Setting & World
This is the name of the protective structure guarding Britain.
What is the Wall?
This is the protagonist’s role at the start of the novel.
Who is a Defender (conscription to guard the Wall)?
The Others
Who are refugees and outsiders who try to enter the country by sea?
Central fear that motivates the construction of the Wall
What is Fear of invasion and of being replaced by outsiders.
What the physical Wall symbolizes beyond protection
What is division, exclusion, and the moral barrier between ‘us’ and ‘them.’
The Wall is intended to keep out people described in the novel as these.
Who are the “Others”?
Relationship between Joseph Kavanagh and Hifa
What is romantic partners; she becomes his companion and hope for a future.
Reasons why the Others attempt to breach the Wall
What is they seeking safety, resources, and a future inside the Wall?
Way in which The Wall explores generational guilt
What is Young people blaming the ‘olds’ for climate collapse; the olds deny full responsibility.
Ways in which the recurring cold environment reinforces the novel’s tone
What is the cold mirrors emotional numbness, suspicion, and hostility.
The name of the territory beyond the Wall (the territory from which the Others come)
What is the Outside?
Serves as Kavanagh’s commanding officer during his time on the Wall
Who is The squad’s Sergeant, who enforces discipline and protocol.
The punishment for captured Others
What is forced into ‘Help’ status, essentially indentured servitude.
Commentary the novel makes about climate change and inequality
What is the privileged seal themselves in and let climate refugees drown.
What the ocean represents in relation to freedom and fear
What is both possible freedom and almost certain death.
“Grey Lands” in the novel
What are the devastated, depopulated zones beyond the Wall / the wastelands outside?
Represents the harshness of authority and obedience within the military system
Who is The Captain / command staff, who value order over humanity?
The society's justifcation for its treatment of the Others
What is claiming that survival requires total exclusion and zero mercy.
Ways in which isolation affects the identity of Defenders
What is erosion of empathy and reduction to function and obedience?
The symbolic role of the uniform in the Defenders’ lives.
What is It erases individuality and demands total duty to the system.
Describe the climate conditions and challenges in the lands beyond the Wall.
What is a inhospitable environment of rising seas, cold, storms, no stable coastlines and a constant refugee crisis?
Kavanagh’s father view of the generation that built the Wall
What is defends his generation and resents being blamed, insisting they ‘did their best.’
How the Others mirror the Defenders themselves
What are desperate survivors shaped by The Change, driven by fear and need.
The novel's suggestion about moral responsibility in a closed society
What is That ‘survival at any cost’ quietly becomes complicity in cruelty.
What the final journey across the sea symbolizes for Kavanagh
What is choosing uncertainty and humanity over passive obedience.