miranda alternates between hope that some places might still function much as before and dread that finding such a place might be impossible. When they reach City Hall, they find Mr. Danworth with sacks of food: He has been instructed to stop deliveries. If people need food—and if they are strong enough—then they must come into town each Monday to retrieve it.
When they return home, they discover that the electricity, always spotty at best, is on. They can do laundry and clean the sunroom where they all sleep next to the woodburning stove. Miranda asks if they can take down some of the boards across the windows; the weather is warming slightly, and the sound of the rain is comforting.
The next day, Matt suggests that he and Jon take a trip to the nearby Delaware River to fish for shad. This time of year, they should be running, and even if they are not as plentiful as in the past, it would provide some much-needed protein for the family. Mom reluctantly agrees to the plan, while Miranda grouses about being left behind. Still, the next day, Mom allows Miranda and her brothers to travel through the neighborhood, searching empty houses for necessities like food, soap, and toilet paper. They split up, contrary to Mom’s orders. When Miranda asks to go out on another search the following day, Mom demurs. She feels that what they are doing is tantamount to stealing; however, she allows Miranda to visit Mrs. Nesbitt’s house. Mrs. Nesbitt was a close neighbor who was akin to family; her death (earlier in the series) brought home the reality and scope of the disaster. Miranda finds a few small items and a small electric heater. Now that the electricity is on occasionally, they can use it to warm other rooms in the house.
Mom then wants Miranda to return to school lessons, and they discuss the causes of World War I. Miranda believes this to be a waste of time. Matt and Jon will leave tomorrow for the river.
Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary
Miranda is reading Romeo and Juliet, per Mom’s orders, as Matt and Jon leave on their trip. Miranda is distracted, thinking of all the milestones she will miss in this new world: proms, fresh food, and sunlight. She also notes that after her brothers leave, their cat, Horton, does not eat much. She reasons that he misses Jon.
Miranda asks for permission to go looking for more space heaters, but Mom does not want her out alone because it’s too dangerous. Miranda insists, admitting that the three split up the previous week when they went searching. This leads to an enormous fight between them. Miranda runs out of the house and pedals her bike furiously away from her home. After a while, she realizes that she is lost and becomes frightened. As she slowly bikes through the streets, trying to find a familiar marker, she stumbles upon a pile of dead bodies. Recognizing some of the faces, she struggles to say anything and finally manages to whisper, “I’m sorry” (37).
When she finally makes her way back home, she is so discombobulated that she accidentally suggests to Mom that Matt and Jon are dead. After some panic, the confusion is cleared, and Mom and Miranda make up. Mom makes her some soup.
Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary
Mom is eager to have Matt and Jon home, while Miranda thinks of the one-year anniversary of the disaster, on May 18. Mom discovers that the cellar is flooded and decides that she and Miranda must clear it, though Miranda finds it a thankless task. Realizing that the small pails of water they carry up the stairs will not clear the water in any meaningful way, she decides to take a brief break while Mom continues to fill pails and pots with water. When she returns to the cellar, she finds Mom face down in the water. She resuscitates her and then gets her into dry, warm clothes. Horton comforts her. Mom is shaken, wondering what would have happened—to her and to her children in the aftermath—if she had not been quickly found. All Miranda can think about is her gratitude that Mom is not with the mound of dead people she saw the previous day.
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary
Matt and Jon return, bringing a significant surprise with them: Not only have they brought back two large trash bags of shad, but they have also brought back a young woman, Syl, who Matt claims is his wife. While Mom is discomfited and a bit disapproving, Jon tells Miranda that Syl is interesting and likeable. Mom welcomes Syl—her manners remain intact—but she and Matt argue over sleeping arrangements. Mom does not consider their marriage to be legitimate, though Matt disagrees. In the circumstances of this new world in which they live, the old rituals no longer apply. Matt threatens to leave, and Mom relinquishes her objections. Matt assures her that she will come to love Syl.
Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary
They empty the cellar of water, and Miranda notes that Syl is a hard worker. The next day, Matt and Syl go into town; they pick up the food, ask for extra now that Syl is a member of the family, and try to marry officially. Their requests will be granted the following week. In the meantime, Matt suggests that he and Jon return to the river for more fish, and Mom agrees—as long as Syl stays behind to help Miranda look through empty houses for more supplies.
Syl upsets Miranda when she reveals that Matt has told her about Miranda’s diaries. Miranda thinks that she now must hide them; she knows that Mom and her brothers have always respected her privacy, but she does not know Syl very well.
She also records the first anniversary of the disaster. When the asteroid hit the moon, Miranda was a sophomore in high school, while Matt was away at college and Jon was in middle school. Her dad had asked her to be the godmother to her yet-unborn half-sibling (whom Miranda now imagines as Baby Rachel). She considers how much she has lost and realizes that losing people is the worst, most devastating kind of loss. Nobody knows where her father and his wife, Lisa, are.
Syl suggests that they perform a ceremony to recognize the date, making offerings to the moon goddess for forgiveness. When Miranda suggests burning her diaries, Mom refuses to allow it: They are the only records of this particular family during this unprecedented time. Miranda cries during the ceremony, thinking about all the horrors that have occurred in the previous year. Syl comforts her, saying that her tears are also a kind of offering.
The next day, after Matt and Jon return with far fewer fish, the family is at odds. Syl has cut her hair as an offering, and Matt accuses Mom and Miranda of wanting Syl to be unattractive like they are (they have kept their hair cut short so that it requires less upkeep). Jon is also angry at Matt, who was frustrated at being separated from Syl and took these feelings out on Jon. Though the fight is eventually (somewhat) resolved, the next day is quiet. The weather has turned colder, and the rain has, once again, turned to snow.
