# Gregor the Overlander Annotations

## Blurb:

<blurb>When eleven-year-old Gregor
follows his little sister through a grate in the
laundry room of their New York apartment
building, he hurtles into the dark Underland beneath the
City. There, humans live uneasily beside giant spiders,
bats, cockroaches, and rats -- but the fragile peace is about
to fall apart.
Gregor wants no part of a conflict. He just wants to
find his way home. But when he discoveres that a prophecy
foretells a role for him in the Underland's future, he realizes
it might be the only way to solve the biggest mystery of his
life. Little does he know his quest will change him -- and
the Underland -- forever

</blurb>

## Part 1: The Fall

### Chapter 1:

Page | Comment
Page 1 | Suzanne Collins uses an extended metaphour of Gregor being a caveman here. Could this allude to how he sees the Underlanders as prehistoric and is embarrased by Vikus later on? Or perhaps just his teenage instinctual actions?
Page 2 | Gregor is repulsed by rats - foreshadowing at the Gnawers being the main antagonists
Page 4, Line 9 | "Golden Glow" - Aliteration
Page 6 | Foreshadowing to Gregor falling down the laundry shoot, and how he is later in the series exited to go to the underland
Page 7, Line 2 | Is this a JoJo's reference?
Page 9, Line 6 | This metaphour of music taking him to "Another world altogether" is foreshadowing of The Underland
Page 10-11 | Gregor and Luxa both deal with missing/dead parents in the same way by being strict on themselves and not allowing themselves to be happy
Page 12, Line 6 | Cliffhanger ending

### Chapter 2:

Page | Comment

Page 16, Line 7

Gregor falls for longer than 70 seconds, as we see he counts 70 seconds. If we assume Gregor's weight at 50kg, as is is said to be quite light and the density of air is 1.225 kg/m3, we also know his clothes are "ballooned" so he is likely falling vertically so his cross sectional surface area would be about 0.1 m2, we know he has been falling for quite a bit so has already reached terminal velocity (would this be differnt due to the vapours?). Finally we can estimate a drag coefficient of 0.7 as he is falling feet first, using the equation Terminal Vel = sqrt((2 * mass * gravity) / (air density * area * drag ce)) we get a terminal velocity of 106.9408 m/s or 350.8513 ft/s (if the vapours have not yet taken affect of slowing his fall yet (he later describes the vapours begining to take affect)) so then if we multiply this by 70 we find that he has fallen approximatley 7486 metres during this 70 second period, however repeating this for a 3 minute period (estimated) we get 16041 metres fallen which is 16 km (10 miles) which would fit up with Gregors later description of the Underland being "miles beneath the city of New York" in the second book. The maths checks out!

Page 16, Line 24 | Could running towards the light at the end of a tunnel be an Islamic reference?
Page 18, Line 10 | The Crawlers are already shown to have a liking to Boots

Page 24, Line 4

15' is around 4.5 Metres and that's the smallest bat so the largest likely go up to 20' (6 Metres). Using the image of a Flier from the Marks of Secret cover we estimate (using Luxa's torso height as 1 m) that the wings (to the edge of the image) are about 7.05 Metres (using pythagoras) so the whole wingspan, including ~1 m for the back of the flier is about 15.1 Metres, then we add on about 4 metres for the part of the wing that is cut off and get about 19.1 Metres +- 3 Metres range for inaccuracy. The maths checks out! (especially since Ares is meant to be a big bat)

Page 26 | Gregor initially does not like Luxa, he judged her book by her cover (rookie mistake)

### Chapter 3

Page | Comment

Page 27-28

For somebody to be so transparent you can see their veins and organs is ridiculous with only 400 years of evolution and likewise for purple eyes, I think it is most likely these are genetic mutations inherited from the original underland settlers as opposed to having any relation to the lack of sun, the white hair also, though this is pretty common so it might not have any significance. Even if one never sees the sun, ones skin would not be transparent.

Page 29, Line 23 | The word cool, to mean fashionable originated around 1933 and so it makes sense that Luxa doesn't understand.