52 pages • 1 hour read
Patricia FordeThe List
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 16-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary: “357: Remember”
Benjamin says that ultimately, he couldn’t support Noa’s plan. He tells Letta not to drink the water and to forbid everyone else from drinking it as well. Edgeware tells Letta that it’s important to remember that people did good things as well as bad.
As they take turns watching Benjamin, he tells Letta that Noa offered him immunity from what is coming next. He coughs, and his mouth glows blue. Benjamin says that Noa plans to make them wordless. He says that her parents love her, and he has left a package for her in his study. Letta must open it once she has stopped Noa. Finally, he says, “Just remember… the birds still fly south” (220). He hugs her as she thinks Love. Heart. Warmth. They don’t need words for this moment.
After Benjamin dies, Letta thinks about Noa’s plan as it begins to snow. Edgeware chants “old verses that she said would shelter his fleeing spirit” (222). “Hallowed by thy name” (223). After they bury Benjamin, rage overcomes Letta. Marlo tells her that Finn will let her live with them, but she says she has to go back.
Letta believes she can fight Noa best from within Ark, as a wordsmith. Finn disagrees, but Edgeware thinks Letta is right. She says that she had a son. Noa made him wordless by cutting out his tongue as part of an experiment before List. Noa had children kidnapped in order to experiment with wordlessness. Thomas, her son, died by hanging himself at age 17. After he died in the forest, Edgeware decided that was where she belonged. By the time she reaches the South Gate, Letta is forming a plan.
Noa thinks of his own plan and wonders how many people to keep. He plans on destroying his library and the wordsmith shop. He knows that the wordless became docile quickly, which is what will happen to them all. Only then can nature take its course, without human meddling.
Chapter 17 Summary: “#395: Son”
They wonder why Fearfall lied about finding Benjamin and plan to question him in a few days. Letta misses Marlo immediately after returning to the shop. She hopes that he will wait for her. She is preparing for work when Carver arrives. He accuses her of not informing them about her trip.
Rose enters the shop and demands to know where Daniel is. She says Letta and her friends promised to help him. She calls Letta a Desecrator as the healer arrives and takes her from the shop. Carver leaves as well, but he is obviously suspicious about the interaction.
Marlo contacts her two days later after a tailor, Tala Green, fits her for a dress. They have caught Fearfall, and Letta is conflicted about the abduction. Marlo holds her hand as they walk through the forest to the pump house. Inside, they enter a “different world.” Candles illuminate a team of painters.
Marlo invites her to look around and leaves her briefly. There is a long shelf where people have placed their treasures: seashells and coins and ornate boxes. The floor is decorated as a mosaic comprising pictures that depict the Melting.
Letta can’t believe how much food they have in the pantry, including jam and cheese. She sees weapons: blades and clubs. Leyla plays the saxophone as people dance. Then Leyla sings. The music makes Letta think of her mother’s face, and she wants to run.
Chapter 18 Summary: “#401: Speak”
When Letta asks Leyla how she can bear such a sad song, Leyla explains the role of the artist, or the color-catcher. She is determined to maintain her memories, particularly the sad ones, and believes everyone else should. Leyla asks if Letta is Freya’s daughter, then says that the song she was singing was the favorite of Letta’s mother. Marlo says music used to be so constant that it lost its power.
Letta can’t enjoy the music: “It is unsettling. It makes you think of things, feel things. It’s fine when you’re happy, but when it reminds you…” (249). This makes sense when she remembers that Noa doesn’t want them to feel anything that would remind them that they are individuals.
Marlo gives her a black hood. He puts one on as well before they go into a room where other hooded men surround Fearfall, who sits on a chair. He admits that Noa made him lie about finding Benjamin’s body. Fearfall says he took a canister to Noa because he is a scavenger. He describes the canister when they threaten his son. The outside of the canister said NICENE. When a child screams, Letta goes to another room and sees the boy with a hooded woman. Letta removes her hood and hugs him. A man named Dean orders her to replace her hood, but Letta ignores him, and then leads the boy to Fearfall.
No one knows the meaning of NICENE. After their discussion, Letta decides to return to the shop, so that she can maintain the appearance of normalcy.
Chapter 19 Summary: “#192: Scavenger”
As she passes through Tintown, Kirch takes Letta to his father, a scientist named Solam, whom she met earlier. His leg has worsened, and she cleans the cut for him and then uses herbs to help with the infection. Solam is familiar with Nicene. He says it was used on criminals to destroy “the part of their brain responsible for language” (265). He says the scientist Hans Nicene discovered the chemical compound while researching treatments for dementia: “Nicene is soluble in water, tasteless, odorless, colorless. It is also very efficient” (265). He ways that Nicene makes it impossible to read, write, understand, or invent language.
They proceeded from experimenting on criminals to the mentally ill, and then on to terrorists. Everyone exposed to Nicene died of despair, quickly. Nicene couldn’t bear to see the results of his work. Solam then asks about the three Deer sisters: Amelia, Leyla, and Freya. Letta now believes that Noa will put Nicene in the water, which is why it has been so strictly rationed and controlled. She goes to the water station and asks Werber if the water comes from the tower. He says that water is pumped to the tower, then cleaned with chemicals, but he is unwilling to say more.
