49 pages • 1-hour read
The Compound
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Part 2-Part 3, Chapter 13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content, racism, graphic violence, and mental illness.
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary
Susie grows jumpy after her temporary banishment, and the others take their first opportunity to banish her permanently in exchange for a vase they don’t even collect. Susie insists on bringing her rewards with her but then panics and refuses to leave, so producers driving an unmarked car collect her. Her partner, Evan, is the next to go, followed by Mia and Marcus. Marcus’s departure devastates Jacintha, who begins to spend more time alone.
When Lily receives a Personal Task to shower outside in exchange for pajamas, she finds Ryan and Vanessa having sex in the outdoor shower. She leaves before either sees her. The group receives a Communal Task challenging each resident to kiss the others for a barbecue. Lily initially resists, with Sam’s support, but ultimately agrees. When Ryan kisses her, she signals to him that she knows he’s having an affair with Vanessa. Lily and Sam share two passionate kisses, shocking the group. Lily also shares a passionate kiss with Candice.
Lily goes to sleep unsure if Ryan is going to join her in bed. When he does, she ignores his attempt to talk to her and flinches when he touches her. The next morning, she wakes to see brush fires moving closer to the house.
Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary
Ryan admits that he had sex with Mia and reveals that Tom had sex with Sarah and Mia behind the back of his partner, Vanessa. Lily tells the girls about Ryan’s confession, and they suggest voting him out at the next opportunity. Lily resists but agrees when the girls convince her that Ryan is likely convincing the boys to do the same thing to her. Jacintha convinces Carlos to vote for Ryan, and Becca offers to do the same with Sam. However, when Lily decides to talk to Sam herself, she realizes that Becca never spoke to him about the vote. Lily begs Sam to help her, and Sam agrees. Ultimately, Ryan receives six votes to Lily’s four and is banished.
That night, Lily reveals Vanessa’s infidelity to Tom in the hopes that he’ll save her by sleeping in her bed. Although terrified of Tom, she is more horrified at the thought of returning to her life, where she works a job she hates and still can’t afford the things she wants. Lily falls asleep feeling alone and wakes to Sam in her bed. He tells her that the compound would be meaningless without her, and they have sex. Lily wakes before dawn and sees Tom kicking Vanessa out of the compound. She realizes that Tom kept his bed empty, expecting Lily to come to him. After Vanessa leaves, Tom rips the head off a teddy bear she left behind and recouples with Becca.
Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary
Sam tells Lily that he has been interested in her from the beginning and promises that he would rather leave the compound than hurt her or vote her out. Lily insists that neither of them is leaving the compound and suggests that they could stay there forever. After some hesitation, Sam agrees that they could stay for a while.
Lily and Candice develop a habit of asking for rewards without explicitly asking for them by talking about how nice it would be to own specific items. The residents begin to spend more time in their pairs, except for Tom and Becca: Lily overhears Becca shut down Tom’s attempts to make her feel comfortable with him. During a rare conversation with Lily, Jacintha reveals that she misses Marcus and that none of the products she’s rewarded with work with her skin tone or hair texture. Later, Lily finds Tom in a room with rewards he has collected from Personal Tasks. She secretly breaks his record player in exchange for a dressing gown.
When Tom accidentally reveals one of his Personal Tasks, the group braces for a collective punishment. The group is offered the chance to vote a couple off in exchange for a hot tub. Lily accepts, but the others resist the idea. Jacintha and Carlos offer to leave, devastating Lily. Sam suggests that they leave, too, but she shuts him down. That night, Tom is badly burned in the hot tub.
Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary
Tom is in bed for days, preventing the group from doing communal tasks. Lily and Sam spend hours talking about living in the compound together alone. Lily knows that Sam only plans to spend a few weeks on the compound if they make it to the end but privately fantasizes about staying there forever. Candice reveals to Lily that she and Andrew want Lily and Sam to stay with them in a final four, refusing to vote anyone else off and living without completing tasks. Lily is delighted by the idea.
When Tom discovers that his record player is broken, he immediately accuses Lily. When she makes a joke about it, he slaps her and rips out a chunk of her hair. Sam hits Tom repeatedly in the face, triggering an announcement that the group will be punished for breaking the rule against violence. Candice warns Tom that he will be voted off next. Tom insists that Lily should go and that she brings nothing to the compound. The group goes to sleep uneasy. They wake in the middle of the night to find the shed they built to hold their rewards on fire. The fire spreads quickly, ruining everything but the house.
Part 3, Chapter 12 Summary
Lily feels responsible for the fight and the fire and is overwhelmed with guilt. She is devastated to see Sam and the others hurt by the loss of the buildings they constructed on the compound (such as the shed containing their rewards), the gardens they planted, and the gardens planted by previous residents. The residents largely stop speaking to each other, and Lily knows the others blame her and Sam.
The residents stop cleaning the house and maintaining the property, and the compound falls into disrepair. Lily stops making efforts at her appearance after seeing herself bruised and burned the morning after the fight and fire. Sam shows signs of depression, and Lily fears that he will likely leave soon. She realizes that he has a successful job and life to return to, while she has a job she hates and will never feel financially comfortable.
Becca suggests completing a Communal Task, triggering dissent from Andrew, who claims he doesn’t feel well. The group votes to complete the task: naming the sexual partners they’ve had since entering the compound. The task reveals that Andrew secretly slept with Carlos behind Candice’s back. Despite Lily’s urging, Candice decides to leave the compound.
