56 pages • 1-hour read
The 100
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Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of pregnancy loss, death, and child death.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Clarke”
Hundreds of years ago, the Earth was rendered inhabitable by the Cataclysm—the result of humanity’s nuclear and biological warfare. The descendants of those who escaped the planet now live on a space colony and are desperate to reclaim the planet before the ship’s oxygen lock fails, killing them all. To gain information about the state of the environment on Earth, the ruling council has decided to send 100 juvenile criminals to the planet.
A teenage girl named Clarke now languishes in solitary confinement aboard the colony. Several months ago, she was devastated when her parents were executed for the crime of conducting radiation experiments on children. At the time, the colony’s vice chancellor also found Clarke guilty of aiding them. Clarke will get a retrial on her 18th birthday in a few months, but she doesn’t hold out much hope of being pardoned, as the council has not issued a pardon for anyone in a long time.
One day, a doctor unexpectedly arrives at Clarke’s cell. Instead of executing her, the doctor fits her with a vitals tracker and tells her that she has a chance to erase her criminal past because she is “going to Earth” (8).
Chapter 2 Summary: “Wells”
A teenager named Wells sits in a detention room in Phoenix—the upper-class section of the three-part the colony, where the most affluent people reside. His father, the chancellor, interrogates him about setting the Eden tree (the only surviving tree from Earth) on fire. Wells refuses to admit that he set the tree on fire because he wanted to get convicted of a crime so that he could go on the mission to Earth; his motivation was to be with Clarke, who is his ex-girlfriend. He feels responsible for the deaths of her parents and her subsequent conviction, and although these events ruined their relationship, he loves her enough to do anything to save her life. When his father realizes why Wells burned the tree, the chancellor is incensed that Wells would risk his life for a girl who is not worth the effort. Wells argues that his father said the Earth is perfectly safe, to which the chancellor replies that it is “[s]afe enough for the hundred convicted criminals who were going to die anyway” (17).
Chapter 3 Summary: “Bellamy”
The narrative shifts to focus on a teen named Bellamy. After the death of his mother several years ago, his little sister, Octavia, was arrested because she was an unapproved child and therefore a violation of the Gaia Doctrine (the governing laws of the colony, which are designed to control the population of the colony and keep the remnants of humanity alive). Terrified that Octavia will die on Earth, Bellamy steals a guard uniform to sneak aboard the transport. When he sees Octavia, he is relieved that she seems healthy after four years in prison, and he cannot ignore the determination in her movements. Suddenly, Bellamy realizes that the trip to Earth will give her a chance at a new life; no matter what he has to do, he decides “to make damn sure she [gets] it” (25). When all the prisoners are loaded onto the transport, Bellamy steals a weapon and charges the chancellor, feigning an assassination attempt. As the guards point weapons at him, Bellamy watches the countdown to launch, waiting for the right moment to dart aboard the transport.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Glass”
Glass is one of the 100 prisoners aboard the transport. When a gunshot sounds, she sees this as her chance to escape and dashes up the ramp. She manages to evade the guards and hide in a vent. After crawling for hours, she arrives in Walden—one of the secondary ships of the colony, which is populated by those who are less affluent. Glass goes to the flat of her former boyfriend, Luke, whom she still loves. There, she is overwhelmed at the sight of him until she realizes that he has a new girlfriend.
Luke gets a ship-wide message that Glass has escaped the transport. He pulls her inside, equally furious and confused. He asks why she was confined, but Glass can’t bring herself to tell him that she broke the Gaia Doctrine by hiding the fact that she was pregnant with his child, which she then lost. Luke turns his back on her, and for a moment, Glass wishes that she hadn’t escaped because “she couldn’t imagine feeling any lonelier on the abandoned Earth than she did right now” (41).
Chapter 5 Summary: “Clarke”
Aboard the transport, Clarke sits in silent shock. She can’t believe that Wells is aboard the ship, or that his father was shot during the confrontation before liftoff. The craft shakes violently as it enters Earth’s atmosphere, catching on fire and plummeting to the ground. Clarke is not injured badly in the landing, so she stumbles to the craft’s door and opens it to find an expanse of space like she has never seen before. The Earth is not a dead world; the sky shines a brilliant blue, and towering trees surround her. As one of the few kids with medical training, Clarke starts helping those who were injured in the crash.
As she works, Clarke recalls the night before her parents were executed. Her family had just moved into a new flat because her parents’ work required private laboratory space. While her parents were out, Clarke heard an anguished cry from the lab and rushed inside to find rows of kids hooked up to IVs. A monitor tracked their vital signs, as well as their “grays” (a measure of radiation). With a jolt, Clarke realized that “her mother and father weren’t curing these children. They were killing them” (53).
