93 pages • 3 hours read
Lois LowryGathering Blue
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2000A 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 22-23Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary
Chapter 22 narrates the conversation between Kira and Christopher, as he explains what happened to him and why he never returned to the village. He tells her that he was not attacked by beasts—there are no beasts, just as Annabella said. He was attacked by someone in the hunting party, clubbed on the head from behind and then slashed in the face and left for dead. He tells her that it was probably because he was going to become a guardian and the others were jealous. When he woke up, he was in the Field, but that night strangers came and took him away, giving him medicine that dulled his pain and allowed him to sleep while they carried him for days to their village—a “village of healing” (228). Kira thinks to herself that she had never met anyone, besides Matt, who had ever wanted or knew how to heal someone else.
During their conversation, Kira tells Christopher about being born with a twisted leg, and how her mother fought to keep her alive. She also tells him that Katrina is dead, which Matt has already told him. She asks him why he never came back to his wife and child, and he tells her that the blow to his head caused him to lose his memory. As he healed, the memories returned, but he was blind and could not find his way back, and worried that, even if he did, he would be killed. So he stayed in the village until Matt arrived. When Christopher heard Matt’s story, he knew that Matt’s friend must be his daughter.
Christopher tells Kira that they can leave after he’s rested and go back to the village of healing. Kira tries to convince him to stay with her—to persuade him that they can be comfortable together and that her special privileges as Threader will keep him safe. She tells him about how Vandara’s threat led to the hearing and her new role in the community. Christopher remembers Vandara, and says that her injury was caused by a fall onto a sharp rock after her child slipped and grabbed her shirt. He recalls that after her child died, some people suspected that she had killed him in retaliation for her own injury, but there was no proof. Father and daughter agree that Vandara is a dangerous person. Kira then goes on to tell him about her defender, Jamison. Christopher stiffens and withdraws his hand from Kira’s, telling her that Jamison is the one who tried to kill him.
Chapter 23 Summary
As Chapter 23 opens, Kira is planting the woad in her dyer’s garden, thinking about how she would not be there to “[g]ather fresh leaves from first year’s growth” (234). After the new plant has been watered, she sits in the garden, thinking about the possibility that her mother was poisoned so the Council could “capture her gift” (235), and whether Thomas’s and Jo’s parents were also killed so their children’s artistic gifts could be exploited by the guardians. She is looking forward to escaping with her father, but knows she will miss Matt, and Thomas and Jo. Thinking about Jo, she remembers the Singer and the strange clanking sound he made, recalling that at the end of the performance, the Singer had lifted the robe and revealed his “grotesquely misshapen” feet. “His ankles were thickly scarred, more damaged than her father’s face. They were caked and scabbed with dried blood. Fresh, bright blood trickled in narrow rivulets across his feet. It all came from the raw festering skin—infected and dripping—around the metal cuffs with which he was bound” (236–237). Remembering this horror, she realizes what the guardians have done—“they had found a way to steal and harness other people’s powers for their own needs. They were forcing the children to describe the future they wanted, not the one that could be” (238).
Kira realizes that she cannot leave with her father. Instead, Matt will guide him home. Kira promises that someday their “villages will know each other” (240), and Christopher understands why she feels compelled to stay. Before he leaves, Christopher gives Kira a gift: he has unraveled his blue shirt so that she can have blue thread to use while waiting for the woad to grow. Then Kira hugs her father goodbye and watches him walk away with Matt and Branch. The book ends with Kira holding the blue thread in her hand, feeling as if it “was beginning to live” (241).
Chapter 22-23 Analysis
Chapters 22 and 23 provide the climax and denouement of the novel, with the revelation that Jamison, Kira’s “defender,” was the one who tried to kill her father in order to take his place on the Council of Guardians. Up until this moment, Kira has been trying to find ways to make her Council-governed life work, despite what she saw in the brief moment the Singer’s robe was lifted. She tries to convince her father to stay with her, as she does not want to give up the position she has worked to so hard to maintain. It is only when Christopher names Jamison as his attacker that Kira decides to leave.
The shift is abrupt—for the reader, as well: Chapter 22 ends with Christopher saying, “Jamison is the one who tried to kill me” (223), and Chapter 23 opens with Kira in the garden, planting the woad, knowing that she won’t be there to harvest it. However, as Kira sits with the woad, thinking about what the guardians have done to “capture her gift” and the gifts of Thomas and Jo (235), she remembers the Singer’s bloody feet and realizes that this is likely to be Jo’s fate as well. Kira’s realization that there can be a future different from the one the guardians “were forcing the children to describe” (238) also influences her decision to stay. She knows that they—Kira, Thomas, and Jo—are key to making that different future happen. They will be the ones to tell a different story. The power is in their hands and in their gifts.
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