The Compound

Lily is the narrator and protagonist of The Compound. Her age is never given, and she is not described beyond the fact that she is “one of the most beautiful” girls in the compound (16). She is an unreliable narrator, describing herself as passive and ambitionless despite the fact that she fights viciously to be the final contestant in the compound. Lily’s defining characteristics are her shallow nature and her materialistic greed, traits she openly acknowledges.

Lily’s shallowness manifests partly in her prioritization of good looks over other attributes, like intelligence or engagement. She admits that her beauty is “what [she] prize[s] most” about herself and “the only thing about [her] which [she] expected to draw a response” from others (81). The novel suggests that Lily’s beauty is the product of careful routine, associating it with artificiality and consumerism. Her lips are “carefully constructed to look full and plump” (9), and her hair is blonde thanks only to “peroxide and hair dye” (81). Her strict adherence to societal beauty standards is an advantage on the show, which implicitly enforces traditional gender norms. It thus does not matter that, as Lily acknowledges, her focus on beauty comes at the cost of other attributes: “[W]ithin minutes of speaking to the girls, I knew I was one of the most beautiful, and one of the least interesting” (16).