61 pages • 2 hours read
Susan NussbaumGood Kings Bad Kings
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 19-23Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary: “Michelle Volkmann”
Michelle goes to ILLC to take notes on operations at the facility. Her boss, Tim, wants her to identify areas, such as staff and supplies, that can be cut due to costs. He says ILLC is “hemorrhaging money” away from the company (114). She spends a few days there and mostly interacts with Joanne, since she is the data specialist. Michelle seems bored and uninterested in the place and complains about her gonorrhea and bickering, divorced parents. Joanne seems offended by Michelle, who makes comments about Joanne’s impressive productivity, despite her disability. Joanne asks Michelle if she will also collect data on the health of the patients—rather than just looking at the costs of the facility—but Michelle says no one asked her to do so.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Mia Oviedo”
Mia is experiencing sickness and depression as a result of her sexual abuse. Jerry still comes into her room at night and takes advantage of her. Mia is losing focus on school and her relationship with Teddy has unraveled. Joanne and friends ask why she is not with Teddy anymore, but she avoids everything by sleeping and crying in the bathroom.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Teddy Dobbs”
After refusing to listen to Mr. Sokolsky—one of his teachers— the security guard, Louie, sends Teddy to the time out room. Teddy tries to resist by crashing his wheelchair into the wall. Louie struggles to get Teddy to comply and calls him a “retarded little shit” (120). Finally, Louie gets him to the room and then steals a few dollars and papers from Teddy’s pockets and mocks him. Teddy is furious and in pain, uncertain why Mia has broken up with him. Later that day, he has a meeting with Mrs. Phoebe about his future at ILLC. He will most likely go to a faraway nursing home for adults, but Teddy’s father is concerned, since he won’t be able to visit his son very often. Teddy wants to run away.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Yessenia Lopez”
Yessie is in a counseling session with Mr. Bonelli, and she tells him about her night with Jimmie. Mr. Bonello asks Yessie if she is lesbian, and she gets angry at him. She doesn’t want other people in her business, but she also admits to him that she isn’t a lesbian. Back at school, Yessie tells her friend about how “cool” Jimmie is, but her friend reacts negatively to the fact that Jimmie is a lesbian. Yessie realizes her only true friend is Cheri because Cheri doesn’t judge her.
While in the hallways, Cheri and Yessie run into Michelle, who recruited Cheri by convincing her parents she would be a good patient at ILLC. Michelle is upbeat and tries to make conversation. Yessie has never seen Cheri get so angry, as she screams to Michelle that they are not friends and tells her she will “beat her ass” (125). Michelle hurries off, startled, and reports it to Mrs. Phoebe. Yessie recalls how Cheri is schizophrenic; once, Cheri walked off in the night screaming, and Yessie tried to help her by calling a nurse.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Joanne Madsen”
Joanne is still figuring things out with Ricky and doesn’t want to become overly dependent on him. She entertains him by looking up Pierre’s files, since Pierre is a patient that Ricky often escorts to the time out room. Pierre’s story is tragic and filled with unfortunate circumstances, such as abandonment, homelessness, abuse, and mental illness. When Joanne leaves work for the day, two of the young female patients ask if they can do her make up. Joanne has allowed them to give her a makeover before, but it didn’t go well. She tells them maybe next week and has to run off while they call for her to keep talking. Once she turns the corner, Ricky is there to take her home. As they are moving along, she calls for him to stop. She tells him that she wants him to go home with her and sleep over. Ricky gets excited, and they kiss tenderly, which she says, “feels so good […] in the cold air” (132).
Chapters 19-23 Analysis
The theme of corporate greed and exploitation continues with Michelle—who represents the inhumanity and selfishness of privatized health care corporations. While visiting ILLC, she is bored and has a careless attitude towards the patients and employees. When Joanne asks Michelle if her company will do more than just calculate the costs of the patients and if there is a plan to track the health and outcomes of patients as well, Michelle responds by saying: “‘Patient outcomes?’ I have no idea what she’s talking about” (117). Her obliviousness highlights her own self interests. Michelle’s character possesses an immaturity and lack of awareness that reflects a deep flaw in her character’s morality.
The book further reveals the toxic treatment of the patients in Joanne’s chapter when she shares details about Pierre. His life has been unforgiving, and he has been diagnosed by multiple disorders that have labeled him as an outsider in society. Joanne wants to learn more about his symptoms, so she searches on Google, noting that she didn’t find descriptions of her own disability accurate: “Some of the technical descriptions were totally creepy and they had no relationship to my real life. I think doctors use the worst-case scenarios in order to be published.” (129) This moment shows how the social stigma and misunderstanding of doctors and health systems can ruin a person’s sense of self. Joanne’s interest in the patients opposes Michelle’s disinterest, making the characters foils.
Meanwhile, the effects and consequences of the corporation’s inability to care for their patients leads to serious, traumatic results for the young disabled population, most exemplified by Mia’s sexual abuse. While the corporate bosses are deciding how they can save money and cut costs, they are overlooking the actual care of the patients, and Mia is at the mercy of Jerry, an abusive employee who continues to exploit her sexually. Mia’s unfortunate experience represents how society’s most vulnerable groups of people—poor, disabled, young women of color—are victims of a broken system. Jerry’s predatory acts go unnoticed in the face of Michelle’s visit, and his insidious behavior underscores how the health care system is not only ineffective, but sometimes detrimental, to the wellbeing of the patients.
Yessenia’s conflict isn’t as clear as Mia’s, though she still struggles with her identity, self-confidence, and ability to interact with others. Her therapy sessions reveal that she is still isolated without her Tía Nene, but also that she has low-self-esteem: “Even Tía Nene who loved me with all her might thought deep, deep down that poor Yessie wouldn’t never be able to do a damn thing for herself” (123). It’s not only the private corporations that doubt and mislabel the disabled youth, but families as well.
