49 pages • 1 hour read
I Who Have Never Known Men
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Pages 66-151Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 66-100 Summary
The narrator states that it will be difficult to relay the next events “because of the shock and amazement” they evoke (66). A guard slips a key into the hatch where food is passed to the women. Just then, a frighteningly loud siren sounds, and the guards rush out of the bunker, leaving the keys in the lock and enabling the women to escape. After racing up a staircase, the narrator is outside for the first time in her life. The landscape is a vast plain that none of the women recognize. They are not even sure if they are on Earth.
The women are frightened, unsure if the guards will return, and they huddle together. The narrator, however, stands apart from them, and she volunteers to go back downstairs and retrieve food. Anthea joins her, and they search the prison’s other rooms, finding tools, supplies, canned goods, and a freezer full of meat.
As the narrator and Anthea bring up supplies, the women arrange bushes and blankets around a hole in the ground, creating a private toilet. Although the narrator never understood the women’s discomfort with public defecation, she knows her invitation to the new bathroom means inclusion in the women’s world. Inside, she experiences solitude for the first time—and likes it.
The group prepares bundles of supplies and heads toward a dip in the plain where they hope to be concealed from any returning guards. They find a river, and the narrator thinks she never wants to leave her first bath. Likewise, they build a grill, producing the narrator’s first meal that is not boiled.
During the night, the narrator accidentally touches the woman sleeping next to her and is startled by the thought of a guard’s whip. She remembers her freedom but moves away voluntarily, thinking she does not like human contact, despite her impulse to embrace Frances in the bunker. She lies still, basking in all she has learned since leaving the bunker.
Dorothy is the eldest and most respected woman, and she assumes authority. After listening to several debates, she decides they need to move on in search of answers. After retrieving more supplies from the bunker, including a chair for Dorothy, the women set off on a slow journey. They hope to find a road, houses, or a sign but only encounter more wilderness. They camp near another river and construct another private latrine.
They are disappointed by their continued isolation, but by sunset, they are laughing again. One woman, Rose, sings, and the narrator experiences music for the first time. She then sees colors she never knew existed. The beauty of the song and sky give her feelings of pleasure that resemble her fantasy-driven orgasms and cause her eyes to tear. That night, while sleeping, the narrator feels Anthea lift her to wrap her in a blanket. This time, the narrator does not recoil from human touch, nor does she fall back asleep. Rather, she lies in fascination of the stars, and Rose’s song lingers in her mind.
The narrator gets up to use the toilet during the night and sees some pairs of women distanced from the group and sharing a blanket. She asks Anthea about it later. Anthea shrugs and says that “they [give] each other what they [can]” (101). Sensing Anthea’s embarrassment, the narrator drops the subject.
Pages 101-130 Summary
After 26 days of exploration, the narrator goes ahead of the group and spots a building that resembles the cabin atop their former bunker. She runs back to tell the others and forces herself to wait for them. Supporting Dorothy helps curb the narrator’s impatience. At the cabin, Anthea, Dorothy, and the narrator descend the staircase amid a horrible odor. Below, they find a cage filled with the bodies of 39 dead female prisoners. When the other women join them, Rose sings a hymn for the dead. The women want to remove the bodies and bury them, or at least leave an inscription, but they do not have the proper tools.
The women collect food and supplies from the bunker’s storage and resume their journey, but the mood is gloomy. No one speaks much. When they spot another cabin, they approach with apprehension rather than excitement, especially after detecting the familiar stench. This time, they find a cage full of male corpses.
For months, the women venture from one mass grave to another. Instead of expecting to find signs of civilization, they now hope to find an open cage where other prisoners escaped. They leave evidence of their presence at each bunker and signs indicating the direction of their departure. As a signature, they use a circle over a cross to indicate they are women.
After two years of exploring, Dorothy is weak. She insists, however, that they continue, not wanting to miss the chance for a discovery. The women construct a stretcher to carry her, and she dies lying on it as they walk. The journey continues until another woman, Mary-Jane, falls ill with severe stomach pains. The group sets up camp near a bunker, and one night Mary-Jane sneaks down and hangs herself near the cage.
Instead of exploring further, the women find a spot near a river to settle down. They build houses and a kitchen, using supplies and tools from a nearby bunker. Life becomes monotonous, and the narrator is restless, always looking for something to build or an excuse for an expedition.
Many women form couples, and the narrator is confused. Anthea explains their physical relationships, which provokes more questions for the narrator about men. The narrator saw nude male corpses in the bunkers but still knows nothing about intercourse and reproduction, which Anthea, who studied nursing, describes in detail. The narrator later explores her own body for erotic pleasures but feels nothing. She only later connects her youthful eruptions to the concept of sexual pleasure. She reasons that her body prioritized survival over reproductive development during her undernourished childhood.
Two other women die, and the mood dips for a while. Soon, however, the women plan to build new houses, which excites the restless narrator. She goes on a four-month expedition to collect supplies from other bunkers, during which she asks her three companions about their former lives. The women speak of lovers, dating, marriages, and divorces. There are many details the narrator cannot imagine, such as dancing, silk dresses, and being lovesick. The women feel sorry for the narrator, who will never know those things, but she thinks, “I am not able to mourn for what I have not known” (130).
