Catastrophes In Monument 14 By Emmy Laybourne

Monument 14 is a book written by Emmy Laybourne in which a post apocalyptic story takes place. The story follows Dean, a teenager, who is stuck inside of a grocery store with other students, including his younger brother Alex. They are forced to stay inside of the store because there is freak super cells developing over them that are causing huge hail storms and other severe conditions. While there they have to overcome many obstacles and difficulties that reveal their true colors. Although this novel is nonfiction, it impacts society by showing how catastrophes can affect people and it also shows how dependent we have become on other people and other objects in our daily life. First, this novel shows how catastrophes affect people. It shows

I think she’s in shock, so she’ll probably come around in a day or two. But it might be something more serious.’ We all looked at Josie, who stared back at us with a weird, detached interest, as if we were people whose faces and names she couldn’t quite place” (Laybourne 19).

This quotes shows that while the others were still okay and functioning normally, Josie was not. She was not coherent with what was happening around her. Other characters, especially the younger ones, were also having a hard time. Dean says this of one of the

It was dead—blank. He started to cry. It seems funny now. He didn’t cry during the storm, he didn't cry seeing me all beat up, he didn't cry about the kids who'd been killed on my bus—he started crying when we realized the Network was down. The Network had never, ever gone down” (Laybourne 16).

This quote shows that even through all the events that have occurred throughout the day, the realization that the Network was down, was the event to cause Alex to cry. The minitab allowed them to connect to people all over the world and provided them with news and now that it was gone they didn’t know what to do. This mirrors our society and our reliance on technology. In conclusion, this novel does a great job of showing what could happen if we don’t become knowledgeable about the world around us. Monument 14 impacts society by showing how catastrophes can affect people and it also shows how dependent we have become on other people and other objects in our daily life. There are a lot of moments in Monument 14 that make you think about how you would react if you were in that situation. This book serves as a good example or a lesson for us in today’s world. It makes us wonder about the possibilities of that happening in real life and really makes us think hard about how we are living our current