Z for Zachariah

Z for Zachariah

Puffin Teenage Fiction Cover
Author	Robert C. O'Brien
Cover artist	Larry Rostant
Language	English
Genre	Children, Science fiction
Published	1974 (Atheneum Books)
Publication place	United States
Media type	Hardback & Paperback
Pages	192 (249 in Hardback version)

Z for Zachariah is a post-apocalyptic science-fiction novel by Robert C. O'Brien that was published posthumously in 1974. The name Robert C. O'Brien was the pen name used by Robert Leslie Conly. After the author's death in 1973, his wife Sally M. Conly and daughter Jane Leslie Conly completed the book guided by his notes. Set in the Midwestern USA, the story is in the form of a diary written from the first-person perspective of sixteen-year-old Ann Burden, who has survived a nuclear war and nerve gas through living in a small valley with a self-contained weather system.

According to Sally Conly, Z for Zachariah was her husband's second novel intended for adults, following his 1972 science-fiction thriller A Report from Group 17. O'Brien had previously established himself as a children's writer with his novels The Silver Crown (1968) and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1971). In 1976, Z for Zachariah won the Jane Addams Children's Book Award and the Edgar Award for the best mystery fiction in the juvenile category.

Plot summary

Ann Burden is a teenage girl who thought she was the last survivor of a nuclear war, living on a farm in a small valley protected from radiation poisoning. In late May during the year after the war, a stranger in a radiation-proof suit approaches her valley. Afraid that a selfish and cruel man could enslave her, Ann hides in a cave and tries to eliminate evidence of her presence (regrettably, including a productive garden). Still afraid to reveal herself after watching for a day, Ann decides not to warn the man when he mistakenly bathes in a radioactive stream. But when he sickens, her fear of being alone forever leads her to reveal herself to help him.

The stranger is John Loomis, a chemist who helped design a prototype radiation-proof “safe-suit” at an underground lab near Ithaca, New York. After searching many months for survivors, he headed west and found Burden Valley. Ann is impressed by Loomis's calm practicality, knowing she would be hysterical if she had possibly fatal radiation poisoning. Loomis is amazed the valley is radiation-free (a "meteorological enclave"); and, after Ann moves him into her house, he explains how to get gas manually for the tractor and begins planning a hydroelectric generator. Having the companion she often wished for, Ann quickly imagines a church wedding the following spring. But she decides it is too soon to get engaged, since they just met, he might not like her, and he is sick. Still, she is hopeful that their children can keep humanity from dying. While plowing, she recites lines from her favorite poem, Millay's "Epitaph for the Race of Man," happy that she is no longer the scribe and confessor of humanity like the speaker in the poem. But she wishes she had warned Loomis about the stream. As Loomis becomes more ill and delirious, he has traumatic flashbacks about the underground lab where he shot his coworker, Edward, who tried to take the safe-suit to find his family. Deeply troubled that Loomis killed a man, Ann debates with herself about whether he is a murderer. Though he may have acted in self-defense (needing the suit to survive) and intended to use the suit to find other survivors, Ann thinks his final journey west suggests he just wanted the suit to "strike out on his own." Nevertheless, desperately afraid of being alone forever, Ann hopes Loomis will live even though he could be a murderer; so she nurses him through his illness and keeps her doubts secret. As Loomis slowly recovers his strength, Ann's original fear of being controlled returns and increases. The first time he speaks again, saying her companionship saved him, she restrains an urge to embrace and expresses no feeling for him. When he later begins making practical plans and one time scolds her for not planting corn, she fears he is becoming possessive and controlling; and his plan to start a colony together makes her uneasy now despite her similar hopes earlier. Imagining his behavior shows more disturbing signs, by June 23 Ann thinks of Loomis as a murderer and fears his horrible experiences have damaged his mind.

Ann thinks her fears are validated when, early on June 28, she awakes in the dark to hear Loomis in her doorway. Fearing he heard her wake, she pretends to be asleep in the hope he will leave, not realizing that her silence might seem a tacit invitation. But when Loomis tries to lie on top of her, she breaks free and flees to the cave, where she hides in terror for a few days, watching constantly and scared to sleep. On the morning of July 1, Ann speaks with Loomis from a safe distance and proposes a "compromise" of sharing the valley and farm work but living separate lives. She is amazed by his friendly manner, "as if nothing had happened." Saying he has no choice but to accept her proposal, Loomis hopes she will reconsider and “act more like an adult"; but Ann assures him she will not change her mind. Though this arrangement is inconvenient and Ann worries about surviving winter, she assumes there’s no alternative and now wishes Loomis had never come.

About 10 days later, it seems Loomis begins trying to force Ann's return by controlling the tractor and the limited store supplies that she relies on. Ann realizes she may have provoked him by denying any companionship, reasoning, "There are people who cannot stand being alone; perhaps he was acting from despair." She decides it is sensible to offer to talk sometimes from a safe distance; but when she approaches the house, Loomis shockingly shoots at her from a window. He then uses her cousin’s dog, Faro, to track her to the cave, where he burns her belongings and takes one of her guns. Nursing a bullet-grazed ankle that becomes infected, Ann hides in a hollow tree and has feverish dreams of another valley where children wait for her to teach them. Ann comes to believe the dreams are true and Loomis is insane, so she plans to steal the safe-suit and find her dream valley. Moreover, she decides to kill Faro to prevent Loomis from tracking her in the meantime, making her feel equally a murderer. Two weeks later, after Loomis tries to lure Ann to the store and wound her again, she tricks him in turn by leading Faro to a planned "trap" where stones span the dead stream. Hiding on the other side, she scares Loomis with gunfire so that he panics, letting Faro swim across the stream to Ann and become fatally poisoned.

