The Compound #5. S.A. Bodeen. Pages 193-245.

Throughout my recent reading, I’ve learned so much about the father, Rex and the main character, Eli. Pages 193 to 245 show a great amount of character development between both characters. Also in my last reading, Rex’s actions really show his true self as a madman. For example, Eli was in his father’s lab looking for the code to get out of the Compound. When he found it, Rex came into the lab and just started destroying Bunsen burners, test tubes, test tube racks and even an expensive microscope while he was shouting at the top of his lungs. He had been complaining about how his family had turned on him. In my opinion, I really disagree with how his family turned on him and how he was “Fine as anyone can be when HIS WIFE IS TRYING TO POISON HIM!” (208) Ever since he stated the reason of locking up part of his family so they wouldn’t become spoiled brats, I’ve always thought of him as himself turning the family upon him. I’m really surprised how Eli didn’t try and defend his family and stick up for them. This also shows how Eli is respectful to his parents but also a coward; which was different from before when he was always being mean to everybody around him. Another example of character development and how his actions showed his true self was the fact that he held a child hostage and threatened to kill him. “What do you think, Eli? Should I choke the life out of him? Or just snap his neck. That would be quicker.” (211) In this scenario, he had to decide between the child, Lucas, and if he were to live or not and the code to the entrance of the Compound. This was the saddest thing I’ve ever read. A poor innocent child who has done nothing wrong to anybody was going to be murdered in such a cruel way. I was shocked that anybody could say and maybe even go through with such a horrible deed. Eli as a character also develops too. Before he entered the Compound, he only watched out for himself, and he was cruel to his friends and his family. Now, he was shouting at his father to let the child go and he became an unselfish young man after giving up the code. Those are a couple ways of how Rex and Eli developed as a character.

The Compound #4. S.A. Bodeen. Pages 147-193.

In my fourth blog post, I will be discussing a little more about the father, Rex, and his reasoning for locking his family in the Compound. In the reading that I had to do for this blog post, there was a major twist in the book. In this reading, Eli found out that living in the Compound was unnecessary and that they should leave. Rex said that he created the Compound because of Eli. During the holiday season, the family went up to their house in Colorado to spend Christmas together. Being the busy man that he is, Rex consistently has to leave for business and a heated driveway was created so Rex could get to the helicopter pad quickly. Eli wanted to spend more time with his father and he wanted his father “to watch me on my new snowboard, wanted him to make hot chocolate afterward.” (170) Since he wanted his father to spend more time with him, Eli turned off the propane tank that was heating the driveway so Rex couldn’t leave for business. Rex confessed to the unnecessary Compound creation, but he wanted to spend more time with his family. Another reason to why Rex made his family go into the Compound was because he didn’t want his kids to become spoiled brats. He has really gone a long way in terms of character development since the Compound was sealed. Rex was nice at the start. Then he became crabby and mad which was due to the conflicts going on within the Compound. Now he’s back to his nice self helping his family escape even though he has Ergoticsm, a poisoning by eating infected grains. The reasons for locking most of his family in the Compound show how Rex has developed back to a nice, caring person.

The Compound #3. S.A. Bodeen. Pages 101-147.

In this blog post, I will be talking about patterns that take place within The Compound. Patterns are shown mostly through secrets that people have within The Compound. As life goes on within The Compound, Eli has to help his father out when it comes to the chore inventory. Inventory is when all of the food and supplies within The Compound are counted. Then Rex takes these results and figures out how much more time they have within The Compound before they run out of these supplies. Rex estimates that they will run out of supplies a year before they were scheduled to leave The Compound. After a shouting fight between Rex and Mom, Rex took Eli to his office to show him a lab. He talked to Eli about increasing the food supply within The Compound which was to clone a human being. Eli’s response was immediately no saying that “It goes against nature! You know that. Besides, none of those animal clones lived more than a shot time.” (124) He also said that “It’s just weird, you know? Cloning people. And besides, don’t you need a human host at some point?” (125) This is where the pattern of secrets comes into play since Rex had already talked to Lexi without nobody knowing. He has shown her the lab that Rex has been using to figure out how to clone a human being and he had already spoken to Lexi about her being the “human host.” She was on board the entire time. Eli was so outraged that she was on board with the process that he went to persuade her to go to his side. During that time, Eli spilled his guts of everything that he has found out which includes the Internet access. The pattern of secrets is also shown here because Lexi was stunned at the fact that Eli was on the Internet and she had always thought there wasn’t Internet to go on. She gave Eli a day to gather enough information to persuade her to trust him.