Chapter 6 Summary: “Wells”
The narrative returns to the present. In the evening, Wells stares in wonder at the sky and reflects on the day. Three kids were killed in the crash, Wells is haunted by the loathing in Clarke’s eyes when she saw him on the ship. Bellamy confronts Wells, accusing him of being a spy for his father. Wells blames Bellamy for the fact that his father was shot (even though Bellamy didn’t fire the gun),and for this reason, Wells isn’t charitable with information,. However, both boys admit that they forced their way aboard the transport to protect someone they care about.
One of the younger kids asks when they can all go home. Wells tells the child that they are home, hoping that “if he said it enough times, perhaps he’d start to believe it himself” (61). The conversation is interrupted by sunset, which Wells watches with awe even as he laments that Clarke isn’t by his side.
Chapters 1-6 Analysis
By alternating the perspective to variously feature the experiences of four different protagonists, Morgan essentially gains access to multiple levels of the space colony’s highly stratified society, highlighting the vastly different social realities in Phoenix, Walden, and Arcadia and hinting at the systemic oppression that plagues the doomed colony as a whole. By using the kids’ individual journeys to examine the social dynamics aboard the colony, the author introduces the series’ broader focus on The Struggle Between Oppression and Freedom. Each of the kids keeps a dark secret about their past that has allowed the council to manipulate their behavior, for regardless of whether the council is aware of the secret. As each of the four protagonists struggles with their place in the broader social landscape, their individual struggles highlight the idea that the power of oppression is rooted in the vulnerability of the oppressed.
In addition, the various fates of the protagonists breaks down the societal barriers that the colony has artificially imposed between Phoenix and Walden. While Clarke, Wells, and Glass are all residents of Phoenix, they receive the same punishment that Octavia and other kids from Walden do. This paradoxically brutal show of egalitarianism merely serves to emphasize the fact that strict adherence to the Gaia Doctrine allows the council to maintain iron control over the populace. In addition, these early developments foreshadow the later revelation that the kids are only being sent to Earth because the colony’s airlock is failing. However, because the council does not know whether Earth is habitable, the mission becomes both a desperate act of survival and a potential death sentence. Thus, the council’s blithe willingness to sacrifice children for their own gain suggests that the true force of oppression intersects with The Power Inherent in Privilege.
As a young-adult novel published in the early 2010s, The 100 features characters and conflicts that reflect the romantic and dystopian genre conventions of the time. These patterns can be seen in the interactions between Wells and Glass, who are both primarily motivated by romantic feelings. Although neither character knows if those feelings are requited, they are both willing to risk their lives—Wells on Earth and Glass as an escaped convict on the colony—to be with their respective love interests. Glass, for example, actively subverts social dynamics to be with Luke. Since she is from Phoenix and Luke is from Walden, their relationship is harshly judged by both social factions, who actively detest one another on principle. Despite this complication, Glass knows that she feels like her truest self when she is with Luke on Walden, and her struggle to find her place in this treacherous world highlights The Impact of External Change on Internal Growth. While her decisions are drastic, Wells’s choice to expedite the colony’s oxygen loss to save Clarke from execution proves that despite his perceived gallantry, he also suffers from a deeply misplaced sense of entitlement. Both Wells and Glass have thus been powerfully shaped by their privileged lives in Phoenix, and they believe that inconvenient rules don’t apply to them. In this way, The 100 explores how oppressive societies keep people divided by establishing widely different understandings of rules and laws.
The arrival of the kids on a beautiful, habitable Earth sets the stage for a new chapter in their lives, and their quest to explore who they are and discover what they truly want from life firmly cements The 100 in the young-adult genre. In particular, Chapters 5 and 6 suggest that this collective coming-of-age journey is steeped in the conflicting pressures of responsibility and discovery. After the rough landing, Clarke takes it upon herself to help the injured because she has medical knowledge, and her drive to save lives charts the course of her character development throughout the novel. Similarly, Wells was previously training to be a guard officer, and he therefore exercises his leadership skills in an attempt to take charge of the group. However, the issue of systemic oppression has not vanished completely, for the new power dynamics on Earth will be directly patterned on the dysfunctional society that raised the kids. As they start to realize that they are now free of the council’s harsh restrictions, they see Wells, the chancellor’s son, as an extension of the colony’s oppressive rule. This dynamic makes it difficult for Wells to establish himself as an authority figure despite his genuine survival knowledge. Together, Wells and Clarke’s actions and choices suggest that even in the midst of creating a new lifestyle, people tend to fall back on the patterns that are most familiar to them.
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