54 pages • 1 hour read
Ruth WareZero Days
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Foreshadowing
There is a great deal of foreshadowing in the novel regarding Jack’s pregnancy and Cole’s involvement in Gabe’s murder. First, Cole is the only person Jack tells about Gabe’s death, and she describes his shock and bewilderment in detail. His eagerness to help Jack, including help in eluding the police, could signal his loyalty or his guilt. Next, Cole takes Jack to a church, a place he knows because, he says, he likes to “walk through the graveyard at lunch, sometimes” (148). This detail begins to link Cole to death, as does his employer, Cerberus Security. In Greek mythology, Cerberus guards the entrance to the Underworld. Cole is high in the Cerberus chain of command and doesn’t technically kill Gabe (or anyone else), but he is ultimately responsible for Gabe’s death and any danger that befalls those who are threatened by the zero-day he created. Finally, his willingness to kiss Jack just a few days after Gabe’s death creates additional foreshadowing that Cole is not what he seems.
Jack’s pregnancy is foreshadowed in even more obvious ways. Jack thinks that Hel “had made her own family, a new one—with a future that was bright and beautiful and loving. And until yesterday, [Jack] had been in the process of doing the same thing” (56). Jack is certain that her “future [has] been ripped away” (56), a sentiment she repeats many times. This repetition foreshadows the news that her hope for a family was not in vain. Moreover, her longing for children is emphasized in the poignancy of seeing Roland, Hel’s husband, interacting with his girls. When Jack sees the twins’ shoes, her “heart contract[s]” (60). Trying to disguise herself later on, Jack wads up a sweater under her coat to look like a pregnant belly, and a teenage boy gives up his seat for her on the train. She feels guilty, but it foreshadows the news of her real pregnancy. Jack actually is entitled to the reserved seat. Finally, the nausea and the vomiting she experiences can, perhaps at first, be chalked up to her infection, but she feels ill in the morning even at the hostel, before an infection would have had time to fester. In addition, Jack is typically most ill in the mornings, vomiting upon waking rather than before bed or after she eats. These details foreshadow her pregnancy, the happiest ending Jack could hope for after her husband’s death.
Allusion
The novel contains allusions to figures in Greek mythology such as Cerberus, the three-headed dog who watches over the Underworld entrance and gives its name to Cole’s company, and Anteros, the god of requited love at whose statue Gabe and Jack met for a date. There are also multiple allusions to the Bible. Jack’s initials are JC, emphasizing her innocence and suffering as a Christ figure, and her last name is Cross, a potential reference to her burden of grief and responsibility for finding the real criminal when she is wrongly accused. In addition, Gabe and Gabby are named after the angel Gabriel, the patron of communicators as well as the one who tells Mary of her pregnancy by an absent father. Gabe dies because he attempted to protect telecom users and is the now-absent father of Jack’s unexpected baby. Likewise, the book opens with Jack and Gabe’s pen test of a company called Arden Alliance. Arden is a Hebrew word for Eden, or paradise. The implication is that Jack and Gabe’s partnership—personal and professional—was a kind of paradise.
Conflict
The main conflict in the novel is difficult to pin down, perhaps appropriately so given the shadow world of cybercrime it addresses. Jack is the protagonist, but the identity of her antagonist is less clear. It might be Cole, the man she ultimately holds responsible for her husband’s murder; however, Cole worked for a person or group that remains unnamed. This shadowy entity killed Gabe and planned to exploit the zero-day that Cole created.
Given the text’s preoccupation with the Dangers of Technology, and the way Cole is oblivious of the identity of his client, the real antagonist is technology and the economic system that encourages technological development regardless of human consequences. Cole does not name his client because their identity does not matter. Cole can create a backdoor to exploit users because those users blindly trust that their information is safe. That the antagonist is vague is fitting given how hard it is to identify cybercriminals. Ware suggests technology is a Pandora’s box—appropriate for a work that alludes often to Greek mythology—letting loose any number of threats to safety and survival.
Related Titles
By Ruth Ware