The Compound #2. S.A. Bodeen. Pages 55-101.

In the last blog post, I talked about most of the character that made it into the Compound. I also talked about Eddy and Gram who didn’t make it in. The one character that developed even more was the CEO and billionaire of a successful computer company; the father or Rex Yanakakis. Rex was an orphan, adopted as a baby and then orphaned again at the age of nineteen. Rex didn’t stop there though since he was a brilliant young man and had some inheritance money to get him through college at MIT with a computer science degree and from there on, he began his computer company. From his success in his company, he supported the orphanage he grew up at and because so, the orphanage named it after him. He met Eli’s mom at the age of twenty-seven when he saw her playing in the Seattle Symphony. Since then, he kept sending her white roses until she finally agreed to meet with him. They got married and built a thirty-room estate, adopted Lexi from his very own orphanage he came from, and had Eli, Eddy and Terese. Sounds like a pretty good life after growing up with nothing right? Eli wasn’t satisfied. He wanted a normal father who “raked piles of leaves to jump in with their kids.” (60) Instead, he was left with a father who would usually use a credit card to buy a gumball instead of always having loose change. Throughout this section of reading, we learned a lot about how Rex had been lying. While randomly using Eddy’s computer, Eli found out that he could go on the Internet. Rex confessed about how he had been going on the Internet for some time now. Rex thinks that it has something to do with the government and how it sends off shockwaves of Internet access so survivors could communicate. As you can see, this section mostly dealt with the character development of Rex Yanakakis.

The Compound. S.A. Bodeen. Pages 1-55.

This reading started off really slow. It mostly focused on character development and how the main character, Eli, has been affected from the door closing of the Compound. Eli, the main character had just turned fifteen. He explores the Compound in the first section and reflects upon past events. The Compound was built by Eli’s father, a billionaire and CEO of a successful computer company. The Compound includes rooms for all of the children, a gymnasium, a fitness center, storage rooms and a chapel; just to name a few. Eli’s focus of past events is upon the closing of the Compound without his twin brother, Eddy. Eli and Eddy are completely different in character. Eddy is pretty popular, really caring for everyone and likes to have a great time whereas Eli is a little more on the brattier side and doesn’t branch out like his brother does. Another person who didn’t make it into the Compound before it was closed was his mom’s mother or Gram. Gram is part Hawaiian and half Chinese. She was really quiet up until she married a music professor where it was changed. The couple had Eli’s mom and then the professor was killed in a car accident. Gram then became lonely and wanted another husband and mom wanted a male role model. Gram did marry again, but he was kicked out of her house because he was cunning towards Gram and verbally abusive towards Eli’s mom. Eli’s mom is pretty quiet and really sensitive. She was greatly influenced by Gram’s first husband and she can play the cello really well. “I loved to listen to her, especially moments like this, when she didn’t know she had an audience. Somehow she seemed freer, more at ease.” (50) Lexi is Eli’s older sister and she was adopted but looks similar to Eli’s mom. She went to an arts school before “the new world” (Eli’s words of play after the Compound was closed) and was a great ballet dancer. Eli and Lexi fight a lot, but Eli admires how good his sister is at dancing. Terese, or Little Miss Perfect, is Eli’s younger sister. Eli supposedly ignored her until she was ten years old whereas Eddy was always by her side caring for her. She had always liked Eddy more than Eli. Those are the characters that are living within the Compound.

A theme that I see occurring is to talk out your problems. “We didn’t talk about him much. Dad had said early on that this was our life and we should move on, not keep thinking about the way things used to be.” (20) My response to that would be how; people in the family are suffering from the loss of Eddy and he wants everyone to ignore it? Terese, the mother and Eli show a huge amount of sadness from the loss of Eddy. Terese has shown it when she’s screaming at Eli about how Eddy would never treat her poorly. The mother has shown it when she found Eli in Eddy’s room and told him to hide the computer that he was taking since the father wanted to keep Eddy’s room the same. Eli has shown sadness from his twin brother from the amount of random memories that he has. He soon starts to try and forget them because he doesn’t want to be sad anymore. If they sat down and talked about it, each of them would feel a lot better when it came to Eddy being brought up in a conversation. I predict that something like that would happen. That is the theme that I see originating from the first section of my book.