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Summary
Chapters 5-6
Chapter 5
Using the drunk man’s keys, Lee and Maren enter his empty, filthy home and spend the night. Lee is initially reluctant to talk about his personal life with Maren, but they both feel that they should stick together in order to watch out for one another. Lee offers to drive Maren to Minnesota after first driving down south to Virginia, where his mother and sister live, as he previously promised to give driving lessons to his sister. Having no other way to get to Minnesota, and hoping to learn more about Lee, Maren agrees. The next day, a furious woman bangs on the door of the house, demanding overdue child support from the deceased owner and slashing one of the tires of the car that they have commandeered. After replacing the tire, they continue their journey down south, each sharing what they know about their condition. Lee is surprised to learn about Sully and concludes that there must be many more eaters in the world than either of them had previously realized. During their travels, they live rough, sleeping outside or in abandoned homes. Maren shows Lee her notebook, in which she has included pictures and stories related to cannibalism from folklore, literature, and mythology, and he is impressed.
Chapter 6
Lee and Maren spend the night in the home of his deceased great-aunt in Virginia. The next morning, Lee leaves to give driving lessons to his sister, Kayla. Maren is nervous about staying in the house alone, but she kills time by trying to knit using knitting materials that she took from Mrs. Harmon’s house. When Lee returns, Kayla is with him. Lee asks Maren to stay inside the house, out of sight, and she eavesdrops on his conversation with Kayla from a window. Unhappy about her brother’s long and unexplained absences, Kayla begs Lee to spend more time at home, but he insists that he can’t, without explaining why. To Lee’s annoyance, Kayla spots Maren through the window and asks about her, at first assuming that Maren is his girlfriend, which he denies. Shortly after, Lee and Maren set off on their three-day journey to Minnesota. On their trip, Lee explains that his family knows that there is something “off” about him, but they aren’t aware of the specific nature of his condition, and he intends to keep it that way. Though he loves Kayla, he wants to maintain distance between them, so that she can grow up to have a normal and happy life.
During their travels, Maren and Lee discuss their respective families and their first experiences with cannibalism. Both Lee and Maren’s first incident involved a babysitter. However, while Maren attacked her babysitter as an infant, without provocation, Lee’s first incident, which occurred in childhood, was provoked by his babysitter’s physical and emotional abuse. Lee explains that he has spent most of his life alone, supporting himself through farm work and other informal labor. At her request, he offers Maren driving lessons, and despite her feelings of inadequacy, he is a good and patient teacher, and they make progress. On the radio, they hear a preacher named Reverend Figtree, who delivers a sermon on repentance and forgiveness. Maren is captivated by the preacher’s words, but Lee dismisses him, and religion generally, as having no solution for people with their conditions. That night, Maren dreams that she is in a church, kneeling before the reverend. In her dream, the reverend places his hands on Maren’s head, and before he can offer her absolution for her sins, the crowd, consisting of thousands of people, break into laughter.
Analysis
These chapters primarily concern the complex relationship between Maren and Lee, two American teenagers from very different backgrounds who are nevertheless united by a shared condition that defines their lives and sets them apart from others. Their early conversations are awkward and tense, as neither has much experience with discussing their cannibalistic habits openly with others. Despite these initial tensions, however, their relationship becomes central to the novel, as they cling to each other in order to ward off the loneliness and isolation that define their lives as cannibals. Though Maren has met another “eater” previously, Lee is far closer to her in age than the elderly Sully, and Lee therefore represents the first real opportunity for friendship she has ever experienced. She has spent her entire life as an outcast, hiding her true nature from others, and she is both nervous and excited about the prospect of speaking honestly with Lee about her bloody past. Together, they navigate difficult and sensitive questions about their respective families and their hopes for the future. Maren finds in Lee a sympathetic companion who can understand her without passing judgment on her actions.
There are, however, also key differences between Maren and Lee. In particular, Maren is shocked to discover that Lee has a relatively high degree of control over his cannibalistic impulses. He is able to decide who he consumes, selecting people who he feels deserve to be killed because they have harmed others. His first ever incident of cannibalism involved an abusive babysitter, who frequently inflicted violence upon him and his sister in ways that left few visible marks, leaving him without evidence of her abuse. Additionally, when Maren first meets him, he attacks a rude, drunk man who harasses a woman at Walmart. For this reason, Lee has been successful in hiding his cannibalism from his family and is still in touch with his mother and sister. Instead, many of his early difficulties stem from his family's low socioeconomic class. His mother struggles to find steady employment and dates a series of cruel and abusive men whom Lee regards as “deadbeats” and “losers.”
In comparison, Maren has virtually no control over her cannibalistic desires, entering into an almost unconscious state when attacking others and only regaining full consciousness after the event. Because of this low degree of self-control, Maren’s cannibalism was quickly discovered by her mother, and almost all her difficulties in life stem from her condition. Despite having to move frequently in order to shield Maren, Janelle is readily employable due to her valuable professional skills, and she is able to maintain a more-or-less middle-class lifestyle for herself and her daughter. Their long journey by car from Virginia to Minnesota gives Maren and Lee many opportunities to explore their similarities as well as their differences.
There are also important differences in their personalities. Three years older, Lee has long been accustomed to living on his own and surviving in difficult circumstances. Maren, conversely, is in many ways less mature than Lee. When she is overwhelmed by her despair, she retreats into comforting fiction, which allows her to “escape” from her difficult circumstances. She carries a stack of books with her throughout her travels, mostly consisting of childhood favorites that allow her to imagine herself as someone else: a “normal” person with “normal” problems. Lee, in comparison, has little interest in literature, dismissing books as pointless fantasies that offer no practical solutions to the problems that define his life. He similarly dismisses Maren’s interest in religion, which he regards as nothing more than a comforting illusion. Those who have tasted human flesh, he insists, can’t expect the “forgiveness” promised by Christianity.
Another key aspect of Maren’s personality that is highlighted in these chapters is her fear of abandonment. Though she understands Janelle’s choice, she is truly distraught after being abandoned by her mother, an anxiety that is compounded by later experiences. Mrs. Harmon passes away unexpectedly, Sully leaves her without saying goodbye, the driver who offered to take her to Minnesota leaves her behind at Walmart, and the kind Andy accidentally triggers Maren’s cannibalistic impulses, leading to his death. Whenever Maren begins to feel secure, she is thrust again into uncertainty. When she first begins traveling with Lee, she feels that he will inevitably abandon her too, and she asks him to let her know if and when he decides to leave her behind, instead of doing so without warning. When she wakes up and cannot find him, first in the house of the drunk cowboy and next in the home of his deceased relative, she immediately suspects that he has left her for good as a result of her previous abandonment. Despite her anxieties, Lee sticks by Maren, offering her a source of stability in her turbulent life.
