65 pages • 2 hours read
M. R. CareyThe Girl with All the Gifts
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 16-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
As Parks wheels Melanie up the stairs to Caldwell’s lab, new sensory input overwhelms her. The chemical smell, so dominant in the cells below, fades, and when Parks takes her outside, the bright sunlight and the feel of the fresh air shocks her system. Slowly, she grows accustomed to the overload and begins to process the sights, sounds, and smells. Parks then wheels her into a squat, boxy building. As they move over a tiled floor, Melanie knows a shower is forthcoming. While she and Parks are both sprayed, she observes her surroundings: the movable shower heads and the mechanism that controls the steel shutters sealing the building off from the outside.
After the shower, Parks wheels her into Caldwell’s lab, a startling environment full of objects and images Melanie has never seen before: gleaming stainless-steel surfaces and jars full of animals, and human body parts. Caldwell instructs Selkirk to move Melanie onto an examination table. After restraining her, Parks leaves with her wheelchair—a sign that she won’t be returned to her cell. Melanie wants to cry out to Miss Justineau, but she remains silent, unsure of how to react to this new reality. Caldwell and Selkirk cut off her clothing.
Chapter 17 Summary
Justineau senses something is amiss when Melanie is not in class. When she finds her cell empty, she asks Parks where she is, although he is distracted by a report of several hungries near the perimeter fence. She pushes him for an answer, and he tells her that he took Melanie to Caldwell’s lab. She bolts for the door, ignoring Parks’s warnings to stay inside.
Chapter 18 Summary
Inside the lab, Caldwell and Selkirk wash Melanie and shave her head. She begins to understand what Caldwell plans to do and begs to be taken back to the classroom. Caldwell refuses and picks up a scalpel. Justineau bursts into the room carrying a fire extinguisher and orders Caldwell to stop. When Caldwell asks Selkirk to call security, Justineau smashes the phone. Caldwell tries to reason with Justineau; meanwhile, she carefully sets down the scalpel but pulls a can of something—possibly pepper spray—out of her pocket and sprays Justineau in the face. Justineau drops the fire extinguisher and collapses. Again, Caldwell orders Selkirk to call security, but before she can resume the dissection, they hear an explosion outside. A second explosion shatters the window, and hungries swarm inside.
Chapter 19 Summary
Outside, mobs of hungries pour out of the surrounding woods before Parks can mount a response. Driven by junkers armed with cattle prods and flamethrowers, they rush headlong into the weakened fence. Vastly outnumbered, Park and his soldiers fall back to the base. The weight of the horde finally pulls one of the fence supports out of the ground, and the hungries flood through.
Chapter 20 Summary
In the lab, Justineau struggles to focus after the pepper spray attack. She sees a hungry devouring Selkirk on the floor. Caldwell fights off two more. Justineau finds the fire extinguisher and hammers the head of one of them while Caldwell rakes the face of the other with a shard of broken glass. Justineau looks for Melanie, but she’s gone, so she grabs Caldwell and drags her out of the lab. From the corridor, Justineau watches the battle between Parks’s soldiers and the junkers. She and Caldwell take refuge in a storeroom, but Justineau wants to search for Melanie. She climbs out a window and drops onto a stretch of empty ground. Caldwell follows. The fighting has moved to the other side of the compound, so Justineau runs for the classroom block. She weaves around a chaotic mass of hungries, junkers, and soldiers until two junkers intercept her. One, a teenage boy, is about to shoot her when Melanie appears, taking him down and biting into his throat.
Chapter 21 Summary
For Melanie, the smell of blood and the first taste of flesh are so intensely pleasurable that they overwhelm her senses. She’s in a feeding frenzy, and all thoughts of Justineau or Caldwell vanish. When the second junker knocks her away, Justineau tackles him as Melanie sinks her teeth into his leg, savoring the raw meat. Eventually, Justineau pulls her free and they flee the battle. Comforted by Justineau’s smell, Melanie calms down, but only for a moment. Soon the desire to feed returns, and Melanie is torn between her love for Miss Justineau and her deep craving for flesh. She fears the animal inside her will win the struggle.
Chapter 22 Summary
Justineau runs, Melanie in tow, without any clear destination. The classroom block is locked and hungries have scented her, so she runs in the other direction; however, the fence blocks her escape. Trapped and with no energy left to defend herself, Justineau prepares for the worst. Just as a hungry reaches for her, Parks runs it down with one of the base’s Humvees. Justineau and Melanie join Caldwell and Parks inside—Private Gallagher mans the gun on the vehicle’s roof—and they plow through the fence and over a ditch, fleeing the ruins of Hotel Echo.
Chapters 16-22 Analysis
The confrontation between Justineau and Caldwell comes to a head when Caldwell brings Melanie to her lab for dissection. Up to this point, Justineau has relied on pleas for mercy, content to gain Melanie reprieves, but when Melanie doesn’t show up for class, Justineau must act. How far beyond threats she is willing to go is unclear; she is impulsive and reactive, without any clear plan other than saving Melanie from Caldwell’s scalpel. The zombie attack makes the choice for her, and rather than saving one child from an overzealous scientist, she must save herself and Melanie from hordes of undead—or so she assumes. In addition to solving the problem of Melanie’s dissection, the sudden assault also unleashes the full force of the young girl’s nature as she tears into two junkers to save her beloved mentor. Not content to let his audience imagine Melanie as a helpless victim—and therefore more sympathetic—Carey describes in vivid detail her ravenous hunger and sensory pleasure as she turns into a meat-eating machine. The contrast between terrified, pleading Melanie begging Caldwell to set her free and zombie Melanie gorging herself on raw flesh is startling, and it raises questions about the nature of children—especially about the delicate balance they walk between civilization’s expectations and their more basic, feral instincts. Melanie’s cannibalism of the junkers toes just this line, turning her savagery to the sympathetic purpose of saving someone she loves.
The sudden breach of the compound signals a dramatic change in the narrative. Thus far, readers have only known the world inside Hotel Echo—its confinement, its strict protocols, its interpersonal squabbles, and its power plays. Apart from some vague information about junkers and hungries, the outside world is a mystery, and how these five diverse personalities will navigate the dangers of the wild (as well their own personal dynamics) promises plenty of raw material for Carey to work with. Under the tremendous stress of fleeing zombies and averting infection, it is unclear whether these characters will unite in common cause, or whether their previous arguments will divide them further. The X factor in all this is Melanie, torn between her child-self—enabled and represented by Miss Justineau—and her zombie nature and value as a research subject, represented by Dr. Caldwell. The moral questions abound. While Justineau will no doubt fight for Melanie’s basic human worth, Caldwell’s motivations may be murkier. Although the attack may steel her resolve to use Melanie as a test subject, it’s also possible that long-term exposure to her—the kind of exposure only Justineau has so far experienced—may change her perception of the girl. Ultimately, the question Caldwell must ask herself is what the value of a single life is relative to the broader goal of saving humanity.