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary
Matt and Syl are now officially married, and Miranda worries that they will leave. The rest of May goes by in a blur. Horton still refuses to eat much. Though they have electricity more often, Miranda cannot escape her bad mood, and she longs for solitude. She and Syl go out again, looking for supplies in abandoned houses. They split up, much to Miranda’s relief, and she begins to understand that happiness is fleeting and that she is responsible for her own state of mind. This changes her perspective on the day she got lost, following the fight with Mom. She begins to realize that she was, in fact, lucky. If she had gotten a flat tire on her bike or not been able to find her way home before dark, she would have been in real trouble.
While musing on her thoughts, Miranda hits a pothole with her bike and crashes onto the road. Her face and hands are scraped up, and she will have multiple bruises. Syl finds her, and they walk home with their bikes and loot in tow. Syl tells her that she is, indeed, lucky: If she had broken a leg, nothing could be done about it. Such injuries have become life-threatening in this post-apocalyptic world. She tells Miranda about traveling with a band of people and coming across a man who had broken his leg. He was howling in pain, but they left him behind.
That night, Miranda has nightmares, one of which includes images of her kicking this anonymous man with the broken leg. When she wakes up, she thinks, for the first time, that maybe she does not want Baby Rachel to exist. It would be such a hard life to grow up in this world.
Parts 1-2 Analysis
Miranda Evans inscribes her experiences—as well as her hopes and dreams, her fears and disappointments—in her diaries, personal repositories of the post-apocalyptic world in which she and her family now live, as further explored in Symbols & Motifs. What was once extraordinary deprivation is now ordinary, and Miranda struggles with The Challenge of Accepting a New Reality: She shivers after she sneaks away from the woodburning stove to write in her diary, forced to sacrifice warmth for privacy. The weather is always cold and gray; no sunlight can penetrate the thick cloud of dust that envelopes the Earth. She longs, more than anything, for some solitude: “I have so few chances to be alone,” she writes (3). The family of four—Mom, Matt, Jon, and Miranda—essentially live together in the sunroom where the stove is, alongside their longtime family cat, Horton. This desire partially explains her sulking jealousy at Matt and Jon’s fishing trip: “If I got to go away for five whole days, I’d be landing triple axels on the living room floor” (29). It is not merely that she wants some privacy but also that she feels trapped in her home. Despite her longing for freedom, she also recognizes that her family depends on her as much as she depends on them. Her adolescent life in this dangerous world is defined by The Tension Between Responsibility and Independence.
Food becomes a symbol of Finding Hope Amid Scarcity and Loss. When Miranda happens upon an old grocery list being used as a bookmark in one of Mom’s biographies, she is struck by how ordinary the list appears yet how far removed it is from her current circumstances: “It’s been so long since I’ve eaten any of those foods. So long since I’d even thought about raspberry preserves or butter” (8-9). Still, the food deliveries turned food pick-ups give the family hope that they can continue to survive in this Darwinian world. The town’s new policy—forcing residents to travel into town for supplies rather than making deliveries—represents a hidden cruelty, a de facto restriction of food to those who cannot prove their continued physical strength. Matt calls this policy “[s]urvival of the fittest. And the luckiest” (18). Still, that there is food at all marks a measure of hope, as does the weather, as the constant snow turns slowly to rain.
Amid all this struggle and anxiety, both Mom and Miranda enact their own rituals to retain normalcy. Mom “insists [they] clean the house and pretend to do some schoolwork” (4), and they listen to the radio whenever the electricity comes on. Mom also attempts to preserve traditional forms of morality: She balks at letting the kids take items from empty houses, comparing it to stealing—until she realizes that this might keep them alive and, more importantly, together. As the plot develops, Mom’s reluctance to leave the house becomes more noticeable. She is also initially quite upset about Matt’s claims to have “married” Syl in a personal ceremony. She relents only when Matt threatens to leave, her worst fears realized.
Mom will have to grapple with the reality that her children are growing up. Matt is already an adult, while Miranda and Jon are quickly becoming so. In many ways, the novel is a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story wherein Miranda in particular tracks her transition from childhood to adulthood. She is often irresponsible, especially in the eyes of Mom: “Mom sighed. It was her ‘Miranda is never going to grow up and be responsible and understand that when it’s raining she needs to let me know’” (6). She can be petulant, as well, and she chafes against Mom’s authority. She also dreams about boys and proms. In many ways, Miranda is a typical teenager, and she longs for a return to the seemingly safe and abundant adult world that she was on the cusp of entering before the disaster.
The day when she and Mom try to clear the cellar of water, Miranda saves her mother from drowning. She revives her, bathes her, reclothes her, and keeps her warm by the stove. These are acts of adult caretaking. Later, when she is off by herself looking for supplies from neighborhood houses, she has “this great realization. [She] do[es]n’t have to be happy all the time” (77). This acknowledgment reveals a growing maturity and understanding that the world does not always, or even ever, respond to the desires and whims of the individual. Miranda begins thinking of others before herself.
It is also notable that these actions and revelations come after Miranda happens upon the pile of bodies in the field after the fight with Mom. That trauma seems to shock her out of her selfishness (though it also causes her emotional pain and disturbs her sleep with nightmares). She acquiesces more readily, though not always, to her mother’s requests and tries to understand her older brother’s motivations in marrying Syl. She also begins to pick up trinkets for her family on her supply runs, bringing back crossword puzzle books for Mom, shaving cream for Matt, and blue jeans for Syl. As she writes, almost in awe, “Everything was a treasure waiting to be discovered” (25). It is the little treasures and small moments of happiness that make this world a bearable place—perhaps even a place of hope.
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