75 pages • 2 hours read
Megan E. FreemanAlone
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Middle Grade | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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The Challenge of Loneliness and the Value of Family
The challenge of loneliness and the value of family are two sides of the same coin in this novel. Like the protagonist in The Island of Blue Dolphins, Maddie encounters her greatest challenge not in trying to feed herself, find shelter, or defend against wild or formerly domesticated animals, but rather, as her younger brother Elliot intuited, in coping with loneliness and isolation. In his book report, Elliot writes,
She [the protagonist] can always fish and get food and it isn’t hard because it’s her island already. But she has to keep herself company and give herself pep talks and if she’s sick or scared she can’t just call out to her mom to come take care of her. So I think that’s what makes her the REAL Challenge Girl and not that other stuff (249).
During Maddie’s years-long period with no human contact, as time passes and Maddie’s loneliness grows, so does her attitude about the true value of family. By the time she is finally rescued, and for a long while before that, Maddie would have given “anything” to have her family back. For most of her story, the memories of her family and the hope that they will one day return sustain Maddie throughout her time alone.
That Maddie changes her attitude toward her family while enduring isolation is somewhat ironic because the reason she missed the evacuation was that she wanted to (temporarily) get away from her family. Maddie craved an evening where she would not have to take care of baby Trevor or listen to any parental figures nag her to brush her teeth, do chores, or study; therefore, she planned a secret slumber party with friends and lied to her parents. Maddie gets what she wished for, only to learn that she should have appreciated what she had.
Before the evacuation, Maddie was somewhat annoyed with her family, cringing at her mother’s clothing choices and her stepfather’s efforts to connect with her. She was also previously unhappy about having to switch houses every week. After being left alone, having to rely on both her parents’ houses to survive, Maddie learns to appreciate each member of her family, seeing each one as a unique resource and person to treasure.
To cope with the challenge of loneliness, Maddie befriends George, “conjures” her family and friends, and finds companionship through books.
Resourcefulness and Risk Evaluation as Key to Survival
Basic survival may not be Maddie’s greatest challenge, but it is a significant challenge nonetheless, one that she overcomes through her resourceful thinking and ability to weigh the risks involved in her options. Maddie is an intelligent, independent, and creative girl before she misses the evacuation. After she is left behind, she draws on a variety of knowledge sources and uses many strategies to overcome hardships that most young teenagers would struggle to handle. She loses electricity and running water. She faces difficult winters, a tornado, a fire, and a flood. She must endure and treat a badly injured leg, and she has to defend herself against wild animals and former pets that have turned aggressive. Maddie does not immediately know what to do in every situation. However, she survives each new hardship by drawing on her prior knowledge, conducting new research, and thinking calmly through situations.
Maddie loses the support of other humans, fresh food, electricity, phone service, television, running water, air conditioning, heat, and more. As time passes, however, Maddie starts applying her creative thinking. She uses lake water to wash her clothes and boxed wine to flush toilets, making sure to save potable water for drinking. She learns to scavenge and to prioritize necessities, and she teaches herself to drive. Drawing on the camping, cooking, and survival skills she learned from her father, Maddie fills in her knowledge gaps by reading library books about campfires and gun safety. Through her own power, physically and mentally, she thereby survives her circumstances, including the harsh winters.
Moreover, when placed in dire situations, Maddie is constantly evaluating the potential costs and benefits of different possible actions. It is often her caution and willingness to accept losses that keep her alive. She revisits the question of whether to try driving out of town several times, acknowledging the worst potential outcomes despite her desire to find other humans. When the looters arrive, despite her loneliness and wish to be rescued, she shows restraint, ultimately avoiding an encounter with dangerous and violent men. When her mother’s house catches on fire, she grabs her backpack and gets herself and George to safety, despite understanding what the fire is about to take from her on an emotional level—most of the remaining evidence that her mother existed.
However, her resourcefulness and risk evaluation take a mental toll given her isolation. Maddie has several mental breakdowns. She remarks that in teen fiction, the protagonist usually has an entire village or society surrounding her, with many others ready to contribute to the tasks. In Maddie’s situation, she has only herself to rely on. Nobody is there to take care of her or provide support. Survival is therefore more mentally draining for her than for these other young heroes.
Civilization Versus Nature
The distinction between civilization and nature blurs in Alone, which differs from many survival novels because of its setting. Maddie is not stranded in an unfamiliar wilderness but is instead left alone in her hometown. It is the circumstances that become unfamiliar. Once everyone leaves, nature starts to reclaim the town. The electricity, along with internet and cell phone service, and then the running water stop working. Maddie is utterly isolated. “Civilization” vanishes overnight, and Maddie is left as a sort of “ghost” haunting the abandoned town, uncertain what aspects of civilization she should maintain.
As time passes, nature encroaches, the physical comforts of civilization fall away, and civilization’s old rules become useless or even dangerous to follow. Maddie stops leaving notes to indicate what she has “borrowed.” She becomes more comfortable with breaking into buildings to take what she needs. She teaches herself to drive. Yet Maddie also relies on the library and its books as a source of information and profound comfort, and she sustains hope that her family, with civilization, will return.
Many survival novels pit human characters against nature, as if nature is a dangerous antagonist that must be overcome and conquered. In contrast, Alone tends to portray nature as an extension or expression of Maddie’s emotional struggles both before and after her abandonment, and accordingly, Maddie learns to coexist with and appreciate the natural world as she grows. She learns the seasonal changes and moves households and scavenges accordingly; before she was abandoned, she disliked her weekly switching between her parents’ houses. She becomes adaptable, adjusting to the challenges that arise, whereas originally adjusting to the different rules in her parents’ houses was a challenge.
George and the looters also highlight the erosion of the line between civilization and nature, reflecting Maddie’s own difficult position. Like all the pets, George is abandoned, but unlike the other dogs, which revert to a semi-feral state without their human companions, George bonds with Maddie. He becomes a good companion and a source of strength for her. In contrast, the looters, despite being humans, have abandoned civilization altogether; their violence is not something Maddie can accept, despite her wish for human company and rescue.
