49 pages • 1 hour read
Tom ClancyThe Hunt for Red October
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1984A 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 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary, “The First Day – Friday, 3 December”
Captain First Rank Marko Ramius of the Soviet Navy sails out of port on Red October, a Soviet ballistic missile submarine on its maiden voyage. Ramius orders the submarine to dive after they are out in open water. Ramius and the political officer, Putin, go to the wardroom to await the appropriate moment to open the safe that contains their orders. When the moment comes, they learn they are to engage in a practice run with another submarine, VK Konovalov, that will test the new engine installed on Red October, a tunnel drive that is nearly silent when it runs. This drive is referred to as the caterpillar drive. After reading the orders, Ramius attacks Putin, forcing his head into the side of a table and breaking his neck. Ramius watches Putin die before placing him on the table. He performs CPR while he waits for the doctor to come and pronounce Putin dead. Putin’s body is placed in a freezer in the kitchen as Ramius tells the doctor their orders forbade them to break radio silence. In truth, Ramius is attempting to take Red October to the US because he wants to defect. He already mailed a letter to his superiors in the Soviet Navy to inform them of his intentions.
Chapter 2 Summary, “The Second Day – Saturday, 4 December”
Ramius announces Putin’s death and reads their orders to the men. However, Ramius replaced the original orders with new ones that instruct the Red October to get as close to the US coast as possible without detection. If they make it, the men will be given a week of rest and relaxation in Cuba. The Red October turns on the caterpillar drive for the first time. Close behind Red October is USS Bremerton, a submarine assigned to track the Red October. They lose contact with Red October when the Soviet submarine switches to the caterpillar drive system.
Jack Ryan is in Morrow, England, writing at his computer when his daughter, Sally, comes in to ask if Santa will find them in England. Ryan puts his work aside and decides to go play with his kids since he’ll be in Washington, DC, for most of the following week. The captain of the VK Konovalov, Captain Second Rank Viktor Tupolev, once Ramius’s student, is looking forward to besting him in their game of hide and seek.
Chapter 3 Summary, “The Third Day – Sunday, 5 December”
Ramius chose his crew on the Red October. Among them are multiple officers that he and his wife unofficially adopted, young men who share his political and moral beliefs. There are only four officers aboard who are not a part of his plan: three young lieutenants and the doctor.
Ramius was brought up in Lithuania by his grandmother. He also befriended a disgraced naval commander who was part of a Soviet rebellion. These two influences allowed him to develop independent thought and to question the party. Although Ramius’s father was a high member of the party and made it possible for him to rise quickly in his naval career, he worked hard and played the game to continue to elevate his career. Ramius always appeared to be a loyal member of the party and a good citizen of the Soviet Union. He also guided officers he and his wife unofficially adopted to be good party members to make their lives easier, despite their personal beliefs.
Ramius’s wife, Natalia, had a literature degree and introduced him to great works of literature that opened his mind to new ways of thinking and taught him to speak English. Natalia’s death led Ramius to decide to leave the Soviet Union. When she fell ill with appendicitis, the doctor who performed the surgery arrived drunk and made several mistakes that led to a serious infection. Natalia was treated with Soviet-made drugs, which were unregulated and often contained less of the active ingredients than required. She died a preventable death, but Ramius could not get justice because the doctor was a son of a high-ranking party official, and there was no oversight of drug manufacturing. He decided to effect justice by handing Red October over to the US.
Chapter 4 Summary, “The Fourth Day – Monday, 6 December”
Ryan arrives in Washington, DC, to meet with the Deputy Director for Intelligence for the CIA, Vice Admiral James Greer. They are joined by the Director of Naval Intelligence, Rear Admiral Charles Davenport. Ryan gives pictures of Red October taken by British intelligence to Davenport. The three men notice small doors they cannot identify on the Red October at the bow and stern. Ryan arranges to go to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis to talk to a friend, Oliver ‘Skip’ Tyler, a former officer who teaches there. Skip tells Ryan that the doors are part of a drive system that uses water to generate power. The US considered such a system, known as a tunnel system, but decided it was impractical. However, if the Soviets were able to overcome those issues, they would have a nearly silent drive system. Skip can “generate a computer simulation of its effectiveness” (91).