Part 3, Chapter 13 Summary
With only five people left in the compound—Andrew, Tom, Becca, Lily, and Sam—the rules change, allowing residents to sleep on their own, to discuss their personal lives, and to inflict some violence on each other. Although Lily is thrilled to be in the final five, Sam is visibly ready to leave. He reveals that he applied for the show during a period of disillusionment. After his brothers died in the wars, Sam refused to join the military, infuriating his veteran father. He joined the show hoping to distract himself. Lily explains that she applied because she had nothing else going on in her life and claims that she’ll never have a better opportunity. She accidentally reveals that one of her first conversations with Sam was in exchange for a necklace.
Sam asks her to leave the compound with him, insisting that their lives there are fake and that they can be together on the outside. Lily refuses and turns cold, knowing that audiences dislike girls who fall to pieces when their boys leave. As Sam says his goodbyes, Lily overhears Becca tell him that the date is September 20. Before leaving, Sam tells Lily about the boys’ time in the desert: After a fight between Tom and Andrew, the boys elected Sam as leader to guide them to the compound. At the perimeter, Lily inwardly hopes that Sam will ask her to leave again. He leaves without kissing her goodbye, promising not to watch her after he leaves.
Part 2-Part 3, Chapter 13 Analysis
This section of The Compound reflects the novel’s interest in The Perpetuation of Capitalism Through Materialism. These chapters contain the novel’s most aggressive criticisms of modern capitalism, as the residents hoard and then lose material objects and as Lily reveals that she feels her life on the outside is hopeless. As the number of residents dwindles, the rewards given for Personal Tasks become more valuable. However, Lily and the other residents grow obsessed with small, meaningless trinkets, which they take with them when they leave. Susie leaves with “a fridge magnet with a picture of a dog, hairspray, fluffy socks, a fake plant, perfume, primer, toner, an eye-shadow palette, makeup brushes, a small teddy bear, and a poster of a popular singer” (134). The fact that she takes all of her things in a “bin bag” reflects the fact that these rewards are ultimately trash. Mia similarly leaves “laden with bags filled with rewards, stooped over like an old lady” (135). Mia’s exit reflects the symbolic weight of the materialism that capitalism encourages.
The novel suggests that the capitalist desire to buy and collect objects is universal among the residents, who build a massive shed to store their rewards. The residents gather in the shed throughout the day to “look at all that [they] had amassed” (158). Lily clearly takes this materialism for granted, suggesting that “anyone would have been impressed” by their collection of items (158). When Lily finds a room full of Tom’s Personal Task rewards, she feels close to him, despite acknowledging that the collection is “faintly ridiculous,” because Tom’s materialism is “the part of him that [makes] the most sense to [her]” (169). Lily’s words suggest that she relates to others principally through the lens of materialism (and capitalist values broadly), pointing to how capitalism distorts personal relationships to perpetuate itself.
Lily’s obsession with things inside the compound also reflects the stress of capitalism in the outside world. These chapters reveal that Lily has an unfulfilling, low-paying job in sales and that she joined the show to escape the pressures of her life. Lily explains that she was sick of going to work “and dreading doing it again the next day, and still never having enough money” (154). She questions the point of working in a system where she is “never going to be able to afford nice things, or have anything worth owning” (154). For Lily, the show offers the chance to escape this system, hopefully forever. The irony is that the show itself embodies the capitalist ethos—residents must still “work” for basic necessities—but for Lily, the bargain seems worth it. She explicitly compares the value of her labor inside and outside the compound, calculating that it would take her “two days’ work” to earn a quality linen dress in the real world (164), while “in the compound, [she] only had to drink a mouth full of expired milk, and it was in [her] postbox within minutes” (164).
These chapters also reflect the novel’s thematic interest in The Insidious Nature of Reality TV, linking such entertainment more explicitly to racism through the disparate treatment of Lily and Jacintha, the only Black woman on the show. Lily spends hours dropping hints about items she wants, and these items are almost always offered to her as rewards. Lily consequently feels “seen” by the producers and is constantly “amazed at just how much [the rewards] suit[] [her] exact taste” (137). By contrast, Jacintha reveals to Lily that despite asking for specific items, such as “a bonnet, a conditioner that works for [her] hair, darker concealer” (168), she is consistently sent items that seem designed to turn her into “a Black version” of Lily herself (168). Jacintha’s requests are specific to her beauty needs as a Black woman, while the producers’ responses suggest an assimilationist impulse: They send Jacintha “long and straight” wigs when “she usually wore [her hair] naturally” (168), pressuring her to conform to white beauty standards. The contrast between the two women’s experiences also functions symbolically within the novel’s critique of capitalism, suggesting how markets cater to dominant social groups, reinforcing racist hierarchies.
As the compound and its surroundings fall into disrepair, an allegorical aspect of the novel comes into sharper focus: The Threat of Climate Change. Heat is an ever-present threat, from the desert environment, to the hot tub that scalds Tom, to the fires the producers set in retaliation for the residents’ violence. Meanwhile, the compound falls into disrepair as the residents accumulate useless goods and stop caring for their environment. Much as it epitomizes the capitalist system, the show also encapsulates the relationship between capitalism and environmental destruction.
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