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.