Writings 

I finished this book in about a week. I immediately began to guess what I would do if I ever found myself in this situation. I’d like to believe that I would retain my rationality, but the complete lack of purpose inside the bunker would destroy me. Without ever learning the guards’ intentions, the continued survival of the women supports the conclusion that the guards wanted to keep them alive. What was the point of keeping them alive? We learn that there were separate bunkers for men and women; however, we never get any inclination that merging between the two occurred. The reason for keeping the women alive could not have been for reproduction. The women also didn’t appear to produce any goods. They weren’t forced into a system of slave labor, which would have seen them subjected to hours of physical, mental, and emotional work. What if the owners of these bunkers were running some type of dystopian betting scheme, which saw participants place bets on which inmate would die first or inversely be the last to survive. The number of inmates within the cages didn’t appear to have any purpose either. 40 members doesn’t seem to create a different environment when compared to one with 50. There is also no mention of any children within the other bunkers. If the guards, or those controlling the guards, were so heightened about maintaining a controlled environment, why introduce a rogue variable. Maybe they determined that a child’s differences from adults would be dulled within the purposeless environment. Their erratic and sometimes uncontrollable behavior had no space in a world where one crack of a whip results in complete submission. Maybe the narrator’s existence in the bunker functioned as a live experiment where the overseers sought to understand how life in the bunker impacted someone who was essentially born into it. Maybe they really just didn’t care. One of the many conclusions of this book is that the desire for purpose is learned. Prior to their life in the bunker, the 39 other women lived lives full of purpose. A handful of them were employed, had families, and participated in activities that created a meaningful life. Once subjected to this new life, their sense of purpose disappeared. They were now surviving purely for survival’s sake. Towards the end of the book, we read about a woman who does not die from physical deterioration but instead from death of the spirit. These women were stripped of their purpose and paid dearly for its absence. The narrator explains how the women would argue over things as simple as what to do with that night’s vegetables. Shall we boil them or eat them raw? While the narrator found this bickering amusing since the women always only had those two options, it’s apparent to the reader that this was the women’s attempt to create purpose and depth in a futile and shallow reality. While the women were never able to suppress their desire for purpose, the narrator seemed unbothered by her purposeless existence. An obvious reason for this unbothered nature is that the bunker is the only world she has ever known. She never lived in an environment where purpose was strived for. Even though she heard the other women discuss their past lives that were enriched with meaning and motivation, she was unable to relate to their lives. While she was exposed to the idea of purpose, the bunker barred her ability to experience it. Why would the other women encourage her to seek purpose when they themselves were being mentally and emotionally crushed by its absence. Purpose only begins to appear when the narrator obtains knowledge. The first pivotal moment is when she utilizes her heartbeat to keep track of time. Her and Anthea, another woman within the bunker, contemplate the measurable parameters of their enclosure. Were they experiencing the normal 24-hour cycle? How long were they being allowed to sleep? How often were the guards changing? By using her heartbeat, the narrator discovers that the women’s days have been shortened. As the days pass, the narrator describes the counting of her heartbeat as turning into a subconscious habit. Without even realizing it, she’s intuitively keeping track of the time, a skill that has given her purpose in a purposeless world. Her new knowledge of the bunker’s day/night cycle opens her mind to an entire new plethora of questions. A new opportunity to gain knowledge and eventually purpose. Her and Anthea begin to ask questions about the guards’ purpose for keeping the women trapped within their cage. The space is now filled with questions about purpose. Something the author admits to never thinking about before. What switched? Her knowledge of the situation. Time became a tangible condition that she could experience. While she was unable to connect to the stories shared by the women because she was unable to picture their existence, time in the bunker was real. Her heartbeat functioned as proof of that. So the question becomes, why does knowledge drive purpose? My initial thought is that knowledge uncovers the potential of life. Those potentials, and the desire to pursue them, are a factor in creating purpose. Would a sense of purpose still exist without knowledge? Do animals feel a sense of purpose? Is awareness of one’s existence necessary for purpose to come about? In regards to the book’s narrator, purpose is not essential for life. One could even argue that purpose is not essential for conscious life. Even when the women escaped the bunker and were unfortunately thrown into a similar prison that presented the illusion of freedom, the narrator never felt discouraged by the utter-lack of purpose in her world. She even acknowledges this when comparing herself to the other women. She was never dismayed by the bizarreness of this life because she knew no different. Why then, did the other women struggle so much? What about this open prairie full of bunkers differs from the world they were abruptly taken from? Was it freedom that differed? Can’t be because the women had the freedom to walk in any direction they wanted. Was it the lack of jobs? Can’t be because the women spent time building, cooking, and sewing. Now was it a lack of hardship? Potentially. While the emotional and mental toll of this life was arduous, the women faced no food struggles, risk of physical attack, or weather complications. They lived in a truly neutral world that forced them to either live out their days until their bodies gave in or until they took their lives by their own hands or through the help of anothers’. While I would agree with the above, that lack of hardship and the ever present reality of needs being fulfilled dispels purpose, the book highlights a different explanation: the lack of men. Men are the women’s purpose. They argue that a woman is meant to fall in love with a man and bear his children. That loving a man is the most important action she can undertake. That is what gives her purpose. This belief of a woman’s purpose is our defining contradiction. The narrator’s ability to handle this purpose-less reality comes from her never knowing men. She never learned that sense of dependability and desire that the other women have been subjected to. Their purpose stems from their successes in marriage and motherhood. Once those paths are eliminated, their sense of purpose follows. So, purpose, in this case, must be learned. For a woman who has never known men lives a life where purpose is not sought after but instead remains in the lives of those who learned that purpose is equated to their relations with men.