What would Harold do？

What would Harold do? is a private mantra that Larry Underwood adopts during his long trek from New England to the Boulder Free Zone, after he has been following the trail of signs and candy wrappers left by Harold Lauder. The phrase first appears in Larry's mind as a conscious problem-solving technique, a way to borrow the ingenuity of a person he has never met but whose resourcefulness he has come to admire through the evidence of Harold's trail. It marks a decisive shift in Larry's character: instead of succumbing to panic or self-pity, he begins to ask himself how Harold would handle a given difficulty, and then acts on that imagined answer.

Origin and Development of the Heuristic

Larry's reliance on the "What would Harold do?" question grows out of his long pursuit of Harold's party across the country. He has seen Harold's signs on a barn in Ogunquit, Maine, and at the Stovington Plague Control Center, each one providing clear route directions. He has also found Harold's discarded Payday candy wrappers at key points along the way, which function as a kind of breadcrumb trail. More than that, Larry has deduced Harold's practical cleverness from physical evidence: at a motorcycle dealership in Wells, Maine, Harold had siphoned gasoline from an underground tank by finding a plug-vent, a trick that Larry himself had missed and that nearly cost him his fingers when he tried a different method. This discovery impresses Larry deeply and becomes the foundation of his heuristic.

Application in Crisis

The most explicit use of the mantra occurs when Larry's party is camped at a farmyard and running out of water. Leo Rockway keeps complaining of thirst, and Larry feels himself tightening up, on the verge of losing his temper with the boy. At that moment, Lucy Swann says, "Quick, Larry, ask the question." Larry stops, thinks "What would Harold do?", and then examines the farm's windmill. He finds that the main driveshaft has popped out of its hole; he reseats it, and water begins to flow from the barn faucets. The problem is solved not by force or by luck, but by applying Harold's characteristic method of looking for the mechanical cause of a failure and fixing it directly.

Thematic Significance

The "What would Harold do?" heuristic is central to Larry Underwood's arc of maturation. Early in the novel, Larry is described by his mother as "a taker," and by his friend Wayne Stukey as having "something in you that's like biting on tinfoil." He is prone to panic, self-absorption, and abandoning people when they become burdens. The development of this mental discipline represents his deliberate effort to become a different kind of person: one who can lead, who can think under pressure, and who can draw on the strengths of others even when those others are absent. The irony is that Harold Lauder, the source of this inspiration, is himself a deeply troubled and ultimately destructive figure who betrays the Free Zone. Larry's heuristic thus operates independently of Harold's actual moral character; it is a tool that Larry has constructed from the evidence of Harold's practical intelligence, and it serves him well even after Harold's betrayal is revealed. The phrase also echoes the novel's larger pattern of characters learning from unlikely teachers—Stu Redman learns from Glen Bateman's sociological insights, Fran Goldsmith learns from Mother Abagail's folk wisdom, and Tom Cullen learns from Nick Andros's silent example. In each case, the knowledge that proves vital comes not from formal authority but from the lived experience of another survivor, repurposed through the learner's own will.