Module 4 LS 5623 The Dead & the Gone

Book cover image from amazon.com

THE DEAD AND THE GONE
1. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Pfeffer, Susan Beth. 2008. THE DEAD & THE GONE. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 9780547258553.

2. PLOT SUMMARY
Alex Morales is an average seventeen year old boy. As he lives in New York City with his Puerto Rican family, he values his faith, his family, and ‘a full scholarship to Georgetown and summer internships with United States senators. He wanted to be the first president of the United States of Puerto Rican descent.” When an asteroid hits the moon and knocks it closer to Earth, Alex’s dreams change...now he wants “to wake to hear Papi cursing him out and Mami defending him. He wanted the moon back where it belonged and pessimistic scientists to crawl under rocks. More than anything, he wanted to know his parents were safe.” During the seven month span of the book, Alex bears witness to tsunamis, floods, rising tides, volcanic ash blocking out the sun, earthquakes, Yankee Stadium becoming a morgue, and much despair. He struggles to keep his sisters alive and to be among the living, not the dead or the gone.

3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Susan Pfeffer creates a science fiction novel which soon draws on dystopian aspects. An asteroid hitting the moon and knocking it off course is what causes the action in the novel, but it is how the characters interact with themselves and each other that kept this reader involved and kept this book from being just another sci-fi tale. Because the author labeled each chapter as a date without a year, we know that the story covers seven months. The language and situations used give it a modern day feel.

Seventeen year old Alex Morales is the protagonist. While he struggles with keeping his sisters in line, his biggest problem is what the world has become with the moon being off track. During one portion of the novel, his supplies dealer tries to trade him safe passage for him and his sister, Brie, by using his younger sister as the bartering item.

Booklist declares “Religion is one of the strong threads running through the novel.” This is evident in the way that Alex continues to pray during all that is going on “As long as he prayed, he didn’t have to think. He didn’t have to remember”. He sends his sister, Bri, to a convent in the country, he goes to a private catholic school, and he and his sisters frequently pray to Madre Santisiana.


4. AWARDS AND HONORS
2008 Cybil Award Finalist
2009 Texas Lone Star Reading List

5. REVIEW EXCERPTS
From Booklist:"The story’s power, as in the companion book, comes from readers’ ability to picture themselves in a similiar situation; everything Pfeffer writes about seems wrenchingly plausible."

From Kirkus: "As in the previous novel, Life as We Knew It, realistically bone-chilling despair and death join with the larger question of how the haves and have-nots of a major metropolitan city will ultimately survive in an increasingly lawless, largely deserted urban wasteland. Incredibly engaging."