Pages 131-151 Summary
One of the women, Angela, is ill, and she does not want to suffer as some of the other women have. She asks Anthea, who knows anatomy well, to stab her through the heart with a knife. Although Angela does not suffer, falling into a coma before death, the request haunts Anthea, who feels obligated to help others but does not think she has the courage to kill. The narrator tells Anthea to teach her the act, saying, “I could do it. I’m not l like the rest of you” (132).
Years later, food supplies dwindle, and the surviving women move to a new spot and erect a second village. During construction, the women have purpose and drive. Afterward, they become passionless and sluggish. Several fall ill. One, Anna, becomes partially paralyzed and begs for relief, which only the narrator can provide. Over time, the narrator kills many of the women, who always seem grateful. They often caress her in their final moments, a touch she can tolerate.
Anthea becomes frail, which the narrator attributes to despair, after losing hope for answers and seeing so many women die. One night, the narrator hears Anthea crying and sits with her. Even though the narrator dislikes physical contact, she agrees to hold Anthea as she passes. Only four women remain, and the narrator soon helps two of them die. She is then alone with Laura, a woman she does not like much.
Laura has no interest in anything. She is distant and easily confused, and the narrator believes Laura’s spirit is giving up on life despite her having a healthy body. Knowing Laura is dying, the narrator plans to resume exploration, contemplating her supplies and route. Then, one afternoon, Laura’s consciousness slowly fades, and her pulse stops. The narrator says, “My last tie had been cut” (151).
Pages 66-151 Analysis
This section begins and ends with two of the story’s major turning points: the narrator’s escape from the bunker and the death of the narrator’s last companion. Likewise, the protagonist transitions from seeking inclusion in the group of women to delighting in her independence.
This section opens with the narrator’s transition from a strictly regulated prison life to the chaos and freedom of the outside world. The narrator’s description of running up the bunker stairs comprises one long paragraph, spanning nearly two full pages. The flowing sentence construction conveys her excitement and the flowing nature of her thoughts. She describes feeling an elation akin to her eruptions and thinks she has the strength to overpower any guard. She also says a dozen years of imprisonment might be worth that joyful experience. Her mind floods with a stream of concepts that she collected in the bunker but never experienced, such as the sky, the wind, and the horizon. For her, freedom means exploration, emphasizing the theme of Curiosity Versus Expectations.
The women, however, expect to find the world they knew before imprisonment and are afraid of the unknown in a land they do not recognize. Outside the bunker, the women huddle together in fear, while the narrator maintains her distance and excitement. While she is less afraid and dislikes human contact, her distance also represents her ideological difference from the others, highlighting the theme of The Intrinsic Value of Thinking and Knowledge. While the women can rely on their knowledge of their lives before imprisonment, the narrator approaches her circumstances with a clean slate. This helps her adjust more quickly than the other women, and it continues to emphasize their differences.
The private toilet also symbolizes the women’s and protagonist’s social differences. Behind the blankets, the women regain their dignity and a piece of their former world. The narrator, however, never having experienced shame regarding bodily functions, cares about the toilet more for its value as a symbol of community into which she has been invited. She experiences the joy of solitude when using the toilet, which foreshadows her desire to break away and explore on her own while the other women waste away in the village.
Still, the narrator becomes, as she states, “a good companion” (101), prioritizing the needs of the group and adapting to their social structures despite her restlessness. Character development in this section feeds the theme of Humanity and Interconnectedness. The narrator often questions her humanity because of her ignorance of intimacy and relationships, but she develops deep connections with her companions. For example, in hindsight, she realizes she had friendships with some of the women, and she admits she loved Anthea.
Ironically, her detachment creates her ability to accomplish acts of compassion that the others cannot when the community requires a mercy killing. The act of killing produces a closeness that she describes as stronger than that of a lover. She knows the dying women love her for ending their pain, and she accepts their thankful caresses. Likewise, some of the healthy women hug her out of gratitude for her ability to end their companions’ suffering. This continues to subvert the trope of maternal caregiving as the age roles are reversed—the younger woman is taking care of the older ones—and the caregiving manifests as an act of violence that would be considered brutal and criminal in a pre-apocalyptic context.
The women’s emphasis on the joys of their former lives, particularly their sexual relationships, makes the protagonist devalue her own life story, which lacks these experiences. For example, despite escaping prison, exploring an unknown world, building homes, and assisting suicides, she says that “nothing ha[s] happened” in her life because she has never experienced sexual pleasure (127). In reality, she has her own pleasures, such as exploring and learning, which most of the women do not understand. Only Anthea has much education, and none of the women have traveled. The juxtaposition of Laura and the narrator, just before Laura’s death, provides a stark contrast on this point. When the narrator announces that she intends to explore, Laura states, “But there’s nothing […] There aren’t even any seasons” (147). In truth, there are seasonal changes, but like the other women, Laura never fully adapts to life outside the prison. Her attachment to a past that no longer exists condemns her to a tragic ending because frontiers require exploration, and those tied to the past cannot embrace the unknown.
The narrative shift that occurs after Laura’s death mirrors the turning point in the narrator’s character arc. As the narrator plans her journey and provisions, the writing again takes the form of an elongated paragraph full of quick thoughts that indicate an excited mental state. Likewise, the alternation between different verb tenses augments this scene’s heightened mood. For example, she says, “I would need lots of matches, a small shovel and boots. I must remember to take some soap. My dress was in complete tatters” (148). The diction suggests she is reexperiencing the thrill that she is documenting, creating a link between the narrator’s past and present.
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