What are your views about the story Z for Zachariah? What do you think it is mainly about? What do you like or dislike about it? Do you think the narrator is reliable or not? Why? Do you have any questions about the story?
Why doesn't Loomis shoot Ann? Lousy aim, it seems. He tried several times; the first time he didn't score the crippling shot he was trying for. The second and third time he missed completely.
More seriously, though, her reminder of Edward's death - which he'd probably pushed out of his mind - revived the guilt he'd felt about it, which would remind him of the further guilt he would incur if he murdered Ann for the 'crime' of 'stealing' a suit he no longer needs for his survival. It shows that he's not completely a sociopath, that he HAS a conscience that can be revived from its sleep - shown in how he spares Ann and gives her the clue to another possible life that he has concealed until then.
Especially at 'understanding Mr Loomis' Not really sure what age the chap was who wrote it but it's a disturbing interpretation. I agree Ann is far from perfect, she annoys me frequently as I wish she had more foresight and courage, but then I have to remind myself she's a 16yr old girl who has lost everything and is actually remarkably practical and hard working given her circumstances.
I am mostly appalled by the attitude that this critic shares of her being a woman (not a woman - a girl!) who simply won't sleep with him if he were the last man on earth... which he is of course, but what sexist nonsense. She was open to the idea of romance had he not treated her worse than the dog after she saved his life. Yes her ideals were childish nonsense, but we we are all guilty of that from time to time. Had Loomis been gentle and encouraging he would have got everything he wanted and much more besides, since Ann seems to martyr herself.
It was also NOT her responsibility to stop that idiot swimming the creek, as he rightly points out - he's the expert with the Geiger counter after all...
Mr Loomis is a controlling and selfish person. He's not a villain - this story isn't heroine vs villain - he's just that type of person that exists in all walks of life. He think he owns everything and everyone. His sense of entitlement exasperated by the fact its only him and Ann. You notice Ann comes round to the idea of sharing everything in the valley while he remains obsessed with ownership. Loomis didn't rape Ann but I feel sure he would have to procreate regardless of whether he hurt her or not. Had he been a gent she would have WANTED kids with him, as she had fantasised about. I think he turned into a paranoid creature who would have chained Ann in the cellar given half a chance.
Ann is annoyingly over flexible and accommodating. Far too selfless and kind (though yes some of her kindness is alos self serving) and that's why I believe she would fail to survive outside the valley. Just as Loomis seals his fate of being alone by driving the one person left away. She kills herself and cages Loomis there; role reversal.
They are, in a way, both idiots. But as we have yet to experience a nuclear war of this kind, its hard to be too negative about them when the circumstances leading to their 'union' are so far beyond our current understanding. Its blatantly obvious early on that if they communicated properly they could have had a happy life in the Valley. Its the most frustrating thing about the book. I certainly have a love/hate relationship with it.
(on a side note the new film looks.. well nothing like the book... casting is all wrong and no love triangle exists - not even a 3rd character. Don't you hate Hollywood when it does this?!)
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Aletheia
8/10/2015 09:12:58 am
I just finished reading "Z for Zachariah" last night, and your analysis of Ann as unreliable narrator helped me organize my own inchoate thoughts in the direction they'd already started to go.
I think the mistake a lot of people have made in considering your analysis is that they're still thinking in terms of polarized extremes: if one character is good and competent and rational and right, the other must be evil and incompetent and irrational and wrong. What nearly everyone fails to consider is that there doesn't *need* to be a bad guy here. This isn't a "man vs. man" conflict so much as it is "man vs. nature AND himself." It's a story of two basically good (but realistically flawed) people, each with his or her own area of competence, each left subtly and significantly off balance by a YEAR of isolation, grief, fear, fatigue, repeatedly dashed hopes, and (at least in Loomis's case) guilt. Neither is always right, or always wrong.
Ann may be an unreliable narrator, but she's not an unsympathetic character. I liked her a lot. She is compassionate and competent, yes. She's also selfish and unreasonable at times. She's not a saint, and she's not a raving psychotic. She's a sheltered young woman who has been through hell. She's human. So is Loomis. BOTH are more than a little neurotic (as anyone would be after what they'd been through), both can be petty and stubborn and pushy, and both fail to communicate for reasons that we can't entirely (but can partially) fault them for.
Rather than either Ann OR Loomis being the "right and reasonable" one, I can't help thinking that if they'd managed to communicate and work together, they would have made a reasonably harmonious complementary pair. Ann knows the land intimately and has basic skills in agriculture and animal husbandry. Loomis has the scientific and mechanical know-how to get the tractor working and possibly even construct a generator to bring electricity back to the valley, and he's a better long-term planner. Loomis's pragmatic disposition and scientific mindset could nicely balance Ann's innocence and sentimentality, each keeping the other from going too far, except that by the time they actually meet, it's probably too late. One has to wonder what would have happened if Ann hadn't let her fear of Loomis's anger hold her back from pointing out the reasonable compromise of going to the Ogdentown library for technical books and picking up a few novels at the same time. I can't imagine Loomis would have objected to that, even if he wanted to wait until he was strong enough to go instead of sending her. If Loomis had shown a bit more patience for Ann's youth and romantic nature, if she'd brooded less over his irritability and lack of tact, I believe she would have appreciated his insights and the higher standard of living his mechanical know-how could afford, and he might have come to appreciate (even more than he already did) having a companion who would liven up the struggle for survival with a touch of beauty and culture - and surely it wouldn't be too much of a struggle to persuade him to take an interest in preserving the intellectual and artistic legacy of the human race.
