66 pages • 2 hours read
Nick CutterThe Troop
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
Unreliable Authority Figures
Unreliable authority figures represent some of the false “differences” between children and adults. Tim shatters the boys’ expectations of him as an adult, doctor, and Scoutmaster when he’s unable to cure the stranger’s illness, instead contracting it himself and exposing the boys to it. Other adults such as the military, the boys’ parents, and other townspeople either don’t try to rescue them or are unable to do so. All of these failures make the boys feel that adults are not different from children in the ways the boys used to believe they were: Adults aren’t necessarily bigger, stronger, braver, smarter, or more moral, and they can’t or won’t always protect children from harm. Despite the lack of a physical, living adult presence throughout most of the novel, the boys on the island frequently recall the words and advice of adults (either through memories, hallucinations, or dreams). However, these words of advice don’t save anyone except for Max. This outcome further erodes the difference between children and adults.
Unreliable authority figures also enhance the novel’s terror because the characters gradually come to realize that they can’t rely on any of the established channels for help. Without their Scoutmaster, parents, the police, the military, or medical doctors on their side, the boys obviously struggle to prevail and also to maintain hope. Only Max holds out hope until returning home because he still has a childlike belief in the absolute power and morality of authority figures despite having been proven wrong several times already.
Hive Organisms
Hive organisms, as a motif, represent the group dynamics of Troop 52, which begin to unravel and change once the worms, which are themselves hive organisms, are introduced. Troop 52 is full of individuals, but the troop as a whole has a definite rhythm and pattern as a group because the members have spent so much time together over the years. They have a definite leader (Tim) and second-in-command (Kent). They walk in a certain order, and each person fulfills a different role within the group, such as Newt being a “nurturer.” The narrator sometimes portrays the boys’ thoughts and emotions as a singular group experience, enhancing the sense that they’re a hive in their own way. The group dynamics aren’t always perfect. The boys still fight, bully each other and make mistakes. Nonetheless, the boys are so used to the group dynamics that, once Tim and Kent are removed from their leadership positions, the rest of the group starts behaving erratically. Most members don’t make it, and the few that do must adapt along the way.
The narrator comments that, as people are getting sick and dying, the group is dwindling to its “core.” This observation suggests that the most important part of the group is not the leader, but the one who survives longest, which turns out to be Max, who actually seems to be the most average child in the group. A distinction is made between Edgerton’s “devourer” worms (who are like worker bees) and “conqueror” worms (who are like queen bees or leaders). The conqueror worms take over the host’s brain, ensuring the devourer worms’ success. However, with the human “hive organism” of Troop 52, both candidates for the human version of a “conqueror worm” are killed first, which hurts the chances of the human group’s survival (if not each specific individual’s survival).
Fatherhood
In The Troop, fatherhood functions as a motif to complicate the distinctions between adults and children. At first, most of the boys believe fathers do, and are supposed to, protect their children under any circumstances. Newt, who has never met his own father, views Scoutmaster Tim as a father figure and therefore expects protection from Tim (as the rest of the group does, as well). However, Tim dies and introduces the illness to the boys, and most of their parents don’t attempt to disobey the military. Kent’s dad, Jeff, and Max’s dad, Reginald, do steal a boat and make an attempt to rescue the boys, but they’re stopped by the military before they can make contact. All of these failures make it seem to the boys like there’s not much difference between children and adults after all. Even Jeff, who is the police chief, a physically large man who can usually command others to do what he wants, ultimately has to answer to higher authorities such as the federal government, leaving him with little more power than an adolescent boy to alter the situation at hand.
Fatherhood also functions as a motif to complicate the distinctions between humans, animals, and monsters. When Shelley gets infected with worms, instead of viewing them as parasites, he views them as his “babies.” Shelley doesn’t see the difference between “humans” and “animals” as important, so it’s easier for him to accept a different species as his own “children.” Shelley takes this philosophical thinking too far in the case of the parasitic tapeworms, but regardless, his idea that he has become a “father” complicates the difference between humans and animals, as well as adults and children. Whereas before, Shelley wanted to kill animals and humans just for fun or to gain knowledge, now he wants to kill Max and Newt because they’re a danger to his “children.” Shelley had already come to view killing things for the old reasons as boring and meaningless. Now, he feels like protecting his “children” is a more noble and fulfilling purpose than anything he’s done before. Shelley thinks he’s now an adult, whereas the “boys” still want to return to their “silly” and pointless lives back home.
