Trapped

One of the greatest ways Weems grows through the course of Trapped is in realizing that people are more than just labels. As a high-school student, Weems characterizes people by things such as what club they are in, what sport they play, or what their primary personality trait is. At the beginning of the book, these definitions rule Weems’s judgments and give him a set of rules with which to understand others. After all the trials the group goes through while trapped in the school, Weems learns labels don’t matter. When people are starving, sick, and worried about the roof collapsing, things that seemed so important to the normal high-school experience (clubs, sports, and personalities) mean nothing.

In Chapter 2, Weems introduces Jason and Pete, the two best friends he has had for years. Weems identifies Jason as a shop kid with an interest in military stuff. From that point onward, Jason fills this role, by spending time working on Flammenwerfer and explaining survival tactics he learned from his military research. Pete, by contrast, doesn’t have a club, sport, or primary personality trait Weems can use to categorize him. Weems defines Pete as an average kid, a filler to round out all the other kids who fit into one of high-school’s neat checkboxes. This foreshadows Pete getting together with Julie (the other person in the group Weems doesn’t have a real category for). At the end of the book, Pete is the first to take a stand and go for help. Whether because he’s aware of Weems’s categorization or because of a need to prove himself, Pete feels he has to do something important.

Weems categorizes the other four kids in subsequent chapters. Les is a bully, and Weems automatically fears him, even though he knows nothing about who Les is away from school. Krista is an attractive girl, and Weems rarely thinks of her in any other way. Weems associates Julie with Krista, almost like an appendage Krista brings along but doesn’t necessarily need, and Elijah is simply weird. Weems hides behind his categorizations to keep himself from revealing his own flaws, but as the danger in the school mounts, he realizes his flaws, and the flaws of others, aren’t important. In Chapter 26, with snow pressing on the roof, Weems realizes the people he’s trapped with are more than the categories he put them in. Faced with life-or-death danger, people are just people.

Weems categorizes himself, too. At the beginning of the book, he thinks of himself as a basketball player. When school ends early, the major reason he’s upset is because his game gets canceled. He’s frustrated that all his extra practice won’t get put to use. Weems also wonders what categories others put him in. In Chapter 26, after he realizes the others don’t fit his categories, Weems hopes they wouldn’t categorize him after everything the group has been through. Weems stops categorizing both himself and the others. He understands now that labels like basketball player, hot girl, and weird kid are labels he assigned to people he didn’t know. In learning about the others, Weems also learns about himself and realizes he can’t categorize multi-faceted people.

Much of Trapped focuses on the seven kids waiting for someone to rescue them. When they first realize they’re stuck at school, they think it will only be for one night and hunker down to wait out the storm. As the days pass and the storm continues, they must take more and more action in order to survive. In the end, Weems goes out into the storm to find help, and only then is he rescued by the National Guard. It’s not until he acts that he achieves results.

When the snow doesn’t slow on the second day, the kids realize they could be in the building for longer than they thought. While they have access to their lockers and bathrooms, they’ll need food and supplies that are behind locked doors. Weems is hesitant to break anything in the building. Since they’re the only ones there, they’ll get blamed once school reopens, and he’s worried about the consequences for his position on the basketball team. As time passes and Weems’s hunger increases, he knows there’s no other option but to break into the cafeteria. The group acts, and they’re rewarded with a steady source of food. When the temperature in the building drops past a comfortable level, the group decides to build a fire. Again, Weems is hesitant because of the consequences and the potential danger of a blaze, but with the pipes frozen and no heat, the group has to do something. They keep the fire contained and have a source of warmth. Again, action brings favorable results.

Jason embodies this idea of taking action throughout the book. He continues to work on Flammenwerfer, converting it into a snowmobile, and makes a hypothetical plan to get help. While Pete ultimately makes the journey with Flammenwerfer, he’s only able to do so because Jason committed to action. Weems’s half-hearted snowshoes are in direct contrast to Flammenwerfer. While Jason works with the intention of acting, Weems initially makes the snowshoes to pass time. After Pete crashes in the snow, Weems regrets not working with more intention. He rushes to finish the shoes but is too late to save his friend. If Weems had taken definitive action to finish the shoes, they would have been ready when Pete went out, and Weems might have been able to save him.