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Part One: The Boy Who Walks in the Night

Chapters 1–5

Summary: Chapter 1, Day

Day is a fifteen-year-old criminal on the run from the Republic. The Republic has no record of what Day looks like or of his fingerprints. Day’s mother thinks Day died in a labor camp. Tess, an orphan, is with Day outside Day’s family home. There are soldiers on patrol looking for people with the plague. Day has stolen a pair of goggles for his brother John, who works in a smoky factory. Day also has a younger brother, Eden, who is about to turn ten. Every child in the Republic undergoes a demanding test called the Trial at age ten, which determines his or her future. Those who score high get to go onto college, and those who score low are sent to labor camps. Day nervously watches the soldiers enter and exit his family’s home. When they emerge, they spray paint a large X on the door, with another line across it.

Summary: Chapter 2, June

June is a fifteen-year-old student at Drake University, the best school in the Republic. She is the only person known to have earned a perfect score of 1500 on the Trial. Dean Whitaker has called June in to suspend her for leaving campus during school hours. Metias, her brother, comes to pick her up. He is not amused—June is constantly getting into trouble. June explains that she was practicing catching Day, who is known to have scaled a five-story building in less than eight seconds. Metias scolds June in the car ride home but admits breaking the rules to practice skills is sometimes acceptable. Thomas, a soldier who works alongside Metias, is driving. Metias and Thomas drop June off at home before heading to the hospital to guard the delivery of a mutated virus.

Summary: Chapter 3, Day

Day recalls the time his father was brought into the police station for questioning and returned bloodied and bruised. Day, who was only seven at the time, retaliated by throwing a fireball into the police station, causing it to catch fire. Now Day is trying to sneak into a hospital to steal a cure for the plague for his family. He enters the hospital pretending to have been stabbed in a fight. An annoyed nurse takes him in and confiscates his money because the poor are required to pay for medical care. Day steals a soldier’s ID card and escapes through an air vent to another floor. He takes a doctor hostage and orders him to tell Day where the cures are. There are no cures left, however— only suppressants. Day releases the doctor and escapes, jumping out a window. Metias, who is on rounds, approaches Day. Day stabs Metias in the shoulder and runs away, escaping down a sewer. 

Summary: Chapter 4, June

June remembers when Metias skipped his induction ceremony to the Republic to take care of her because she was sick. Thomas comes to her door to tell her that Metias is dead. On the ride to the hospital, June notices rifle grease on Thomas’s forehead. At the hospital, Commander Jameson informs June that she’s being promoted to the position of agent immediately, and he leads June to Metias’s body. June starts to examine the body, assessing it for clues, but she cries alone later from the shock. She vows to hunt down and kill her brother’s murderer. Back at home, June studies a necklace she found at the scene. She’s convinced Day is behind the break-in and is the one who killed her brother. She deduces that Day was trying to steal a cure for his family. She thinks it’s odd, however, that Day killed someone because he has never done so before. 

Summary: Chapter 5, Day

Day has a dream his brother Eden is drawing pictures of soldiers breaking into their home. He wakes up to find he’s in a stranger’s home with Tess. Day has been unconscious for two days from his injuries. Tess tells Day that Eden is sick with the plague. She wants them to escape to the Colonies, but Day says he can’t because of his family. Day is happy that Tess, an orphan, has never been on the “grid” and is at least free from the Republic. The stranger, an older man, comes in to give Day some food. Tess explains that the man sympathizes with them because he had a son who worked at the war front and died of the plague. The man tells them they should leave soon, however, because he heard someone is going around looking for Day, claiming to have a plague cure. They both know it’s a trap. 

Analysis: Chapters 1–5 

Marie Lu’s Legend presents a dystopian future in a novel that could very well be our own someday. Cataclysmic environmental events cause society to collapse, and a totalitarian regime takes over—all situations that scientists, environmentalists, and public officials commonly warn about today. Even though the United States portrayed in the novel is vastly different from the one that exists now, Lu portrays a country similar to the one that exists today to make this dystopian future seem plausible: There is a place called Los Angeles, California, which is broken up into different economic sectors, and the area at large is in danger of catastrophic earthquakes and floods. In essence, Lu’s novel imagines what this area could look like after collapse. Some of the poorest sectors are half underwater and prone to flooding. The buildings crack and wither from the constant moisture, and sewage brought in by the floodwaters is commonplace. 

Within this dystopian setting, in Chapters 1–5, readers are introduced to Legend’s two main characters—Day and June. The novel is told in first-person narration by each character, shifting between their viewpoints in alternating chapters titled “Day” and “June.” Through this narrative structure, Lu can create a fuller picture of the plot events in the novel. Through each character’s perspective, the reader can see each “side,” namely, the perspectives and challenges of the poor through Day, and the perspectives and challenges of the wealthy through June. Readers see that each side—the poor and the rich—has different challenges, viewpoints, and stakes in the political and economic issues presented in the novel. Readers also see that both rich and poor children have incredible stresses put on them from a young age. By using this structure, the novel suggests that each of these sides has an important and valid perspective. Lu is careful to give Day and June a roughly equal number of chapters, to support the idea that Day’s and June’s perspectives are equally valid.

The contrasts between Day and June are evident. They come from different worlds in the Republic: Day comes from the world of the poor and June from the world of the privileged. Day, the Republic’s most wanted criminal, is on the run from the law but stays close to his family home to watch over them, revealing the value he places on family. Day lives under the radar. June, in contrast, lives a life very much in the public eye. As the only known member of the Republic to have earned a perfect score on the Trial, June lives a life of privilege and fame. When the novel begins, she’s about to graduate early from Drake and become a member of the military’s elite, like her brother, Metias. 

The Trial that June performed so well on is a singular feature of the Republic. It draws a hard, definitive line for a person’s future, with outcomes based on scores. The lowest scorers are sent to labor camps, middle-range scorers are sent to college, and the top scorers are promised a college education and a prestigious job. Lu is alluding to testing practices in the United States like the SAT, which can partly determine what college a student can be admitted into. The Trial, however, is given when students are much younger—age ten—as opposed to seventeen or eighteen, when students take the SAT. Also, the Trial determines the student’s entire future, not just whether the student attends a particular college or not. Lu imagines a hyperbolic, skewed version of test-taking in the United States to make a point about test-taking in America. The exaggerated, ridiculous stakes Lu gives the Trial in the novel is satire to show how test-taking can have too much impact on a person’s life. 

It is also evident from Day’s perspective that poor students are at a disadvantage. They don’t have easy access to the resources to help them get ahead, and they usually have more stress in their daily life. For example, Day describes how his mother has to sell her clothes just to buy a chicken one day to feed the family. Later in the novel, there’s an advertisement that plays on the JumboTron for a student prep testing service for the Trial, something Day’s family and others like him can’t afford. It is clear that students from the poorer sectors are more likely to score lower on the Trial and that students from the wealthier sectors score higher, a discrepancy that the government takes advantage of. Thus, the Trial is the government’s main tool to keep the poorest down and the richest in power.

Next section Chapters 6–10

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