Endangered

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Parts 1-2

Part 3

Part 4

Parts 5-7

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Background

Zoological Context: Bonobos

The bonobo, or Pan paniscus, is an endangered species of great ape. They have long legs, pink lips, a dark face, parted long hair atop the head, and a tufted tail. On average, male bonobos weigh about 99 pounds, whereas females weigh about 73 pounds. Bonobos live in the Congo Basin of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is also the setting of Endangered. They eat raw fruit, roots, shoots, nuts, seeds, honey, leaves, and eggs. (In the novel, Otto’s favorite foods are sugar cane and peanuts.) Bonobos live about 40 years in captivity, but scientists are unsure how long they live in the wild, though the bonobo’s lifespan in the wild is presumably shorter than it is in captivity.

In terms of behavior, bonobos are timid and primarily peaceful. These apes have demonstrated behaviors like compassion, empathy, kindness, patience, and sensitivity, yet bonobos can also become aggressive when threatened. Bonobos are nomadic and do not have well-defined territories. As a result, a group of bonobos will not behave with territorial aggression toward other groups that they encounter. Scientists estimate that between 29,500 and 50,000 bonobos live in Africa today. As the trafficker who sells Otto exemplifies, their numbers are dwindling due to habitat loss, human population growth, and commercial poaching.

Bonobos live by a matriarchal social structure, so the females make decisions and ultimately control a group. Eliot Schrefer demonstrates this matriarchal structure when the females at Florence’s sanctuary attack a male bonobo named Pweto for accidentally killing a female’s baby. The females almost kill Pweto, forcing him to live in isolation away from the group. Males are not often aggressive and play an essential role in alerting their groups to threats and outsiders.

Series Context: The Ape Quartet

Endangered is the first book in The Ape Quartet. The series also consists of Threatened (2014), Rescued (2016), and Orphaned (2018). These books have won various awards, and Endangered and Threatened are both National Book Award finalists. Each novel focuses on a different type of great ape. Endangered focuses on bonobos, Threatened on chimpanzees, Rescued on orangutans, and Orphaned on gorillas. Each story also includes a new setting and set of characters, so while the books all advocate for the survival and preservation of the great apes, each story can also stand alone and does not depend on the context of the previous story’s plot.

In Endangered, the first novel in the series, 14-year-old Sophie journeys through Congo’s jungle with a young bonobo to reunite with her mother after rebel soldiers overtake Kinshasa and other areas around the country. The second book, Threatened, features a man named Luc who attempts to rob a professor but ends up working for him instead and becomes fascinated with chimpanzees. Together, they go into the jungle to study the chimps and must find their place in the apes’ social hierarchy while protecting them from danger. Rescued tells the story of Raja, an orangutan raised in an American home, and John, a boy who grows up with Raja and sees him as a brother. John’s parents’ divorce, separating the two characters, so John must rescue Raja from a miserable existence. The final novel in the series, Orphaned, is set in the Paleolithic period. A young gorilla named Snub loses most of her family in a natural disaster and must take care of her sister while navigating the dangers of her environment, including humans.

Each novel offers a distinctly different storyline about one of the four ape species and presents a unique perspective. For example, Rescued and Orphaned include the apes’ perspectives, not just a human’s, while Endangered and Threatened focus mainly on the human perspective. While the literary foundation of each novel is unique, they all share some common themes, the most dominant of which is that of survival. Family relationships, whether human or ape, also play a major role in each of the narratives, and several also discuss the impact of contemporary ethics and politics on the lives of both humans and apes. Endangered includes all three of these themes, as the rest of this guide will illustrate.