the dead and the gone chapter 2 summary
The Dead and the Gone The Dead and the Gone follows 17-year-old Alex Morales and his sisters, Briana and Julie, in their struggle to survive after an asteroid hits the Moon and knocks it out of orbit, closer to Earth. Taking place in New York, they are plagued with volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and tidal waves, and earthquakes, along with famine caused by food shortages and disease that kill millions of people in the process. Alex is forced to take care of his sisters in the absence of his mother and father and to raid dead bodies for valuables to trade for food. He struggles with his religious faith while trying desperately to survive.
The Three Dead Kings In the poem, an unnamed narrator describes seeing a boar hunt, a typical opening of the genre of the chanson d'aventure. Three kings are following the hunt; they lose their way in mist and are separated from their retainers. Suddenly, "schokyn out of a schawe" (42) ('Starting out of a wood') three walking corpses appear, described in graphically hideous terms. The kings are terrified, but show a range of reactions to the three Dead, ranging from a desire to flee to a resolve to face them. The three corpses, in response, state that they are not demons, but the three kings' forefathers, and criticise their heirs for neglecting their memory and not saying masses for their souls: "Bot we haue made ȝoue mastyrs amys/ Þat now nyl not mynn us with a mas" (103-104). Once, the three Dead were materialistic and pleasure-loving: "Wyle I was mon apon mold merþis þai were myne" (121) ('While I was a man upon earth, pleasures were mine'), and they now suffer for it. Eventually, the Dead leave, the red daylight comes, and the kings ride home. The final message of the Dead is that the living should always be mindful of them - "Makis your merour be me" (120) - and of the transient nature of life. Afterwards the kings raise a church "with masse" (139) and have the story written on its walls.