So the story follows this kid named Adam as he tries to survive in a world where panic and fear are the most common emotions. Adam is a teenage boy, just a regular person whose main concerns are if his car is going to break down again and if the girl of his dreams will ever notice him. When the lights suddenly go off one day at school, he can tell that this is not just a simple power outage. The fact that Adam is one of the only people in town who has a working car could be the key to his survival.
When I read this book, I think back a couple years to when I read William Golding’s classic, Lord of the Flies. Some people may not know this, but that book is symbolic of how mob mentality and fear can affect even the most mundane people - even the most innocent people. When something happens that is fearful or extreme, we as humans sometimes do things that we didn't know we were capable of. You don’t have to be a bad person to be affected by this. Now, I am not comparing Lord of the Flies to Rule of Three in the sense that it's about a bunch of little kids trying to kill each other, but the two stories are similar if you think about it in a broader sense.
In the beginning of Lord of the Flies, the main character starts out as sort of a leader. He takes control of the situation and he tries to maintain this idea of civilization. But as the story progresses, the small semblance of control that he had slowly leaves the boys, and things get out of hand. The same concept follows Adam in the book Rule of Three.
Have you ever seen someone being bullied? Have you ever seen a crowd of angry protesters screaming? Even now there are riots in the streets when heartbreak happens. Fires being lit. Stores looted. Regular people like you and me turn into what some would call savages. There is no control, no authority that these people have. All they have to guide them is fear and anger.
All of this takes place in Rule of Three. But it is not mob mentality that this novel is about. It is about the people who overcome their fear and doubt, and grow from it. They do not conform to the panic and fear that everyone else has been swept into. They adapt to the situation that they are in, and they grow from it. That, I believe, is what resilience really is.
Sophia Thompson
THOUGHTS ON DYSTOPIAN RESILIENCE