50 pages • 1 hour read
Lauren OliverDelirium
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2011A 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 18-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 18 Summary
Lena and Alex make their way through the dark forest of the Wilds. Alex always seems to know which way to go, guided by a flashlight and blue markings on trees. In a clearing along an abandoned road, they see an old truck, house, and debris. Lena is astounded by everything she sees. She realizes that a 50-year-old event now known as the “Blitz” was actually a deadly bombing that killed thousands of Invalids in the Wilds, and not the benign clearing of land that government-authorized history books claim it to be. With the suddenness of these new realizations, she feels lost and unsure of where she belongs.
Alex brings her to a small trailer park filled with tents and ramshackle homes where his friends and family live; they are all asleep. He then shows her his own trailer, complete with a large book collection. Lena does not know what poetry is since it was banned after the cure was introduced. Alex recites love poems for Lena, seemingly confessing his love for her in doing so. Lena is afraid of uttering the word “love” and is overwhelmed by her own feelings. They sit under the open roof, viewing the stars, and Lena falls asleep in Alex’s arms. When she awakens, they make their way back across the border. Lena misses the freedom of the Wilds instantly and feels as though it has all been a wonderful dream.
Chapter 19 Summary
The next day, Carol reveals that she has invited Lena’s match, Brian Scharff, over for a visit. Lena is furious because she has plans to meet Alex. The reminder of her match to Brian, who is already cured, also renews her anxiety over her impending cure date. Despite Lena’s protests, Carol is adamant that this is the way things must be. Lena is overcome with the depth of her feelings for Alex.
When Brian and his mother arrive, Lena discovers that he is small and asthmatic: nothing like Alex. She leaves the room, and when she comes back, she overhears Brian claim that Lena is not as pretty as she was in the pictures he received. Lena is offended and hurt. She runs outside to cry, and eventually Brian comes out to apologize. He explains that she looked happier in the pictures and seems to know that Lena is in love with someone else. He reveals that he, too, once had inappropriate feelings for a girl before his cure and promises Lena that she will feel much better after the procedure. As Brian takes her hand, Lena briefly wishes that she could go back to being excited about the cure and her safe new life as she was just a few months ago.
Suddenly Brian comments on a man that has been watching them. Brian yells at the man, whom he believes is a regulator, that he and Lena are allowed to touch because they are paired. When Lena turns, she sees that the man is Alex, who then runs away. Lena is dismayed and fears that Alex will be angry at her.
Chapter 20 Summary
After Brian and his mother leave, Lena races around town looking for Alex so she can explain. She is desperate as she realizes they are running out of time together. She leaves a note in the Governor statue, hoping that he will meet her at 37 Brooks later that night. She sneaks out to make the rendezvous, and again Grace catches her but says nothing.
Lena finds the living room at 37 Brooks cleared of all their things and takes it as a sign that Alex has left her. She breaks down in sobs, succumbing to the Coldness inside her. Suddenly Alex appears, forlorn, and Lena frantically tries to explain everything. He tells her that he isn’t angry and leads her upstairs where he has placed their blanket and candles. He has also torn out the rotting ceiling, exposing the sky and stars like in the Wilds. Lena senses that this evening will be their goodbye, and she confesses that she does not want to be without him. When he suggests they run away together, she admits that she doesn’t want to be like her mother, whom Lena believes abandoned her by choosing suicide due to her feelings of love. Lena shares how her mother felt everything too deeply and had “black days” of deep depression (334), briefly mentioning that her mother also always wore her father’s necklace. Alex is stunned by her description of the necklace and seems to recognize it. He claims that Lena’s mother may still be alive.
Chapter 21 Summary
The next morning, Lena and Alex go to the Crypts, which serve as a combination of a prison and a psychiatric hospital. Lena is terrified that her mother may be locked inside this nightmarish place, but she knows that she must learn the truth. Alex uses his lab guard badge to gain entrance by claiming that he has official orders to give Lena a tour of this place in order to scare her away from resisting the cure. The other guards recognize Alex, and he confesses to Lena that he comes to the Crypts often because his father is buried there. He takes her to a small graveyard on the prison grounds where his father’s tombstone reads “Warren Sheathes, R.I.P” (349). His father never knew that he had a son, and Alex’s mother thought it would be better if Alex believed his father to be dead. His parents had planned to run away together, but his father was imprisoned before they could. Alex and Lena then make their way to Ward Six, where sympathizers are left to die in solitary confinement. Alex apologizes to Lena for being the one to bring her here.