Believing she has no choice but to leave the valley, on August 7 Ann lures Loomis away from the house by offering to discuss her return if he meets her unarmed in the south. Amazed that her ruse works, she steals the safe-suit, puts it on, and waits on Burden Hill for a last meeting. When Loomis arrives on the tractor enraged, threatening to kill Ann if she doesn’t return the suit, she finally reveals knowing of Edward and despairingly invites Loomis to murder her the same way. However, Loomis suddenly becomes dispirited and passive, explaining that Edward tried to steal the suit like Ann. Seeming frightened and confused, he begs her not to leave him alone, saying, “It’s wrong.” But Ann merely blames him because he never thanked her for nursing him; and, after these admittedly childish last words, she heads off into the deadness. Though she expects to be shot in the back, Loomis surprises her again by calling out that he once saw birds circling to the west. Ann then walks on through most of the night until, exhausted, she sleeps in the open without setting up the protective tent. Late the next morning, she continues west beside a dead stream, hoping to see a green horizon.

Setting

The story's events are set almost entirely in Burden Valley, a small and remote valley in the American Midwest. It was named after the protagonist's ancestors, who were its first settlers and built a farm in the northern end. The only other inhabitants were the Kleins, a couple who lived over the store and mainly did business with Amish farmers to the south.

The valley is approximately 4 miles long, from Burden Hill in the north to an S-shaped pass in the south called "the gap." The largest of its two streams, Burden Creek, is radioactive because of flowing from the top of a ridge in the northwest. It runs parallel to the road from north to south and exits the valley through the gap. A smaller stream originates from a deep spring on an eastern hillside and feeds a small lake with fish that provide an important food source for Ann. The stream then meanders south and flows through a culvert under the road to join Burden Creek. Much of the valley is made up of woodlands, particularly on the inner slopes of the surrounding hills.

Ann believes the few animals in Burden Valley are probably the last ones of their species. Ann notes that there are a lot of rabbits and squirrels. There are also a few crows, which Ann believes are the last surviving birds because only they had the "sense" to stay in the valley. Migratory birds seem an example of a species betrayed and killed by its own instincts. The domestic animals on Ann's farm include two cows, a bull calf, and some chickens. Finally, there is the last surviving dog, Faro, who belonged to Ann's cousin David.

The most important feature of the valley is that it is somehow separated from the surrounding atmosphere and has its own weather system. Loomis calls it a meteorological enclave created by an inversion (i.e., air only rising, not falling), but he views its existence as so unlikely that it is only a theoretical possibility. In fact, Loomis's scientific assessment seems correct because the air in a valley could not be separate from the planet's atmosphere unless the valley's walls were unbroken and rose as high as the tropopause, the level at which temperature begins to increase and air only rises. In any other situation, a valley's air would necessarily mix with surrounding air, and pollution would enter from above. However, for the purposes of this story, readers must suspend disbelief to accept that at least one valley with a self-contained weather system exists, allowing some life to continue after global nuclear war.

Major Themes

Seeing the story as a conflict between an innocent girl and a domineering male scientist bent on controlling the valley, reviewers have found themes such as the destructiveness of science (at least when it is separated from conscience), the corrupting effect of the desire for power, and the moral value of individual freedom. Ann's sensitivity and love of nature are viewed as contrasting with Loomis's callous reasoning and selfish compulsion to take control. Writing for The Spectator in April 1975, Peter Ackroyd concludes that "science turns paradise sour." Reviews the same year in The Junior Bookshelf and Times Literary Supplement described Ann as an unwilling Eve who "finally refuses to begin the whole story over again."

Adaptations

In February 1984, the BBC presented a film adaptation for its Play for Today series in which the setting was changed from America to Wales.

A film adaptation of the novel is currently in production with financing from Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and Material Pictures. It stars Chris Pine, Margot Robbie and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Craig Zobel directs from an adapted script by Nissar Modi. Filming began in January 2014 on New Zealand's Banks Peninsula.

Notes

Bibliography

• O'Brien, Robert C. Z for Zachariah. 1974. New York: Simon Pulse, 2007.

External links

• Z for Zachariah Reviews (a collection of reviews from 1975 to 1984)
• Robert C. O'Brien News (IMDb's links to blogs about film adaptations of O'Brien's novels)
• Z for Zachariah Analysis (an interpretation of Ann as an unreliable narrator)
• Z for Zachariah Literary References (support for the above interpretation)
• Z for Zachariah (1984) at IMDb
• Notes about Z for Zachariah (A site with several years of collected blog posts offering detailed analysis and some teaching material)
• Reviews and Ratings for BBC's Z for Zachariah (1984) (including a teacher's take on the story's unreliable narrator)
• Tobey Maquire, Craig Zobel line up 'Zachariah' (Variety's article on the 2013 film adaptation)