The following version of the novel was used to create this study guide: Dalcher, Christina. Vox. Berkley, August 21, 2018. Kindle.

In the dystopian novel Vox by Christina Dalcher, Jean McClellan, a mother and neurolinguist, learns how quickly the world can change when a plan is put into place. In this America where an overzealous minister has decided he can cure the country of evil by sending women back home to cook, clean, and not speak, Jean is shocked by how willing people are to go along with the new restrictions. She worries about her own children’s futures as they embrace the new rules. As a scientist who was known for her work on a serum to cure fluent aphasia, Jean is given a rare opportunity when the president’s brother has a skiing accident. She is called to continue her work on the cure for this brain injury but realizes the president intends to reverse engineer this cure as a curse. He really wants an easy way to damage the language areas of the brain so that the people he chooses will speak only nonsense. Jean must decide how important freedom is to her and what she would do to ensure her freedom and the freedom of others.

Of all of her children, Jean worries most about Sonia, her six-year-old daughter. Although they have only been wearing the counters that limit them to 100 words a day, Sonia has embraced the challenge to remain silent and has even won a contest at school for speaking the fewest words. Jean wants her daughter to grow up with a vibrant vocabulary of words, something the current leaders in America discourage.

When Steven, Jean’s teenaged son comes home wearing the pin with the P on it, Jean realizes her son has been sucked into the beliefs of the president’s Pure Movement. Believing he is doing the right thing, Steven turns his girlfriend in to the authorities when they go a step too far when making out and have sex. Premarital sex is illegal under the Pure Movement but only females are punished. Julia is arrested and sent to a work camp. Steven is upset when he watches the arrest on television at school and his teacher makes the students call Julia dirty names. He is even more upset when he arrives home from school and discovers that Julia’s mother has tried to commit suicide.

During this same time, Jean has reluctantly agreed to go back to work on her cure for fluent aphasia because the president’s brother suffered brain damage that causes that disruption in speech. He can still speak fluidly, but he puts together words into sentences that make no sense. Working at the lab, Jean has been reunited with Lorenzo the man with whom she had an affair two months earlier. With the help of information that Jean gleans from a folder Patrick left on his desk, Jean and Lorenzo determine that the president intends to reverse their cure into a curse, perhaps to use it as a bio-weapon.

At this point, Jean realizes that she is willing to kill if that is what it takes to ensure freedom for herself and her family. Jean and Lorenzo join forces with members of the resistance to derail the president’s plan by giving him and his top advisors the serum intended for their enemies. In the midst of this chaos, the word counters are removed from the women and a new president is elected who vows to return America to normal.