Each, individually, could probably eke out a life of basic survival in the valley, but neither can progress and thrive without the other, let alone reproduce (obviously). Together, they seem to have about as good a chance as any two people could of really making a go of it. It kind of makes you want to grab them both and smack their heads together until they get a clue.
For the record, I *do not* believe that Loomis would have been justified in raping Ann, in any case. There ARE men I wouldn't have sex with if they were literally the last man on earth. If Ann or Loomis, together or individually, decided it was better to let the species die out gracefully rather than carrying on for a few more increasingly inbred generations, I would argue that was an ethically valid decision that should be respected. Neither of them feels that way, but I want to make it clear to some of your critics that this isn't all about the survival of the human race trumping all other concerns. It's about THESE TWO CHARACTERS and THEIR goals and how they both allow their neuroses to undermine their own best interest.
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Aletheia
8/10/2015 01:55:30 pm
I'm also amused and annoyed by the failure of many commenters to understand that society's rules no longer apply. That doesn't mean that murder, theft, or rape are suddenly acceptable, but that the definitions are to some degree open to interpretation. To put it another way, we're dealing now in terms of moral law or natural law, not "legal law." Under "legal law," a human can be murdered but a dog can't. Ann's conscience, her understanding of "moral law," tells her that plotting to kill Faro made her effectively a murderer, and whether or not we agree, she's not *wrong*, because the law that defined what was and wasn't murder before the war no longer stands. As a vegetarian, I would feel like a murderer if I chose to kill a chicken when there were soybeans and canned foods available. Loomis *feels* like a murderer even though reason tells him he acted in self-defense. Conscience is the only law that's left in their world, and as we've seen, moral law can be even stricter than "legal law," but conscience isn't governed well by reason and varies widely from person to person. And don't get me started on the people flaunting their ignorance of history, biology, and the definition of "postapocalyptic" by complaining that Loomis was intolerably creepy for even considering as a potential sex partner a female "below the age of consent."
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Jayn Sand
8/24/2015 04:26:16 pm
We only have Ann's speculation that Loomis MIGHT have killed Edward in self defense - she has considerable doubt on that point, which was never clarified. It may or may not have happened so.
And I'm pretty sure that most readers don't think Loomis creepy only because he did not pay strict attention to what was the age of consent that Ann happened to live in. IMO, they think him intolerably creepy because he brushed aside the idea of getting her consent at all.
He sneaked into her bedroom into the middle of the night while she was asleep, tried to pin her to the bed and when she attempted to flee (thus making it abundantly clear she was refusing consent) he dragged her back by force, ripping her clothes, and she only freed herself by a lucky thrust of the elbow to his throat. When she came back to negotiate a few days later he denies that he did anything wrong, refuses to apologize or offer any concession that might make her feel safer (give up his guns to her, for example). He calls her an immature schoolgirl for being upset about his rape attempt, making it clear that if she returns to him he has no intention of altering his behavior, and her role is to put up with it. His way or the highway...which he soon emphasizes by cutting off her access to food and shelter to bully her back under his control.
I'd say that fits well under the rubric of "intolerably creepy and controlling."
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Aletheia
12/8/2015 12:24:19 am
I never said that there was never anything creepy or controlling about Loomis's behavior. I don't think he was the sociopathic tyrant most readers make him out to be; I think he was a man who had suffered much and been left desperate and more than a little unhinged. As I tried to make clear, this isn't a case of 'Loomis good, Ann bad.' It's about two people destroyed by a failure to communicate. Loomis's desperate acts are as much to blame for Ann's probable death in the wasteland as her own foolish choices.
My point is not that people are wrong to object to Loomis's behavior. It's that people who DO bring up the issue of 'age of consent,' which plenty of people DON'T, aren't engaging with the text beyond the most basic level, and it's hard to take what they have to say seriously because they've missed so much of the point.
Lauren
12/1/2016 09:24:42 pm
Something that struck me re-reading Z for Zachariah is that nowhere in the book, as far as I can make out, are there any references to Ann's menstruation, or any indication she has reached adulthood. The reasons she may at times behave like a child is because she is a child- on the cusp of adulthood, yes, but not an adult. That she resists the sexual advances of the much older Mr Loomis (the fact she calls him Mr Loomis also indicates her immaturity) is perfectly reasonable, as is her fear of him. (By the way, it is also perfectly reasonable for an adult woman to resist unwanted sexual advances.) -To enter into an adult sexual relationship and have children is a major decision and life changer whether or not there be an apocalypse - and the author of the blog seems to be unaware of the risk of mortality to both mother and child due to both age and circumstance, even if she did want to have a sexual relationship with Mr Loomis.