Ruth gets the drop on Wolfman, shooting him in the back at close range with a pistol. There are more pages remaining than any denouement would require, so Wolfman's return isn't that much of a surprise itself. He nabs Ruth, tosses her in a car, drags her to a field to finish his kill. She's so close to salvation. She can see a convenient store up ahead and hears cop cars approaching. If she can just fight Wolfman a few more minutes, she can make it. But she knows he'll overpower her. He's determined to end her even if it means guaranteeing his own capture. So she does the only thing she can. She plays dead. Wolfman is so convinced that he buries her in a pit. He shovels dirt onto her face, and Ruth fights the urge to blink. The girl who values winning above all else must give up and be defeated in order to save herself. In order to continue to be anything at all, she has to become nothing. Just a few pages previous we saw Ruth floating triumphantly downriver in what should have been a standard baptismal/rebirth moment, but it's not till she's pulled out of the ground like a resurrected corpse that she truly allows change into her heart. It's a great ending, the right ending. Ruth is grating for a good part of the book, prideful, conceited, cocky. Going limp against every instinct, every self-taught survival mechanism she has, Ruth is truly humbled, truly changed. Ruthless is Adams' first book, and it's flawed. But the ending she chose is perfect.
In this society, wealth is a sign of one's importance and social standing
This means that wealth describes where you are on the "level system." If you are very wealthy then you are popular and respected. If you are poor and have nothing then you are looked down on and thought of as unimportant.
