The Cabin at the End of the World

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-2

Part 2, Chapters 3-4

Part 3, Chapters 5-6

Part 4, Chapter 7

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Part 1, Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Come and See”

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Wen”

Content Warning: This section of the guide references antigay violence.

The novel opens in a New Hampshire forest near the Canadian border. Seven-year-old Wen is on vacation with her American parents, Andrew and Eric, who adopted her as a baby from a Chinese orphanage. The three are staying in a remote cabin.

Outside the cabin, Wen wades in a lagoon and tries to catch grasshoppers. She intends to keep the insects in a jar to study them and has made air holes in the jar lid. A tall, heavily built stranger approaches, wearing jeans and a bright white dress shirt. He introduces himself as Leonard. His demeanor is warm and gentle, and he quickly befriends Wen. Although wary of strangers, she instinctively trusts Leonard. He helps her catch seven grasshoppers, and she gives them names. Wen is self-conscious about her faint facial scar. When Leonard asks about it, she explains that she was born with a cleft palate and had many surgeries to correct it. She also reveals that Andrew has a scar from a childhood baseball accident.

During the conversation, Leonard frequently checks the trail behind them. Wen starts to feel uncomfortable and emphasizes that her two fathers are nearby in the cabin. Three strangers appear on the horizon: two women and one man. All are dressed like Leonard in jeans and shirts, which differ only in color. Each carries a sinister-looking, long-handled tool. Leonard tells Wen that he and his companions need her family’s help. Regretfully, they must make some difficult decisions to save the world.

Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Eric, Wen, and Andrew”

Wen’s parents have both encountered antigay prejudice. Thirteen years earlier, a stranger attacked Andrew in a bar. His attacker hit him with a beer bottle, leaving a scar on the back of his head. Eric was raised Catholic, and his parents briefly cut him off when he revealed he was gay. Andrew teaches English at Boston University, and Eric is a market analyst.

While Wen is out front, Andrew and Eric sit on the deck at the back of the cabin, which overlooks the lake. Eric worries about Wen playing in the front yard alone and wants to check on her. Laughing at his fears, Andrew jokes that their daughter is likely fighting with bears. Wen runs onto the deck and anxiously tells them about the strangers outside.

Eric and Andrew refuse to open the cabin door when Leonard knocks seven times. They assess the strangers through the window. Leonard calmly and politely introduces his companions. Redmond wears a red shirt, Sabrina’s is off-white, and Adriane’s shirt is black. Redmond is the most aggressive of the four, insisting that they’ll find a way to enter the property. Andrew orders them to leave, declaring that he’s calling the police. Sabrina points out that there is no cell reception in the area and apologetically admits that she cut their landline. Leonard assures the family the contraptions they’re carrying are “tools,” not “weapons.” Andrew announces that he has a gun.

Andrew learned to shoot as a boy on his family’s farm. He decided to buy a gun for protection after the bar attack. Eric was unhappy about having a gun in the house, particularly after adopting Wen, and they kept it in a safe. Andrew failed to tell Eric that he brought the gun on vacation. He fantasizes about shooting Redmond, who looks typical of the bigoted, antigay men he has previously encountered. Unfortunately, he left the weapon in their SUV outside.

The strangers disperse, looking for an entry point into the cabin. The family closes the curtains, turns on the lights, and blocks the deck and basement doors with furniture. Looking for weapons, they arm themselves with a poker, tongs, and a mini shovel. Andrew suggests they run to the SUV at the first opportunity.

Redmond breaks into the cabin through the doors to the deck, and his companions follow, using different entry points. Eric picks up Wen and runs to the front door, but Sabrina trips him with her long-handled weapon. Attempting to protect Wen from the fall, Eric is knocked unconscious. Redmond grabs the poker from Andrew, knocking over a yellow lamp as he does so. Andrew repeatedly punches Redmond, whose nose streams with blood. He tries to defend himself from the blows but doesn’t retaliate. Andrew stops only when Wen tells him to. Eric regains consciousness, and Sabrina examines him, claiming that she’s a nurse.

Part 1, Chapters 1-2 Analysis

The novel uses a primarily third-person perspective, giving insight into multiple character’s thoughts. The story begins from Wen’s point of view, emphasizing the seven-year-old’s innocence and vulnerability through her pleasure in childlike activities. The opening description of Wen wading in the lagoon deliberately evokes the first lines of William Golding’s 1954 novel Lord of the Flies. In his liner notes for The Cabin at the End of the World, Tremblay reveals that he aimed to capture the atmosphere of Golding’s text (Tremblay, Paul. “The Cabin at the End of the World Liner Notes.” Paul Tremblay, 18 Jul. 2019). Like Ralph at the beginning of Lord of the Flies, Wen innocently enjoys the idyllic, peaceful setting with no concept of the violence and trauma that will soon disrupt it.

Leonard’s unexpected appearance is unsettling. His intentions are unclear even though Wen perceives him as a gentle giant. Tremblay named Leonard after Lenny in John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men. Like his namesake, he’s physically imposing but has an innocent, childlike manner. Although she isn’t a naturally trusting child, Wen instinctively trusts Leonard, contrasting his warm and open expression with the fake smiles of many adults.

When introducing Leonard’s character, Tremblay highlights his contradictory qualities. Throughout the novel, he’s compared to large creatures combining gentle and dangerous associations, emphasizing his potential for both virtue and violence. For example, his hands are reminiscent of bears’ paws, while his eyes are “round and brown like a teddy bear’s” (16). Tremblay intends the encounter between Wen and Leonard to resemble a scene in James Whale’s movie Frankenstein (1931) where the Monster innocently interacts with a young girl before accidentally killing her. The allusion foreshadows Leonard’s later role in Wen’s death.

A sense of foreboding gradually builds in this chapter. Wen’s concern over the welfare of the insects she collects highlights the symbolism of the grasshopper jar. The seven insects inside it foreshadow the seven characters who will soon be confined inside the cabin. Further tension develops as Leonard glances back at the trail, indicating that he’s expecting the arrival of someone or something else. Emphasizing the remote nature of the setting, Wen recalls that the dirt road to the cabin took “twenty-one minutes and forty-nine seconds to drive” (13-14), and they have no cell phone reception. The suspense climaxes when three additional strangers appear, carrying menacing-looking weapons, and Leonard delivers his ominous message. The novel’s apocalyptic imagery emerges in the different-colored shirts worn by Leonard and his group, which allude to the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The bizarre yet lethal-looking tools the strangers carry foreshadow the forthcoming violence.

Chapter 2 shifts among Eric, Wen, and Andrew’s perspectives—a narrative style Tremblay continues throughout the novel. The author creates dramatic irony and tension as Andrew and Eric lightheartedly disagree over whether they should check on Wen, with no concept of the impending threat. The four strangers breaking into the cabin establishes the novel as a home invasion thriller. However, although the scenario conforms to the genre’s tropes, there are signs that the intruders don’t conform to type. Except for Redmond, the strangers are incongruously polite and apologetic, disrupting the home invader trope. The contrast between their aggressive actions and unassuming manner is intentionally disconcerting, serving as “proof of their collective madness” (57).

These chapters provide backstories that highlight the novel’s motif of scars, introducing the theme of The Traumatic Effects of Violence. Wen is self-conscious about her facial scar—the result of multiple surgeries on a cleft palate. Meanwhile, the text reveals that Andrew’s scar was acquired in an antigay attack, not (as he told Wen) from a childhood accident. Andrew’s first impression of Redmond as typical of the “hate-filled, ignorant cavemen he’s had to deal with” (53) foreshadows his later conviction that Redmond is Jeff O’Bannon—the man who attacked him years earlier.