Alone Chapter 113 – “I Can Almost Pretend”: Summary & Analysis
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
Maddie walks through her mother’s neighborhood on a winter morning. The yards and gardens, once left overgrown from neglect, are now covered in snow, appearing neat and tidy. The houses look cozy from the outside, belying their frozen, empty interiors. For a moment, Maddie lets herself believe it is just an ordinary snowy day and the rest of Millerville is still asleep. She imagines the most remarkable event of the day will be an eagle catching a bass and the fish’s death never reaching the news. This brief fantasy allows her to escape, for a heartbeat, the reality that she is the only person left.
Key Events
- Maddie walks through her mother’s neighborhood and notes the snow-covered lawns and gardens, which look orderly now.
- She observes the houses, which appear warm and comfortable from the outside even though they are cold and empty inside.
- Maddie deliberately slips into a fantasy: she pretends it is a normal morning and everyone else is just sleeping in.
- She imagines that the day’s biggest story would be an eagle’s successful hunt and the death of a bass – a routine natural event.
- The chapter ends with this imagined ordinariness, a fragile moment of denial before reality reasserts itself.
Character Development
The protagonist, Maddie, has been alone in Millerville for over a year by this point. In earlier chapters, she often confronted the silence and abandonment head‑on. Here, she shows a new coping strategy: willful fantasy. She does not fight the truth; she briefly sets it aside. This marks a shift from raw survival mode to a psychological attempt to make her surroundings feel livable. The fact that she can “almost pretend” suggests both her resilience (she still has imaginative capacity) and her fragility (the pretense is a temporary shield). Her identity continues to be shaped by the absence of other people, yet she finds small ways to endure.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs
- Pretending normalcy – The central theme of this chapter is the human need to believe that the world is still functioning as it should. Maddie’s fantasy is a survival mechanism, not delusion.
- Nature’s indifference – The eagle and the bass represent the natural world continuing without regard for human absence. The eagle’s catch is “the most extraordinary event,” but only if humans were there to witness it. In Maddie’s pretend world, it would be news; in reality, it is just another day.
- Winter as a disguise – Snow covers the signs of neglect (overgrown gardens), making the neighborhood look cared for. Winter becomes a collaborator in Maddie’s pretense, hiding the truth of abandonment.
- Empty houses as symbols – The cozy exteriors contrasted with “frigid empty interiors” mirror Maddie’s own outward composure and inner loneliness.
Why This Chapter Matters
This chapter is a quiet but important moment in Maddie’s long isolation. It shows that after many months alone, she has developed psychological strategies beyond mere survival chores. The ability to “almost pretend” is not a sign of losing touch with reality; it is a deliberate, temporary escape that helps her face another day. The chapter also underscores a key irony of the novel: the prettiness of the snow‑covered town makes its emptiness harder to bear. Readers see that Maddie’s greatest challenge is not finding food or shelter but maintaining hope in a world that looks normal but is utterly changed. The eagle and the bass remind us that life and death continue without human intervention, and Maddie must find her place in that new order.
Study Questions and Answers
1. Why does Maddie pretend that everyone else is “still asleep” rather than gone?
She needs to preserve the belief that her situation is temporary. By imagining the townspeople simply sleeping in, she avoids the crushing finality of their disappearance, which allows her to keep functioning.
2. What does the eagle’s catch of a bass represent in this chapter?
It represents ordinary, ongoing natural processes that would be noteworthy only in a human‑centered world. In Maddie’s pretense, it becomes the day’s big event; in reality, it is a silent, unnoticed act of survival, mirroring her own unnoticed existence.
3. How does the setting (snow‑covered yards and cozy-looking houses) contrast with Maddie’s true situation?
The snow makes the neighborhood look orderly and warm, but inside the houses are empty and cold. This visual lie reflects Maddie’s internal attempt to see her life as ordinary, even though it is anything but.