Chapter 22 Summary
Lena is shocked by the squalid conditions inside Ward Six. Alex is surprised to find a new guard posted outside the cells. The new guard, Frank, is suspicious when Alex asks about the old guard, Thomas (presumably the boy Rachel was once in love with). Lena guesses that Thomas is a secret sympathizer who helped Alex sneak in and out of this forbidden ward in the past. Frank seems cruel and sadistic, but Alex appeases him by pretending to hate sympathizers. Frank explains that Thomas is now imprisoned in the ward himself after failing to stop a female prisoner from escaping a few months ago. He shows them her old cell, and Lena immediately knows that it was her mother who escaped. The filthy cell is covered with engravings of the word “Love” all over the cement walls, and her necklace is abandoned in a corner. One of the large O’s in the word “love” was carved all the way through to form a tunnel through which she escaped. Lena is both relieved and horrified.
Chapters 18-22 Analysis
This section begins and ends with Lena’s crossing over into new territory: first into the Wilds, and then into Ward Six to learn the truth about her mother. In addition to expanding Lena’s worldview, these journeys are also metaphors for growing up. Step by step, Lena is leaving behind the safety and stability of childhood lies and moving toward an awakened adulthood. The juxtaposition between the open Wilds and the enclosed city of Portland becomes jarring. When she returns from her visit to the Wilds, Lena compares Portland to a sandcastle, “like something in danger of dissolving” (304), thus reflecting the inherent fragility of a Portland built on such a flimsy ideology of oppression and control. Thus, upon her return to the city, Lena’s changing perspective reflects her growing maturity in this harsh coming-of-age story. The comparison of Portland to a sandcastle is also significant because it also echoes Lena’s childhood memories of playing innocently on the beach, and this tinge of nostalgia suggests that Lena’s awakening does not come easily or willingly. Despite the revelations she witnesses, she sometimes tries to resist the truth by seeking refuge in the way society has told her grow up, and this conflict is best articulated when she meets her match, Brian, and states, “This is my life, and the order of things. There’s no changing it. I take a deep breath and tell myself to stop being such a baby. Everyone has to grow up sometime” (309). Her hesitation to enter the Crypts and Ward Six also reflects this same resistance to change, for she is afraid of what lies on the other side and who she will become once she knows. However, Alex, the harbinger of change, maturity, and inner realizations, is there to push her forward and support her as she evolves.
This evolution is also marked by Lena’s conflicting, overwhelming emotions. She is full of love for Alex, wonder at the freedom of the Wilds, and fear of losing her newfound happiness. As she and Alex read poetry in the Wilds, she is afraid to verbally express her love because speaking the words makes them real, and she feels unprepared for the reality of being in love because it has been declared a weakness. Later at 37 Brooks when she believes that Alex has left her, she is overcome with a “a surge of [the Coldness] so strong it hits [her] in the chest like a physical force” (326). She is physically undone, and it seems like the government was right about love being a liability. In this moment, Lena experiences the full spectrum of emotions, intensified by her seemingly manic-depressive tendencies inherited from her mother. Before Lena enters the Crypts, she describes how her “body has been burning one second and icy the next” (341), a dynamic that accurately illustrates Lena’s volatile mood swings. However, as Lena will eventually discover, the pain of feeling such a confusing range of emotions is better than the blank numbness of the cure.
This section also explores the power of names. Lena has previously explained that she mostly uses her aunt’s last name, Tiddle, because she is afraid of being associated with her mother’s name, Haloway. The Tiddles are a normal family, and Lena has always believed that using their name will make her seem more normal. However, as she ventures into the Crypts to search for her mother, she learns that Alex “has a secret name, just like [she does]” (352). He has gone by an assigned last name, Warren, to avoid arousing suspicion, but his real last name is Sheathes. Thus, the strategic use of names throughout the story highlights both the desire for conformity and the power in nonconformity. When Lena discovers Alex’s true last name, she feels a deeper connection to him, and the discovery strengthens their bond and shows her that her mother’s last name is in fact a strength, not a sign of contamination by the disease.