Chapter 20 Summary: “#493: Work”
Letta finds a word list focusing on water treatment. Marlo and Finn come to collect her: the healer has accused her of collaborating with Desecrators, and Carver doesn’t trust her. Finn says they have gavver insiders but doesn’t know how much they can help. She refuses to go, and they agree to wait a day before proceeding. Letta asks them to research the water tower, including the shift rotations.
That night, she hears a noise downstairs and finds Carver on her porch. He and a gavver named Rex deliver her to a cell, where she hears a man scream nearby. Soon, Carver returns with another gravver. He speaks in the old tongue, pulls her hair, beats her, and demands to know everything. Noa enters and asks for an explanation.
Letta tells him that Hugo visited her the day Daniel was taken. She told Rose that Hugo had promised to help her, which may be how Rose got the idea that Letta had promised to help with Daniel. Noa tells her to be more careful, then takes her to a deep, underground cell where Leyla is shackled to a wall.
Amelia is there as well. She begs Noa to forgive Leyla, who was once her sister. After Amelia leaves, Noa summons Carver and asks what he learned from her. Noa asks Leyla to choose between giving him one name or giving the life of her child. She is pregnant. Leyla tells Letta to be strong like the other women in her family, and then begins to sing. Noa orders Carver to kill her now and takes Letta from the room.
In his office, hoping to distract Noa, Letta proposes making the List shorter. There are still enough words for people to have ideas. She shouts that, “People should use words for function, not for nonsense!” (286). Noa says she reminds him of his younger self. He hints at the early experiments that Letta knows refer to NICENE. Noa says that he is going to send her some water, which is the only water she is allowed to drink. She imagines killing him and wonders why he is sparing her.
In the hall, Letta asks Amelia about her sisters. She says the other was lost. When Letta tells her that Noa told Carver to kill Leyla, Amelia orders her to leave. At home, Letta wonders about Leyla’s comment regarding the women in her family. When Marlo arrives, he says they caught Leyla during one of her shows. She tripped while escaping because her legs cramped due to the pregnancy. Finn is the child’s father. Marlo says that Finn gave Leyla a blade to take her life with, if necessary. Letta tells Marlo that they are going to kill Leyla, and Marlo leaves to find Finn.
Chapters 16-20 Analysis
Chapters 16-20 are slightly deceiving in that, while they start building towards the climax of the novel, The List is only the first entry in a series. These chapters set the stage for the final showdown of the novel, but not of the story.
Forde uses these chapters to speak through Noa as he expands on the theme of Censorship and Control. Like many dictators, Noa seems to believe what he says. He isn’t simply interested in power or wealth. He is willing to destroy language to achieve what is (to him) a regression to humanity’s proper place. He works similarly to the people from the past whom he despises: “In the old days, before the Melting, no one would listen. No one. The politicians just talked and talked. They used words to keep the people in ignorance” (216). Noa does not use words to keep people in ignorance, but rather the removal of words. His plan makes it possible for him to prevent people from even wondering about the nature of their reality to the fullest extent. When Letta learns the purpose behind Nicene, it is even worse than any of them had imagined.
Noa’s lethal experiments on criminals, the mentally unstable, and terrorists have echoes of many of history’s other heinous attempts to control knowledge. Specifically, he has much in common with the experiments of the Nazi doctors, who did learn things, but at the expense of human life. With each new piece of knowledge, Letta is more horrified by her previous beliefs:
There was lots of laughter as Letta walked on by, and she was struck by how her attitude had changed. Once, she would have seen this as proof of her community pulling together, one big happy family living lightly on the planet. Now she knew differently. This was how Noa exerted his control, pulling their strings, a menacing puppet master, hiding in the shadows. If only people knew what he was really like! (233).
Yet, in understanding the severity of Noa’s Censorship and Control, she realizes The Power of Language is truly significant and threatening to Noa.
Benjamin’s death is the final loss that commits her to stopping Noa at all costs. This is often the case in stories that involve anything like radicalization. There is a loss that liberates the person from doubt. This can result in the idealistic pursuit of a goal, or in a myopic obsession that damages the world, such as with Noa’s hatred of language. His plot to poison Ark’s water supply is another reference to the Biblical story of Noah and the flood. Once again, water will be used to purge the earth. This time, John Noa serves as the God figure, Ark is the failed world, and the extinction will be of language, not of life, although life is likely to follow.
When Letta speaks with Leyla, Leyla gives her a new perspective on why life is worth living and why art justifies its own existence:
“Music comes in all colors, Letta, just as we do. Before I knew the word for Creators, I called us color-catchers, the musicians, the painters, the dancers. That’s what we try to do, catch the colors in our own hearts and share that with other people. Color-catchers. I think I still prefer that word…. One of my colors is sadness, my friend” (247).
Language is part of one’s Identity and Self-Expression, so removing language is the same as removing one’s existence. Leyla grants value to the word sadness in its ability to capture the truth of one’s experience, however disheartening or unpleasant. The fact that Leyla is Letta’s aunt also gives Letta a sense of family through language. Now, protecting language is also about protecting family.
