56 pages • 1-hour read
The 100
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Chapters 13-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of child death, animal death, death by suicide, illness, and cursing.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Wells”
After less than a week on Earth, Wells can see the hunger in the eyes of the other kids, and he fears what will happen when they run out of food. As they sit around the campfire one night, the peaceful ambience is interrupted by a noise from the trees, and Bellamy enters the clearing, carrying a dead two-headed deer. Wells offers Bellamy heartfelt thanks and then walks away as Bellamy and Clarke inspect the animal. Seeing them together makes Wells remember a day when he was training to be a guard and helped to arrest a woman who violated the unplanned-child rule of the Gaia Doctrine. He had gleaned comfort after the experience by holding Clarke that night, and he hates how far away she feels now.
The deer meat is like nothing Wells has ever tasted, and it leaves him feeling satisfied in a way that food never has. A while later, the kids notice glowing butterflies in the trees. The insects make Wells think of Clarke, and he finds her entranced by the sight. In that moment, he sees the girl she used to be and realizes that “he could make her love him again” (145).
Chapter 14 Summary: “Bellamy”
The deer was the result of several days of hunting, and Bellamy has begun to cherish the experience of communing with the natural world. The morning after he kills the deer, he leads Clarke to the medical supplies, noticing how her gaze lingers on him. Clarke is impressed by Bellamy’s knowledge of Earth, and he confesses that he read everything he could about the planet for Octavia’s sake, reasoning that he would be “better equipped” to “keep her safe” (152). Clarke and Bellamy agree that hardly anyone knows who they really are, and Bellamy starts to wonder if he wants Clarke to understand him.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Clarke”
As Bellamy and Clarke continue through the forest, they talk about their former lives on the colony. As a resident of Phoenix, Clarke had the freedom to do as she pleased, and she is shocked to learn that Walden’s people had no choice in their lives unless they were chosen to be guards. Bellamy shoots a rabbit for dinner, and Clarke hates to see the creature suffer. To distract her, Bellamy asks about her history with Wells. Clarke refuses to say, but she does admit that Wells did something she can’t forgive. Bellamy counters that nothing is unforgiveable if it is done for good reasons; he states that Wells came to Earth by choice, not because he was forced. Before Clarke can respond, they find the wreckage and the missing boxes of medical supplies. Bellamy twirls Clarke in a circle and kisses her. Clarke knows that she should pull away, but she doesn’t because “he tasted like joy, and joy tasted better on Earth” (161).
Chapter 16 Summary: “Glass”
Glass’s mother frets over what Glass will wear to the comet-viewing party, since the event will be Glass’s reentry into Phoenix society. An official message comes through their flat’s communication channel from Luke, telling Glass that the guards have recovered an item belonging to her. Glass recognizes the message as the code that she and Luke developed to set times to meet. Overjoyed that he wants to see her, she goes back to trying on dresses. Her mom suddenly thinks that the dress Glass is wearing is the one, but when Glass looks in the mirror, she realizes that her good looks have nothing to do with the dress. Instead, it’s the joy in her eyes and the color in her cheeks because “she looked like a girl in love” (164).
When Glass meets Luke later, he hesitantly recalls hearing about a Phoenix girl who was arrested for an unplanned pregnancy. Glass starts to cry, and Luke realizes that it was her. He tells her that he loves her and pulls her into a kiss, which Glass gladly returns.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Wells”
The kids on Earth have buried five people so far, and while the concept seems strange, Wells also finds comfort in placing the dead together. When it is his turn to collect water from a nearby stream, Octavia joins him. She asks about Clarke, and Wells remembers when Clarke told him about her parents’ research. At the time, her parents had been experimenting on unregistered kids whose parents violated the Gaia Doctrine, and they’d been forced to do so under threat of Clarke’s life. The threats came from the vice chancellor, and Wells was furious to realize that the man had usurped his father’s authority. Though Clarke swore Wells to secrecy, he couldn’t watch Clarke suffer, so he told his father, hoping that he would put an end to the experiments.
