Escape From Spiderhead Book Summary

The exploration of the topics of good and evil in human beings, human sex versus love, fantastical drugs that can control human nature, and moral choices has been done by various authors in many fields of literature. Therefore, for an author to grab your attention and present you with a different perspective on those topics, the author has to use a unique way of telling his or her story. In the Tenth of December, George Saunders gives us a whole collection of his unique work. Out of all the stories, Escape from Spiderhead, is the most compelling in his book, because it takes the reader on an intellectual and emotional journey through the main character’s experiences which are interesting, disturbing, and spiritual.
One of the interesting aspects of the story is the relationship between the title and physical arrangement of the central control and the workrooms. That arrangement mirrors the title, “Escape from Spiderhead,” because if one draws a visual representation it appears to be the head of a creature with eight legs. Because so many people are afraid of spiders or have strong negative views of them, the author’s reference of the spider sets the reader on this journey already feeling that it is going to be dark, creepy, and possibly involve webs of entanglement from which escape is going to be …show more content…
The intellectual interest in the names of the drugs is that they have a specific reference in their name to the effect that they have; for example, Darkenfloxx gives a hint that the effect will be negative. This gives the reader a foreshadowing of what will happen to the characters as the experiments continue. The emotional journey occurs as the reader feels the different effects of becoming more talkative (Verbaluce), not being able to tell lies (VeriTalk), and the whole descent into a deep depression (Darkenfloxx). The reader can feel the loss of control over their own feeling and