107 pages • 3 hours read
Suzanne CollinsGregor the Overlander
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-3 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The story begins in a New York City apartment building, where a disappointed Gregor must stay home from summer camp, even though his younger sister, Lizzie, gets to go. Gregor must stay home with his other sister, Margaret, who goes by the name Boots, and his grandmother because there’s no one else who can take care of them. His mother feels bad, but Gregor tells her: “‘That’s okay, Mom. Camp’s for kids anyway.’ He shrugged to show that, at eleven, he was past caring about things like camp, but somehow that made her look sadder” (3). Three years ago, Gregor would have been able to go to camp with Lizzie, but that was before his father mysteriously disappeared.
It’s a normal day—Lizzie’s first day of camp—Lizzie leaves, and it’s just Boots, Gregor and their Grandmother left in the apartment. Gregor gets his grandmother her favorite drink: a root beer: “She laughed: ‘A root beer? What is it, my birthday?’” (5). Their grandmother is lucid sometimes, but not all the time. At four o’clock, the doorbell rings, and a woman named Mrs. Cormaci arrives. She tells Gregor that she promised his mother she’d sit with their grandma. Bored out of his mind, Gregor decides to go downstairs and do laundry while Mrs. Cormaci is upstairs.
Boots, roughly two years old, goes with Gregor and is overjoyed to be in the laundry room, where she chases a small ball. Watching her play, Gregor tries to remember the last time he felt real happiness. At first, he thinks about playing his saxophone “things were always better when he played music; the notes always carried him to a different world altogether” (9) Then, he thinks about his father and realizes it’s been two years, seven months and 13 days since he was truly happy. That was the last time he saw his father. The police thought his father had run off with another woman, so they hadn’t taken the case seriously, but Gregor knew in his heart that it wasn’t true: “If there was anything Gregor knew, it was that his father loved his mother, that he loved him and Lizzie, that he would have loved Boots” (10). Boots hadn’t been born when their father disappeared. Instead of the truth, Gregor tells people his parents are divorced and his father lives in California.
Gregor comes out of his musings and tosses the ball between the washer and dryer. Boots runs after it. A second later, Gregor sees an old air duct wide open and Boots trying to squirm in: “Gregor could see nothing but blackness. Then a wisp of… what was it? Steam? Smoke? It didn’t really look like either. Some strange vapor drifted out of the hole and curled around Boots” (12). Gregor lunges after her and falls down, headfirst, into an interminable empty space.
Chapter 2 Summary
Boots and Gregor plummet through space; Boots is joyful and laughing, but Gregor is terrified. He convinces himself the whole thing must be a dream until they finally land. Gregor hears Boots squeaking “Bug! Bug!” and he wanders in the direction of a shaft of light until he finds himself staring headlong into the face of the largest cockroach he’s ever seen. It’s at least four feet tall. Gregor wraps his arms around Boots to protect her, wondering if the cockroach is going to try and eat them.
A voice asks, “smells what so good, smells what” (18) and it takes Gregor a minute to realize the sounds have come from the cockroach. Gregor tells the roach that his sister needs a new diaper. The roach comes in closer, and Gregor notices that the pair are in fact surrounded by giant cockroaches. The bugs rush forward to admire her smell: “Boots who loved any kind of compliment, instinctively knew she was being admired. She stretched out her chubby arms to the insects […] they gave an appreciative hiss” (19). One of the roaches asks Gregor if she is a Queen or a Princess. Gregor laughs, and the roaches are palpably offended. They ask why he “the Overlander” is laughing, saying, “No Underlander are you […] you look much like but smell not like” (20). This moment is significant because it’s the first time the reader is made aware that there are two distinct types of humans: Underlanders and Overlanders, and the roaches can identify which is which based on smell.
The roaches debate whether or not to take the pair to the rats, but they ultimately elect to take Gregor and Boots to the other humans. One of the roaches offers them a ride; Gregor declines, but Boots happily accepts. Gregor holds her hand, and the roaches hurry through a passageway. At last, Gregor sees light and finds himself in the middle of a huge crowd; he realizes he’s in a field where people are playing some kind of game. He looks for the ceiling and instead finds the athletes: humans racing on giant bats: “a dozen bats were slowly spiraling around the top of the arena. They ranged in color from light yellow to black. Gregor guessed the smallest one had a wingspan of about fifteen feet” (24).
Boots sees a ball cascading through the air and hops off her roach. A huge yellow bat flies down, right above her, almost skimming the top of her head. Gregor sees a teenage girl hanging upside down off the yellow bat’s neck—the girl does a double back flip, lands perfectly on the ground, and catches the ball mere feet from Boots: “One hand went out, and the ball fell into it in what was either a feat of remarkable timing or incredible luck. Gregor looked at the girl’s face and could tell by her arrogant expression that there had been no luck involved at all” (26).
Chapter 3 Summary
Gregor meets Luxa for the first time. He finds her appearance strange: “her skin was so pale he could see every bone in her body […] this girl was a walking circulatory system” (27). Her hair is blonde with a metallic, silver tint, and on her temples rests a small golden circlet: a crown. Gregor recognizes that the girl has real attitude: “Well there was having an attitude and then there was just being a total show off. Gregor felt she’d done that fancy trick off the bat completely for his benefit” (28). He looks into her purple eyes and the pair size each other up until Boots runs into Luxa, knocking her off balance. Boots asks Luxa for the ball, but Luxa is mean. She reaches out a hand and tells Boots it’s hers if she can take it, but her grip is a vice grip. Boots, mesmerized by Luxa’s purple eyes, pokes Luxa in the eye so that she drops the ball.
Luxa reveals to Gregor that she is Queen of the Underland and tells the two newcomers that they need to bathe: “You smell of the Overland. That is not safe for you here. Or for us” (31). Luxa says they had rare luck, being found so quickly. Luxa proceeds to barter with the roaches—whom she calls crawlers—for Gregor and Boots. An old, bearded man with unknown authority comes up behind her, promising the crawlers more baskets of grain than Luxa originally intended. Luxa glares at the old man but doesn’t contradict him. The man, Vikus, says, “One more basket will be a small price to pay if he is expected” (34). There is an air of mystery to these words. Vikus then asks Gregor if he’s from New York City—bringing Gregor back to reality.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
One of Gregor’s defining traits is his ability to listen to intuition over logic. He thinks about his father’s unknown fate from his heart rather than his head: “‘Accept it,’ he whispered to himself. ‘He’s dead’ A wave of panic swept through him. It wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true […] I can feel it. I know he’s coming back” (10). Throughout the novel, Gregor consistently acts from his intuition and trusts his heart to guide him. This longing for his father is also paramount to the overall arc and quest of the novel.
Though Gregor is the story’s central protagonist, over the course of the novel, Luxa becomes a secondary protagonist. Gregor’s first meeting with Luxa speaks to her powerful spirit:
He didn’t want this girl to be in charge. He could tell by the upright way she held herself […] that she had real attitude. That’s what his mom would say about certain girls he knew […] but Gregor could tell she approved of those girls (27).
This is also a story which celebrates feminine power, and Luxa is set up from the beginning as having extraordinary prowess.
Luxa has wisdom as well as attitude. When the roaches barter with the Underlanders, they say the rats will give them a better deal: fish instead of grain. Luxa says: “Take them to the rats, then. It will give you no time” (33). Gregor doesn’t comprehend at first what is meant by this statement, but the roaches immediately consent and give the Overlanders over to Luxa. This concept of time is essential to all species of the Underland and something Collins develops over the course of the book. Gregor comes to believe it means life; giving someone time means giving them life.
Related Titles
By Suzanne Collins
