61 pages • 2 hours read
Caroline B. CooneyCode Orange
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary
Mitty watches a basketball game with his parents. While his parents are excited as usual about the game, all Mitty can think about is smallpox infecting the crowd of 11,000 spectators.
When he goes to bed that night, he can’t sleep. He wonders if he will end up like Typhoid Mary, a woman who accidently spread typhoid to numerous other people in the early twentieth century, and be treated merely a specimen to be handled with care, no longer a person with feelings:“Nobody had cared what the poor woman thought or hoped for. Her life didn’t matter. She was a threat. Lock her up” (107).
He also thinks that he will be judged by history as the person who brought smallpox back into existence. He worries about his potential to destroy many lives and change the world. The city he loves so much “would go through hell, all because Mitty Blake had done his homework for a change” (107).
Overcome with fear and disgust, Mitty puts the envelope with the scabs in a trash bag, soaks the contents, and then throws the trash bag down the trash chute. He wonders where he can go to isolate himself in case he gets sick. He fears losing control of his body and his choices, worrying about what could happen if the government is making his medical choices.
He gets up early and goes to breakfast. It is still too early to go to school. He sits on a bench and writes a letter to his family, telling them everything that has happened. There is nothing that can help him if he has the disease. Despite his fears about suffering from smallpox symptoms, he is much more afraid of what his potential disease could do to society. He wants to save the world and thinks the only way is to die before getting sick so the virus can’t emerge in the world again.
Chapter 11 Summary
Mitty is distracted in school, unable to focus, despite his English and biology teachers’ encouragement. He thinks about suicide, which he wrote about in his letter to his parents, but he is sickened by the idea, especially because he loves his parents so much and “believe[s] suicide was the most vicious thing a child could do to his mother and father” (120). But a decision to kill himself would not be motivated out of hate for his parents, but rather a deep love because he can’t bear to hurt them, or anyone, if he can help it. He cannot figure out what to do.
After school, Mitty realizes that he is still in control of what happens—he has not yet been apprehended by the FBI or any other government body. He needs to make a decision soon. He thinks about what true courage is and “could think of only two current examples of people walking into true danger and fighting back: the firefighters and police officers of 9/11 and the soldiers sent to Afghanistan and Iraq” (121).
Olivia invites Mitty to walk with her in Central Park. But he can think only about not wanting her or anyone else to catch the disease. She is confused and misinterprets his reticence for disinterest. When she brings up Valentine’s Day, he is silent, which causes her to cry with disappointment and leave him alone.
Chapter 12 Summary
The next day, neither Mitty nor Olivia shows up to school. Their friends wonder where they are, especially since Olivia is never sick. Derek is called to the office. Waiting for him are two FBI agents and a scientist from the CDC, Dr. Graham. They question Derek about his knowledge of Mitty’s smallpox paper. Derek is in shock, wondering why the FBI would be interested in Mitty. They ask him what he knows about Mitty’s smallpox scabs, and Derek tells them he knows nothing about them.
Olivia, who is home upset over her encounter with Mitty, is summoned to the school, where she also talks to the agents about Mitty’s research. The agents ask her if she knows anything about the scabs or the old science books. She tells them she doesn’t know anything about either, even though she did help Mitty with some of his research.
When Derek asks what the odds that Mitty can get smallpox from the scabs are, Dr. Graham replies, “‘Virtually one hundred percent impossible’” (134).Derek presses, but the doctor insists the chances are“[i]nfinitesimally small” (134). They also share the letter that Mitty wrote, which his parents found on his computer.
Derek says Mitty would never commit suicide because Mitty believes that suicide destroys the parents. Olivia wonders why the FBI cares so much, since they have emphasized that it’s almost 100 percent impossible to get smallpox from the scabs. Olivia remembers how the US worked to prevent an outbreak of mad cow disease, a neurological disease spread by eating the meat of infected cows, even though there was no evidence it could happen in the US. Derek has another theory about why the FBI cares so much: terrorists wanting to weaponize smallpox could seek out Mitty as a source of the disease.
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
What started as a homework assignment has transformed into a potentially life-or-death decision for Mitty—and perhaps for the world at large. Mitty is a kind but rather lazy student who, while happy about his many advantages in life, is also complacent about the world in general.
But his brush with smallpox and his confrontation with his own mortality forces him to seriously evaluate his life and those that he loves. He realizes that he truly loves not only his own family, but everyone. He loves the people in his building, both the workers and the residents. He loves seeing the people of Manhattan every day. He reflects on the word “society” and what that means to him. It forces him to realize that he is willing to die rather than put society at risk.
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By Caroline B. Cooney