In the present, Wells gives Octavia one-word answers but feels bad because she looks so sullen. He asks why she was arrested. Octavia repeats the story that Bellamy has told everyone—that Octavia was arrested for stealing food for hungry kids. Wells asks if that is what really happened, but Octavia shrugs and says, “If that’s the story Bellamy needs to believe, then I’m not going to stop him” (180). On the way back to camp, Wells sees Bellamy and Clarke kissing, and feels a sense of broken-hearted fury.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Clarke”
After the kiss, Clarke is embarrassed and hurries along at Bellamy’s side as they return to camp. There, she rushes to the infirmary and treats her best friend, who immediately relaxes in her sleep. The only other person in the tent is Octavia, who asks if Clarke found the medicine. Exhausted, Clark murmurs that she did, then falls asleep. The next morning, the medicine is gone. As Clarke frantically searches for the missing supplies, she recalls one of the girls from her parents’ experiments asking Clarke to help her die by suicide so that the pain would stop.
In the present, Clarke finds Bellamy and asks where Octavia is. She shares her suspicion that Octavia took the medicine. Bellamy can’t believe that Clarke would make such an accusation. He thought she was different, but now he sees her as “just another stupid Phoenix bitch who thinks she knows better than everyone else” (192). Bellamy storms away, leaving Clarke to cry alone.
Chapters 13-18 Analysis
The romantic tension continues to climb in this section with the formation of a love triangle involving Clarke, Wells, and Bellamy. From Clarke’s perspective, the two boys represent different versions of who she wants to be. As Clarke’s former boyfriend, Wells symbolizes Clarke’s past and reminds her of who she was before her parents’ executions and her conviction and imprisonment. Back then, Clarke was eager to help her parents and do the right thing, believing that right and wrong were universally defined. When she finally discovered the truth of her parents’ experiments and decided to assist one of the kids in dying by suicide, these traumatic experiences changed Clarke, making her the girl who is now faced with the choice represented by Wells and Bellamy. Although she still loves Wells, choosing him feels like a step backward. By contrast, Bellamy symbolizes new experiences and higher levels of understanding. As a boy from Walden, he offers her a way to move on from the pain of her past. However, their lack of history also means that Bellamy doesn’t understand her, as when he insults her in Chapter 18, reducing her to a stereotype of her social class on the colony. Thus, the dynamics between Clarke and the two boys represent further nuances of The Impact of External Change on Internal Growth.
The progression of the relationships in The 100 also emphasize The Struggle Between Oppression and Freedom, given that the social order on the colony deliberately divided the people into different castes to keep them from uniting and defying the will of the council. Now, the kids find their perceptions limited by the hierarchical nature of their upbringing. Bellamy is surprised to find that Clarke is more than a vapid Phoenix girl, and Clarke is shocked to learn of the limitations that Bellamy had to endure as a resident of Walden. Their mutual lack of understanding highlights the extreme degree to which the citizens of Phoenix and Walden were kept apart, both socially and physically. Only people like Glass, who ventured to Walden, have had the opportunity to compare and contrast these social realities, but even then, Glass did not fully understand the effect of oppression on Walden until she became a prisoner and was similarly deprived of freedom.
In many ways, Glass, Clarke, and Bellamy’s respective experiences highlight the idea that a person’s background often dictates the extent of their grasp on the world as a whole. Each character must navigate the immediate challenges that their environment presents, prioritizing things that seem important. Prior to her arrest, Glass would have prioritized frivolous activities like the comet-viewing because it represented luxury, freedom, and privilege. After her imprisonment, though, she can no longer care about a meaningless party when she knows how much Luke suffers on Walden. Similarly, Bellamy once prioritized secrecy and safety, but now that he has escaped the colony and is spending time with Clarke, he starts to realize that he can appreciate life rather than fearing it. Thus, through their new relationships, the characters learn to embrace more authentic identities and break away from the restrictions of the colony.
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