Summary

In The Beginning, an apt title for Part II, rewinds the clock to the first few days of the Community’s experience in the Wilderness. Recounted in past tense by a third-person omniscient narrator, this section provides necessary background information regarding the action that took place before the novel’s beginning. The study was an experiment “to see how people interacted with nature” because interactions between nature and humans had all but disappeared, given that the land was now used to provide resources (oil, gas, minerals, water, wood, food, servers, toxic waste) to sustain the City, where “everyone now lived” (51). A few of the twenty volunteers joined for scientific reasons, some for the thrill of adventure, but most joined because they believed that leaving the City was their only chance of survival.

At first, the Community had ample food and equipment with them...