THE COMPOUND

Eli’s dad became a famous billionaire (by founding the world’s most successful software company). He and his wife then adopted a daughter (Lexi) and had three more kids the natural way (twins Eli and Eddy, plus Teresa).

Eli’s dad wanted to become even more of a legend and give his family a unique adventure (instead of having them lose the thrill of buying regular things). He had been building a bunker in preparation for a potential nuclear war, but after baby Eli sneakily stopped the driveway snow-clearing gadget so that his father would be forced to spend at least one day of the family’s ski vacation stuck together in the house with them, his dad thought -- why not use the bunker for a similar experience?

Once the bunker was complete, Eli’s dad falsely announced to his family that a nuclear missile directed at the United States has been launched and will demolish the world as they know it in 40 minutes! He pulls them into the bunker, closes the door, and sets the lock for 15 years (when the radiation will supposedly die down). After the door closes, they realize that two members got left outside the bunker: Eli’s grandma and Eddy (and their dog Cocoa).

Eli’s dad secretly had planned it for Eli’s mom to not make it (to make their story seem more tragic and realistic to the rest of the world, and maybe so he wouldn’t have to deal with his mother-in-law for the next 15 years?). He did this by planting a kitty outside the family’s RV that they were camping in, knowing that little Teresa couldn’t pass up picking it up and bringing it in. Eddy is very allergic to cats, so when his allergies flare up, Gram drives back to the house to pick up his allergy medication. Eli’s dad times his false announcement once Gram is en route.

What Eli’s dad didn’t count on was Eddy sneaking into Gram’s car to go with her. (Eli had convinced Eddy to get a sneak peak of their birthday presents.) So for the next few years, Eli had to grow up without Eddy (which is a shame since Eddy is the nice twin, who once saved Eli from falling off a cliff, and Eli is the evil twin, who once switched the name labels on their birthday presents).

In the compound, Eli, his mom, and his sisters thought that the entire outside world had gone up in smoke (thus assuming that Eddy and Gram were dead). On the flip side, Eddy and Gram thought that Eli and the rest of the family were dead (since Eli’s dad set fire to the RV to give the world some sort of explanation for their disappearance).

In response to the T.S. Eliot quote that says, “This is the way the world ends// Not with a bang but a whimper”, Eli’s experience is quite the opposite:

“T.S. Eliot was wrong. My world ended with a bang the minute we entered the Compound and that silver door closed behind us” (i).

Eli’s dad’s plan was that in 15 years, they would reenter the world. The whole world would be so amazed that it was possible for them to live underground for that long, and many people would want to copy their idea in case a nuclear war actually emerges. In addition to being regarded as heroes, all the family members will have a renewed appreciation for regular life in the normal world.

Six years into the compound life (when Eli is now 15), Eli pieces together holes in his dad’s story:

Some of the music in the library was recorded at a later date than when they entered the compound.

Eli’s laptop momentarily receives a Wi-Fi signal outside of his dad’s office (hinting to outside civilization).

Eli’s mom notices that her husband somehow had enough time to trade out the real Monet painting that was hanging in their bedroom with the fake one that was intended for their replica bedroom in the Compound.

Because Eli’s dad is the only one who knows the door’s code, he once promised Eli’s mom that he would plant clues around the compound in the event that something happened to them and they needed to leave before the 15 years was up. Eli figured out this code from the following steps:

His dad gave him the clue that the door’s code was somehow related to “turducken” (that is, turkey stuffed with duck stuffed with chicken).

Thinking about things that are stuffed inside one another (with there being a mystery inside), Eli takes a close look at a Russian doll set, where the smallest doll had the word of the material that Teresa’s oboe was made out of written on it.

There seemed to be no clue on the oboe itself, but Eli took a closer look at the parchment paper that the oboe was wrapped in. The code was written on this paper in invisible ink (revealed with the vapor of ammonia fumes).

Eli’s dad snatched the paper away from Eli before Eli was able to enter them, but Eli remembered enough numbers to piece together that the numbers were the dates of memorable nuclear events (like the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

Eli and the rest of this family escaped, so they were reunited with Eddy, Gram, and even Cocoa! However, Eli’s dad escaped in his trusted account’s (Phil’s) helicopter, presumably to keep up the charade of staying off the grid?

Back

This book raises a lot of moral issues.

Eli’s dad liked to push his power to see how far he could take things. He once invited a group of animal activists to his house for Thanksgiving dinner and insisted on serving everyone a slice of turducken. Even though many people were vegetarian, they felt awkward saying no to the main entree to the richest man in the world, so none of them refused.

Eli read a book where people are stranded on an island and they take cyanide to save themselves the misery of dying from starvation and loneliness. Is it right to be able to choose when your last breath is?

Eli’s dad asked his planners to contaminate their food supply in sneaky ways (which they did by setting the thermometer of the food pantry to 90 degrees instead of 60 degrees to decrease the storage life, storing mostly fluorescent bulbs instead of growth bulbs so that there weren’t many bulbs available to help plants grow, and planting traces of rat poison in their grains and flour). Eli’s dad wanted this to experiment with what moral decisions his family would make in the face of disaster.
- He convinced his wife to bear 3 more children (even though her doctor had warned her that Teresa should be their last child due to the medical complications that she had during that birth). Eli’s dad declares that these children are “Supplements” (for them to eat if they ever run out of food, like the explorers on the Oregon Trail). However, Eli’s mom and sisters care for them like the family members that they truly are and work to make sure it never gets to the point of their “intended purpose”.
- Eli’s dad begins toying with the idea of cloning so that they could expedite the number of “Supplements” they have.
- Eli’s mom feeds Eli’s dad with bread made from flour that smells funny (since it was ergot-infested) just since she didn’t want to give him another reason to view the Supplements as anything other than beloved children. She warns Eli and his sister not to eat this bread just in case anything bad happens to Eli’s dad (who ends up becoming very sick as a result).

At the end of the book, Eli’s dad and his accountant throw bombs into the Compound to destroy their traces. What a waste! Why was this necessary?