At the Sonar Surveillance System Atlantic Control (SOSUS), Chief Franklin listens to movement in the Atlantic that is transmitted to his computer system through sensors lying on the bottom of the ocean in various strategic locations. He easily identifies several American submarines and surface ships, including the USS Dallas. Franklin is called to the office of his commander, Commander Quentin, and asked to move to the “North Cape barrier supervisory board” (97) to take over for the less-experienced men due to concerns about a large collection of Soviet ships that seem to be searching for something.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
The novel is divided into 18 days that offer a snapshot of multiple locations with multiple narrators. The point of view is third-person omniscient, moving from the minds of the two main protagonists into the minds of antagonists and minor characters to offer information that supports the main conflict of the plot.
The first few chapters of the novel introduce the protagonist, Marko Ramius. Ramius is a Soviet submarine commander who chose to defect from his home country. He is motivated by the preventable death of his wife, Natalia, which left him with a sense of injustice and a desire to punish the only people he feels he can, his government. However, the Cold War and the structure of the Soviet Union place many obstacles in his path. First, he must deal with the political officer on his boat, a man who works for the GRU and whose job it is to maintain discipline and to ensure the beliefs and values of the Communist Party are practiced. This man can overrule any judgment Ramius makes and will attempt to stop his plan to defect. For this reason, Ramius kills the political officer and spreads false orders to the crew of Red October in order to protect his plan. His actions are unavoidable, but also irrevocable, setting the tone and the main conflict that will drive the plot.
The setting of the novel is explored in the first three chapters, which provide Ramius’s background and the circumstances that led to his decision to defect. The quality of life in the Soviet Union during the 1980s was difficult due in part by the distrust of the State in its citizens, touching on the theme Mutual Distrust between Soviet Leaders and Subordinates. Ramius expresses this distrust when he reflects that the State does not allow ballistic missile submarines to leave port for longer than a few weeks at a time. He also shows this distrust when he reflects on the reasons why many of the officers he chose to take this journey with him were not allowed to advance in their careers for reasons such as being Jewish or gay. Other parts of the setting are explored when Ramius remembers his wife’s preventable death that happened because her surgeon was drunk and the drugs she was given were unregulated and not potent enough to fight her infection. Finally, the novel points out that many of Ramius’s friends and neighbors did not own cars, a privilege that, in contrast, many Americans take for granted now and in the 1980s.
The second protagonist, Ryan, is also introduced in these early chapters. He is a quiet, intelligent family man who is self-made and content to sit behind a desk for the rest of his life. Ryan is described as unassuming and unremarkable but also unafraid to speak his mind. Ryan is almost a boring character in these initial chapters, someone who is easily overlooked. This characterization will play into the plot later in the novel when Ryan finds himself pushed into a situation he did not expect to be in as a CIA analyst.
Ryan’s arrival in Washington, DC, reveals that both the US and her ally, Britain, are following the progress of the new Soviet ballistic missile submarine, Red October. Clancy pulls Ryan into the saga of the Red October by providing him with photographs of the submarine that he already knows contain odd doors on the front and back of the boat. Ryan is the first to get information on the silent tunnel drive on Red October and arranges for a friend to get involved by asking him to figure out how effective this drive might be. By going to Tyler, Ryan foreshadows more information on the drive and the character’s further involvement later in the novel.
As this is a novel about submarines and other naval ships, Clancy includes a great deal of detail on the equipment used both on these vessels and on land to track them. In these chapters, Clancy describes sonars planted in the Atlantic Ocean that allow the U.S. Navy to track the ships moving around in the ocean and potentially coming toward the US coast. The drives on submarines are also described, as they are a factor in the conflict that drives the plot. Clancy avoids making this information sound like a textbook by weaving these details into the narrative.
Related Titles
By Tom Clancy
