104 pages • 3 hours read
Cinder
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Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Peony, Cinder, and Iko each exhibit panic in response to Peony’s plague symptoms. Peony yells, tries to wipe away the spots, and keeps Cinder at a distance to avoid transfer of the plague. Cinder alternates between wanting to soothe Peony and to escape; meanwhile, her netlink supplies her with endless unwanted factual information about letumosis: “Letumosis. The blue fever. Worldwide pandemic. Hundreds of thousands dead. Unknown cause, unknown cure” (50). Iko, even though she is an android, and can’t become infected, shows concern.
As Cinder attempts to understand the source of Peony’s letumosis, she remembers her possible exposure at the market, feeling guilt that she may be the carrier. She regretfully sends an emergency message of Peony’s plague status, which signals the arrival of med-droids to take away a scared Peony. At Peony’s insistence, Cinder flees, but encounters three med-droids. Choosing to not lie about her possible contact with letumosis, her ID is scanned and blood tested. Free from pathogens, Cinder is neither sick nor the source of Peony’s plague.
Chapter 6 Summary
Additional components of Cinder’s mechanical nature continue to come to light in Chapter 6. She is able to store a wrench in the calf of her leg, and the interface that accompanies her can record experiences, such as feelings and visual and auditory stimuli, like that of Peony’s scream. Cinder maintains an element of control regarding the replay of memories, but it requires energy that she currently lacks.
Dread follows Cinder into the apartment, wondering how to tell Adri and Pearl about Peony’s illness and inevitable death. However, along with Adri and Pearl, two med-droids greet Cinder and Iko. Adri questions Cinder about the reason for Peony being at the junkyard. Since both Cinder and Pearl are free from the disease, Adri assumes Cinder’s time at the market and neglect in telling Adri about the earlier outbreak translate to Cinder infecting Peony: “Tell me Cinder. If Pearl and I are not carrying the disease, where did Peony get it from?” (63). Cinder insists that she loves Peony. Adri responds by saying, “‘Do your kind even know what love is? Can you feel anything at all, or is it just […] programmed?” (64).
Adri volunteers Cinder for letumosis research and slaps Cinder across the face in response to Cinder’s allegation that Adri is volunteering her for research for the monetary compensation, and not to help find a cure for Peony. Cinder tries to avoid being a research subject, saying, “I won’t go. Scientists have done enough to me already!” (68). She loses the fight and with a pulse of electricity from a med-droid, her brain powers down to a state of unconsciousness.
Chapter 7 Summary
Dr. Dmitri Erland leads the letumosis research, reviewing cyborg prospects for testing the disease. He rules out a 32-year-old cyborg for being too old and states that a potential subject without much research value needs to be released, to be with his son. For an unknown reason, Dr. Erland is experiencing visual hallucinations that he hides with humor and ascribes to his aging mind, despite the fact that the “visions [a]re getting worse” (71).
Dr. Erland and Fateen, a research assistant, both express surprise about the lack of volunteers for the program, considering the end result of the plague is death. Research assistant Li informs Dr. Erland and Fateen of a new volunteer—Cinder. An unconscious Cinder lies restrained on a table in a lab room, viewed by Dr. Erland and the assistants through mirrored glass.
The amount of mechanical structure externally visible on Cinder suggests the potential of a quality test subject. The next step involves connecting Cinder to a machine to determine her overall makeup and the degree of her value as a research participant.
Chapter 8 Summary
Cinder dreams a familiar dream: her body is enclosed by fire and coals, she is missing prostheses, and she can’t remove herself from the situation. However, unlike previous dreams, she is joined by others with missing limbs who are also showing the blue spots associated with letumosis. Peony haunts this dream, saying it’s Cinder’s fault that Peony contracted plague.
Cinder awakens from the dream in the lab room, restrained and with her synthetic parts exposed. Wires connect her forehead and chest to a machine; a med-droid opens the control panel at the back of her head for a scan of her human and synthetic makeup: “But someone was in her head. Inside her. An invasion. A violation. She tried to jerk away, but the android held her firm” (81).
Dr. Erland offers his thanks for Cinder’s cooperation from a separate room; Cinder is unaware of who is speaking to her. On a netscreen in the lab room, Cinder sees her personal information displayed, some of it unknown to her: “She had not known about the metal vertebrae along her spine, or the four metal ribs, or the synthetic tissue around her heart, or the metal splints along the bones in her right leg” (82).
The ratio makes her a medical marvel, an ideal candidate for letumosis testing. Without her consent, a further testing step is taken: injecting her with magnetized letumosis. At stage two, the research team plans to inject her with an antidote.
Chapters 5-8 Analysis
In contrast to “Cinderella,” Cinder takes on a darker tone, intensified by elements of the story, such as the plague. Being Diagnosed with the plague is a death sentence, and Cinder understands this inevitable end for one of the only two people she cares about: Peony. The burden of the approaching loss is complicated by the possibility that Cinder may be the source of Peony’s illness, which makes Cinder feel guilty.
As if waiting for the opportunity to rid her life of Cinder, Adri volunteers Cinder for the cyborg draft as a punishment for the misplaced blame for the death of Adri’s late husband and the impending death of Peony. The cyborg draft represents a theme surrounding the lack of value associated with cyborgs, in the world of the novel. Although they are both human and machine, it seems that the machine part of cyborgs receives a disproportionate amount of negative attention by humans.
The experiences Cinder faces as a coerced test subject reflect back to the circumstances that altered her from human to cyborg, as well as the lack of free will she experiences as a cyborg. After transportation to the letumosis research portion of the palace, which occurs while Cinder is unconscious, she awakes in a lab room, restrained on a table. No one talks with her; she hears only a voice emanating from outside the room. Cinder’s only direct actions are with a med-droid that conducts procedures on Cinder, which she tries to fight. Her body and mind experience a familiar intrusion; reflected back to her, a holograph shows her internal structures. Cinder perceives herself as “[a] girl full of wires” (82).
Cinder’s feelings of resentment toward her researchers are juxtaposed with the lack of empathy the researchers feel toward Cinder. The team values Cinder for research purposes only, thereby indicating the social hierarchy present in the novel’s world, one in which cyborgs exist below humans, and despite the fact that Cinder herself is primarily human—63.72%, to be exact.
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