39 pages • 1 hour read
Roadside Picnic
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaChapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
After his release from prison, Redrick promises himself he will never again step foot in the Zone. That doesn’t stop the Vulture from trying to enlist him in a scheme to airlift the Golden Sphere out of the Zone using a hot-air balloon in return for $500,000. The Vulture visits him 20 times, and each time Redrick says no. Then one night, the Monkey and Redrick’s father begin emitting creaky, drawn-out cries at one another in a dire expression of their shared inhumanity: “And they kept calling back and forth in the dark—it seemed to last a century, a hundred years, another hundred years” (163). This sets Redrick off on a drinking binge that culminates in Redrick finally agreeing to the Vulture’s plan. He agrees not for the money, but in order to use the Golden Sphere to wish for his daughter’s humanity back.
Accessing the Golden Sphere requires a sacrifice. One must pass through a “grinder,” an invisible force that lifts a human off the ground and twists them horribly, almost always resulting in death. After the grinder takes its victim, a second human may pass by unmolested. In an act informed by cruelty and spite, Redrick agrees to bring along as his sacrifice the Vulture’s son, Arthur, a handsome law school graduate groomed to become a senator and possibly the president. When Redrick asks Arthur what he plans to wish for, he says he will wish for his father’s legs. Redrick calls him a liar and reminds him that the Golden Sphere will only grant a person’s truest and deepest wishes.
On the way to the quarry where the Golden Sphere lays, Redrick and Arthur pass through a series of deadly perils. At one point, a sudden surge of intense heat nearly scalds the pair to death, but they narrowly escape to a cooler area unaffected by the hot blast. As Redrick drags Arthur to safety, he wonders whether he does so as an act of goodness or merely to preserve his human sacrifice. Later, they wade through a stream of green gunk and yellow steam while violent lightning strikes the ground inches away from them.
When Redrick and Arthur finally reach the Golden Sphere, nestled in the rocks on the far side of the quarry, Redrick sees a series of black splotches on the ground. Each one represents a human sacrifice made by the Vulture in advance of a wish. One represents his wish for Dina, another his wish for Arthur. Still others represent wishes to simply make it out of the Zone alive.
Upon seeing the Golden Sphere, Arthur runs toward it, shouting his wish: “Happiness for everyone! Free! As much happiness as you want! Everyone gather round! Plenty for everyone! No one will be forgotten! Free! Happiness! Free!” (190). Then Arthur suddenly goes quiet: “Redrick saw the transparent emptiness lurking in the shadow of the excavator bucket grab him, jerk him up into the air, and slowly, with an effort, twist him, the way a housewife wrings out the laundry” (190).
After waiting a few minutes to ensure the sacrifice worked, Redrick approaches the Golden Sphere and finds himself unable to vocalize his wish for his daughter’s humanity back. Redrick feels anger at how others treated him like riff-raff his entire life. Even in this moment, he feels cheated at having arrived at the Golden Sphere and finding he has nothing to say. Finally, in a state of futility and despair, Redrick speaks to the Sphere in earnest. Instead of asking for his daughter’s healing, he repeats Arthur’s words to the Sphere.
Chapter 4 Analysis
The argument that the Zone is a Soviet metaphor for the dangers and inhumanity of capitalism finds its strongest support in Chapter 4. Not only does the Zone present Redrick with another improbable moral decision—let an innocent man die or save his daughter—it also exists as a broader symbol of inhumanity. For example, when the Monkey and Redrick’s living corpse of a father—both products of the Zone—begin to emit animalistic sounds at one another, their actions symbolize an expression of the depraved subhuman condition in which capitalism leaves its participants.
The idea of the Golden Sphere itself may also be a symbol of Western capitalism. A literal dream machine, the Golden Sphere is a promise, not unlike the American Dream. And yet it also exists in and of the very system that causes the characters so much pain and suffering. In addition, the Sphere requires a blood sacrifice in order to operate, raising the notion that success in a capitalist system requires not just another person’s failure but a total negation of that person’s life. As Redrick slowly commits to this dream—a dream whose fulfillment will require an unambiguously immoral act—he undergoes a transformation where he begins accepting the pointlessness of hope. Viewing this as a commentary on Western capitalism and the American Dream, it is as if Redrick realizes that his participation in a system that prizes self-reliance in the pursuit of money is one that causes nothing but gloom and torment. Real success, the real American Dream, is something that’s virtually impossible to achieve without an act of God, summoned by a blood sacrifice. Redrick further participates in this system by deciding to sacrifice an innocent for his wish.
After the sacrifice is complete, however, Redrick undergoes a second transformation, one that complicates the capitalist-communist dichotomy suggested by much of the book. When confronted with the opportunity to wish for his deepest desires, Redrick is at a loss to determine what it is he wants. The Redrick of earlier chapters—who will steal and even kill to support his family—matures and latches onto Arthur’s dream of “HAPPINESS, FREE, FOR EVERYONE” (194). This wish is an expression of Karl Marx’s vision of what a utopian socialist society might look like in the distant future. In considering the historical context of the Soviet Union in the 1970s—which was anything but a utopia—it is difficult not to read this wish as just as impossible as the visions of widespread prosperity promised to all by Western capitalism. Ursula Le Guin says as much in the Foreword, writing, “The final promise of ‘HAPPINESS, FREE, FOR EVERYONE’ rings with unmistakably bitter political meaning” (iv).
And yet, Le Guin also adds that “the novel can’t possibly be reduced to a mere fable of Soviet failure, or even the failure of science’s dream of universal cognition” (iv). While the novel offers implicit commentary on both the decay of capitalism and the unrealistic utopian dreams of communism, the work is ultimately the story of a man trying—and frequently succeeding—to assert his human dignity in a system that wants to crush it. Within the same final speech to the Golden Sphere, Redrick proclaims, “I’ve never sold my soul to anyone! It’s mine, it’s human! Figure out yourself what I want—because I know it can’t be bad!” (194).
Unlock all 39 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features: