60 pages • 2 hours read
Robert C. O'BrienZ For Zachariah
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1974A 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 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “May 20”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
Ann Burden sees smoke in the distance for the third day in a row—a column rising into the sky, appearing each afternoon, and then disappearing at night. She estimates that it started about 15 miles away, at Claypole Ridge, but it is closer each time it appears.
She knows that everyone beyond Claypole Ridge—in Ogdentown—is dead. Her father; her brother, Joseph; and her cousin David went out to Ogdentown after the war to see if they could find anyone. They searched homes, but all they found were bodies, and they rang the church bells and waited, but no one ever came.
The next day, the smoke has moved even closer, just over the ridge where the road crosses the state highway. Ann prays that “he” (she decides to call the person “he” even though she’s not sure) will decide to follow the highway, but she knows that if he looks toward her, he will see the only living foliage in the entire area.
Ann first got the notebook that she is now writing in a few months ago. It allows her to keep better track of things like when she planted her garden, and it gives her someone to talk to.
The last radio station went out a few months before that. Near the end, the man on the radio talked about how little food he had left and how few people were around him in Boston, and he repeatedly broadcast his location. Ann decided that he started to sound “crazy,” which made her realize that “there are worse things than being alone” (6). She started moving her supplies to a cave around then, and she is now prepared to hide from the approaching man until she can decide whether he is safe.
On May 22, the fire is still in the same spot. Ann decides that the person must be leaving his supplies at the crossroads and then checking in each direction and returning to the same spot each night.
After they went to Ogdentown the first time, her family decided to go again to check on the Amish nearby and explore different directions. Her mother and father and their neighbors went together and told Ann and her brother to stay home. However, after they left, Ann realized that her brother must have hidden in the back of their truck. Her family never came back. She went to the edges of her valley, looking out in each direction and climbing a tree, but all she saw beyond was dead land.
Chapter 2 Summary: “May 23”
The next morning, Ann does some things that will hide her presence in the valley. She lets her chickens and cows out and digs up her garden, covering it with rocks and dirt. She hides in her cave, where she can see most of the valley as well as Burden Hill, where she expects the man to come soon.
She thinks of how lucky she is to have survived this long. The general store in town is well stocked, and she had a bunch of firewood already cut. The nuclear war—which only lasted a week—ended in the summer, giving her time to prepare for winter. There are also two streams, one of which must come from underground and not pass out of the valley because the fish still live in it; it is her only source of water. She has no way of knowing the exact date, as she sometimes loses track on her calendar. However, she plans to time the days to figure out which is the longest. The longest day is the summer solstice—June 22. Once she has established the date, she will know when she turns 16.
That afternoon, she sees the fire lit closer, which tells her for sure that the man will be coming over Burden Hill soon. She cooks some food, knowing that she soon won’t be able to start a fire without alerting the man to her location.
The next day, Ann goes to the top of the hill and looks down at the man. He is dressed in a green suit and pulling a wagon, also covered in the green material. She realizes that she will have to decide soon about whether to approach him or let him pass through.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Still May 24”
Ann watches the man for the rest of the day. He comes over the hill, sees the green of living plants, and then runs down and looks closely at the trees. He starts to take off his suit but then stops, instead pulling out two different Geiger counters to measure the radiation. He decides that it is safe and then pulls off his helmet and yells, asking if anyone is there. Ann considers going down to him but then decides to remain cautious.
The man looks wild; he is pale and has long hair and a beard. She thinks that he looks “unhealthy” but also “poetic” (23).
The man eventually goes down to Ann’s house, yelling again to see if anyone is there and checking in all the windows. He builds a fire outside the house, cooks a meal, and then goes inside a tent, all while Ann watches from the cave.
The next day, Ann watches the man go to the store and the church. He checks the water at the good stream and drinks. He shoots one of her chickens for food and then shoots at something in a bush and misses. However, at midday, he shocks Ann when he takes off his suit and bathes in Burden Creek—the dead stream—without checking the water first. She wonders what exactly is wrong with the water and how much damage it will do to him.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Still May 25”
That night, to Ann’s surprise, her cousin’s dog, Faro, comes back after having been gone for months. He is thin and is missing half his hair. Ann thought that he left the valley, but she decides that he must have been waiting in the woods near the edge after following her family in their truck. She guesses that the gunshots brought him back. She watches as he approaches the man, runs away, and then finally goes up to the man when he offers him some chicken. Faro then turns and runs to the cave, tracking Ann’s scent. He stays only briefly—Ann guesses that he is disappointed not to have found David—and then goes back to the house. Ann is worried about what will happen if the man is able to follow Faro the next time he runs to the cave.
