63 pages • 2 hours read
Ann NapolitanoDear Edward
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPart 1, Chapters 6-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “July 2013”
Edward visits Shay at night again. She compares him to Harry Potter, a character who moved in with his aunt and uncle after his parents died. While Shay believes Edward is special like Harry, he doesn’t agree. Edward visits Dr. Mike, his therapist, who tells Edward, “There are grown-ups, children, and then you […] we need to figure out what you are” (76). Again, Edward is separate from the larger world.
Edward begins to sleep on Shay’s bedroom floor every night. Besa thanks him for his friendship with her daughter, who has trouble making friends. When Besa mentions Lacey, Edward considers his inability to sleep in the nursery, “knowing that those four walls couldn’t bear both Lacey’s grief and his own.” (78). He begins to find connections in his loss.
As he tries to eat crackers one night, Edward sees John drop his tablet and laughs, startling himself. He also notices that Shay is writing in her notebook as they talk at night. An envelope with pictures of his family’s belongings arrive, and Edward is upset by a photo of his mother’s bracelet. This strengthens his understanding of Lacey, who “lost her sibling, just like he lost his” (85).
As Edward walks up the street for physical therapy, he notices a group of people watching him. When he finds John’s tablet one night, it sparks his curiosity. Edward and Shay follow links saved on the tablet to websites and searches about Edward and his family. She finds “over a hundred and twenty thousand results” (89). Edward’s story has made him famous worldwide.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “10:17 A.M.”
On the plane, Jane visits her family. When the pilot calls all passengers back to their seats, Edward’s “eyes are wet with sudden tears” (94). The childlike need for his mother and teenage independence traps him. On her way back to her seat, Jane brushes past Florida and feels a missed connection after exchanging only a few words.
Benjamin watches the Alder family skeptically from across the aisle: “When they speak, it sounds staged, as if they’re reciting the script all happy families are handed at conception” (96). This bothers him because it is also how he pictured Gavin’s family interacting.
Further up the plane, Linda confesses to Florida that she’s pregnant. Florida reflects on her husband, who wants children of his own. The plane hits turbulence as it heads into a rainstorm.
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary: “September 5, 2013”
On his first day at public school, Edward sticks with Shay. Other students stare and whisper about him. He meets Principal Arundhi, who asks Edward to help him take care of his office ferns throughout the year. Edward agrees. At the end of the day, the school parking lot is swarming with people hoping to get a glimpse of Edward. Some take photos of him.
At dinner, Lacey tells Edward that a moving truck will arrive to bring his family’s belongings. He privately asks John to keep him updated on news of the crash because he doesn’t want to look himself. In an appointment with Dr. Mike, Edward starts to talk about playing piano, something his father taught him. Now, Edward doesn’t believe he’d be able to play anything he used to know. He has lost more of his identity than he realized.
Besa and Shay help Lacey and Edward sort through his family’s belongings. Edward asks if he can wear his and Jordan’s old clothes; Lacey agrees, and he sleeps that night in his pajama bottoms and one of Jordan’s shirts.
Winter approaches, though Edward is unaware—he tells Dr. Mike about his disinterest in passing time. Dr. Mike pushes Edward to talk about his belief that Jordan should have survived rather than him; Mike suggests that the people following Edward “[w]ant to share something extraordinary about themselves, because you’ve experienced something extraordinary,” reframing Edward’s unwanted celebrity (117).
After school one day, Gary, the man Linda was moving to California to be with, approaches Edward. Obsessed with finding answers, he shows Edward a photo of Linda and asks if he recognizes her. Edward does, choosing to remember something from the crash for the first time. There’s more connection within Edward’s loss: he “sees the lines of pain on Gary’s face; they’re the same lines—carved by loss—that engrave Edward’s whole self” (120).
Part 1, Chapters 6-8 Analysis
Edward’s fame grows throughout this section. Shay compares him to Harry Potter due to the loss of his parents and his unlikely survival. Edward denies that he is special or worthy of fame. That denial fuels his isolation: he is known the world over, but even his closest friends do not understand the complexities of his trauma.
Complicating this isolation is Edward’s arrested transition into adolescence. Dr. Mike is commenting on Edward’s mental health when he suggests that Edward is neither an adult nor a child, but he is also recognizing that Edward is physically between those stages of life. His trauma is stalling his progression. Before the crash, he nearly cries when Jane must leave her family and go back to her seat. He has not moved past that stage after the tragedy; by allowing him to sleep in Shay’s room every night, the adults in his life are showing that they still see Edward as a child.
John’s tablet symbolizes the relationship between Edward’s arrested development and his celebrity. The tablet is a gateway to the outside world, but John guards it. By denying Edward the full story of the crash’s impact on the world, John is enabling Edward to remain stagnant. He does not do this with malicious intent, but Edward cannot step toward adulthood or begin to heal without access to this larger context.
Edward struggles with survivor’s remorse, especially concerning Jordan. He goes so far as to wear Jordan’s old clothes to keep some part of his brother alive. This delays his growth, however, because he is assuming the past as part of his identity.
In contrast, Principal Arundhi’s ferns are the first representation of Edward’s healing. By showing patience and compassion toward the plants, he helps them thrive. In a sense, this is the first time that Edward’s survival has a positive impact on other living things. In the same way that the plants require patience and care, Edward’s healing process will take time and sustained effort. Before it can happen, Edward must find worth in himself the way Arundhi finds worth in his ferns.
It is no coincidence that Gary arrives not long after the introduction of the ferns. Gary forces Edward to recall details about the flight, which he has so far refused to do. Just after he begins to help the ferns grow, he takes his first step toward his personal growth. Helping Gary forces Edward to reconcile with part of his trauma. This foreshadows the way he will find catharsis by helping those affected by the crash, as well.
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