Full Measures

The novel’s main protagonist, Ember, is a 20-year-old college student home for Christmas break. On her birthday, which should be a happy occasion, a knock at the door presents a contrasting event to the life of Ember’s military family in the form of casualty notification from the US Army: The family’s patriarch has been killed in the line of duty. The casualty notification disrupts domestic order and thrusts Ember and her family into both personal grief and institutional procedure. This immediate crisis dismantles the family’s hierarchy of responsibility, incapacitating the matriarch, June, and compelling Ember to adopt a parental role and ensure her younger siblings’ well-being. Plans and schedules frame her response, as she routinely takes a calculated approach to life, from determining what distance she must run to compensate for eating Christmas fudge to having a five-year plan with her boyfriend. The news of her father’s death immediately shatters her worldview, introducing one of the novel’s core themes: The Illusion of Control in a World of Uncertainty. Her father’s binder, containing his will and other instructions for the family (to help them carry out his final wishes), informs this theme: The binder is his attempt to help his family by imposing order on the chaos of his death. In becoming his executor, Ember inherits her father’s belief that preparedness can help mitigate disaster, a belief that the novel’s events challenge. Her assuming responsibility for the family isn’t merely a coping mechanism but also a necessity, forcing her to manage crises while deferring her own grief.

The novel uses character foils to explore different forms of support and delineate the two worlds Ember now straddles: her past life of youthful certainty and her new reality of adult responsibility. Her boyfriend, Riley, and her former classmate, Josh, are the first pair of opposing forces. Riley represents the superficiality of Ember’s former life: Absence, emotional distance, and self-interest define his actions. He arrives late to the funeral and is more concerned with his fraternity formal than supporting Ember and her family in their grief. In addition, he has been betraying her for some time by sleeping with her best friend. His failures highlight his inability to navigate a genuine crisis. In contrast, Josh embodies a quiet, mature, and empathetic form of masculinity. He provides support through small, practical acts of service: paying for the birthday cake, retying Gus’s tie, taking Gus to hockey, and bringing the family pizza. These actions are unprompted and address immediate needs, establishing him as a stable presence amid the chaos. The physical confrontation between the two men in Breckenridge is the culmination of their contrast, in which Josh’s punch defends Ember against the carelessness that Riley represents.

A dense symbolic landscape in these early chapters underscores the finality of the family’s tragedy and the dual nature of military life. The narrative opens with three knocks on the front door, a sound that functions as an auditory symbol for an irreversible threshold. Ember’s reflection that she “had opened the door to a fire, and it was poised to decimate [her] family” (4) confirms this interpretation; her act of opening the door marks her immediate and unwilling acceptance of a new reality. While the home becomes a space of static grief, hockey provides a counterpoint, representing stability and routine. For Gus, the ice rink is a sanctuary where he is “just Gus,” not the boy whose father died. For Josh, coaching is a vehicle for mentorship, allowing him to offer structured support. The military uniform itself emerges as a complex symbol. The dress blues worn by the notification officers signify the institutional gravity of duty and sacrifice, but for Ember, they are also a tangible representation of the trauma: the embodiment of the fire that has entered her home.

The novel’s first-person narrative perspective conveys the psychological weight of Ember’s burdens. Confining the events to Ember’s perspective creates an intimate experience of grief and responsibility. Her internal monologue reveals a constant battle between her duty to remain stoic for her family and the overwhelming pain she suppresses. She externalizes this conflict through actions such as her compulsive rage-cleaning of the kitchen in an attempt to impose order on a small corner of her world when the rest is in chaos. The narrative voice captures the nuances of a young adult forced to become mature in a way she doesn’t yet feel. Her observations are sharp and her actions decisive, yet they’re punctuated by moments of intense vulnerability, such as her breakdown in the grocery store or her silent promise at her father’s coffin. This strategy ensures that the exploration of grief isn’t an abstract concept but a personal, moment-to-moment struggle.

In addition, these chapters lay the foundation for the primary romantic conflict, which introduces Weighing the Risk of Love Against the Fear of Loss as a theme. Riley and Kayla’s betrayal of Ember does more than end a relationship; it annihilates the five-year plan that was a cornerstone of Ember’s identity, reinforcing that the future is unpredictable. This experience of personal loss, compounded by her father’s death, primes her to become wary of new emotional attachments. Her immediate connection with Josh at the cabin is therefore presented as both a necessary catharsis and a significant emotional risk. The encounter is pivotal not for its passion but for its restraint. By stopping before they have sex, Josh redefines their nascent relationship, insisting they build their connection on mutual trust and healing rather than using it as a balm for her pain, telling her their first time must be about “us, and no one else” (71). This act distinguishes him from Riley’s self-serving gratification and introduces the central tension Ember will face: whether she can learn to trust in a love that is worth the inherent risk of future pain.