As Ann watches the man, she considers whether to talk to him. She realizes that having another person with her is what she had always hoped for; however, she now realizes that there is a chance that he could be dangerous or that they may not like each other. She considers how she could become a “slave” to him. She sees him cut his hair and trim his beard and considers how “he looks almost handsome” (37).
May 26 is a Sunday, and Ann considers how she would normally be in church. She doesn’t go during the winter, but when the weather is nice, she likes to put flowers on the alter and sit and read from the Bible. It is not much different from before, as the church was never used for real services. Her ancestors—the Burdens who founded the area—built it thinking that a town would eventually grow around it, but one never did.
Today, she follows the man as he goes into town. He stops at the store and gets new clothes, which makes Ann realize that he is much younger than she originally thought. She guesses that he is around 30. He continues to the end of the valley, stopping at the exit where the streams converge. At that point, he realizes that there are two streams—one dead and one alive—and Ann guesses that he figures out that he has bathed in the dead one.
On the way back to the house, Ann follows him in the woods above him. She sees him stop three times, violently vomiting. By the end, he is stumbling and barely able to make it back into his tent. He does not reappear for the rest of the day.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
Z for Zachariah is an epistolary novel: one that takes the form of a series of documents that exist within the novel’s fictional world—in this case, a collection of diary entries written by Ann. As a result, the novel is told in the first-person point of view from Ann’s perspective, with the events recounted by her after they have already occurred. In the first section of the text, this narrative structure builds suspense around the arrival of the man in the valley. Because the reader does not have his perspective, little is known about him. Instead, the reader sees Ann’s anxiety, hope, and indecision after finding another human after a year of solitude.
Ann’s hopes and fears about the arrival of the man introduce the theme of The Tension Between Community and Autonomy. She faces a dilemma—whether to notify the man of her presence, thus making herself vulnerable, or to remain hidden, thus condemning herself to permanent solitude. She writes, “[T]his man is a stranger, and bigger and stronger than I am. If he is kind, then I am all right. But if he is not—what then? He can do whatever he likes, and I will be a slave for the rest of my life” (36). O’Brien’s diction with the use of the word “slave” emphasizes how much Ann values her individual freedom. Although she would like to build a life with another human and craves that connection, she is also intelligent enough to recognize that a life of solitude at least offers her safety.
Ann’s intelligence and resilience are important components of her character, on display from the very beginning of the text. Despite being only 15 years old, she has managed to survive on her own for a year. Not only that, but she has also created a successful system for herself in the valley, planting her own food, raising animals, and rationing her limited supply of items in the store. Additionally, her recognition that another human could be dangerous—despite her extreme desire for human companionship—emphasizes her logical and intelligent nature. Her forethought in moving to the cave, making her home look abandoned, and doing everything she can to hide traces of her presence in the valley show how calculating she can be.
One important component of Ann’s survival is her connection to the land. In her journal, she provides vivid descriptions of the valley and her home, understanding the space that she inhabits and the best way to use that space for her survival—both over the last year and after the man arrives. This connection demonstrates her role in The Conflict Between Technology and Nature. The land itself is what has saved Ann’s life, as, for unknown reasons, the valley has been left untouched by radiation. She knows how to cultivate the land, having learned from her father while growing up on the farm, and understands the value that her garden and the animals hold for her survival, ultimately emphasizing the importance of nature.
One important motif in the novel is religion, which is introduced through Ann’s discussion of the church in the valley. She notes that the valley has a physical church but that “there never were any real services in the church, not in [her family’s] time, anyway, nor any minister. It is very small, and was built a long time ago by some of [their] ancestors” (37). Ann goes to church each Sunday in the spring and summer, often just sitting and reading the Bible. This description of the church before the war as well as Ann’s connection to it now—not performing “any real services” and only attending when the weather permits (37)—shows the absence of organized religion from her life. However, she has not abandoned religion entirely, instead keeping her faith in her own, personal way. Ann’s faith will be an important component of her character in the novel, emphasizing the impulse to turn to faith in the face of catastrophe.
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