As a story
with a main character that is male, there is bound to be a female character to accompany
him. Mainly there are love interests or mothers. In this story Eli lives along
with his two sisters, Lexie and Terese. He also lives in the compound with his
mother. This story mainly consists of weak women who are more concerned about
family than the inevitable death from starvation. They are manipulated in cruel
ways and the only strong women were left on the surface world.
Terese is the youngest of the original family and therefore
seeks someone to look out for. Her main purpose in the compound is to look
after the supplements while her mother is away. She cares for them and plays
with them. Overall she is the gentlest with the need to take care of her
younger siblings. The mother and Lexie are the next ones who are the most
gentle. They both offer their bodies to conceive a possible food source for the
family. While the mother gives birth naturally, Lexie, for a while, accepts
that she has to give birth to the clones. Eventually Lexie realizes that she
had been played as seen in this quote, “I just didn’t want you to feel like the
pioneering is over,” (Bodeen 168). The last two are the strongest of the group,
blessed by the author to stand up for themselves. Grams and Els both have a
tough characteristic that partially contributed to the reason why they were
left to the surface.
In The Compound it really seemed like being a caring woman
was a curse, because each one of them were fooled to do something so
significant as to give up their children for sustenance later in life. It also
seemed like that’s the only thing any of the girls ever did. Each one cared for
the supplements or did other “womanly” acts such as cooking and cleaning. The
mother even cleaned a room that hadn’t been used for six years just so that
when S. A. Bodeen made Eli stumble into the room, it would be clean and just as
he had seen it all those years ago. All three women were pawns, though
important, to create a family environment that Eli would turn to. The main
character, Eli, in the beginning of the book looked down on the mother and
Terese for caring so much about his siblings. When he turn, however, he meets
the kids that all three women try to protect. This protection would lead to
Lucas helping Eli and the others escape from the compound, and finding the code
to even make it that far. At the end of
the book, Eli, and somewhat the author, come around to the woman’s side and
everyone begins to care more about the human life than the crazy idea of cannibalism.
So while in the beginning you often overlook the presence of
the mother, Lexie, and Terese, they are very much noticeable in the coming
chapters.
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