44 pages • 1 hour read
Craig SilveyJasper Jones
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
Jeffrey and Charlie talk about the New Year’s fireworks at the Miners’ Hall. Charlie is afraid that he will tell Eliza what he knows about Laura in a moment of weakness because sharing what he knows would help alleviate the misery he feels over keeping his terrible secret. He knows that such a confession would only get Jasper sent to jail, however. One day, Charlie’s father tells him that he has been writing a book and wants Charlie to be the first one to read it. Charlie is secretly upset because he feels as though his father has stolen his own dream to become a writer. Jasper comes to the window and asks Charlie to come with him to confront Lionel. As the two boys head toward Lionel’s house, Charlie encounters Eliza, who is desperate to talk to him. He promises to come back and see her later. When the two boys encounter Lionel, the old man is excited to see Jasper and invites the boys in. When Jasper confronts Lionel about Laura, it is clear that the old man does not even know that Laura is dead.
Lionel shows the boys old pictures featuring Jasper and his parents, Rosie and David. It is revealed that Lionel is Jasper’s paternal grandfather and was the one driving the car when Rosie died. Lionel tells the boys that when Rosie first became pregnant with Jasper, Lionel pushed David, Rosie, and Jasper out of his life. Jasper’s parents married and changed their last name to Jones. Rosie kept trying to make amends between father and son, and finally, Lionel agreed to a meal at Rosie’s home. David stayed away that night and all the other nights that Lionel returned to visit, so although Lional developed a solid relationship with both Rosie and Jasper, he was never able to reconcile with his son. One day when Lionel was at dinner, Rosie doubled over in pain from appendicitis. When Lionel rushed her to a hospital, the car hit a pothole, and Lionel lost control of the vehicle, killing Rosie. David blamed Lionel for what happened and forbade his father from attending Rosie’s funeral, so Lionel held his own private funeral for her by the car and carved the word “sorry.” Many different rumors surrounded the incident. Lionel always called out to Jasper when he walked by because he wanted to tell Jasper what really happened. Finally, the two boys learn that Lionel did see Laura walk by alone on the night she died and that someone was following her.
Eliza comes to Charlie’s and tells him that she knows where her sister is. She leads Charlie to Jasper’s clearing, and on the way, they see a parked car that Charlie recognizes as his family’s car. He and Eliza see Charlie’s mother having sex in the backseat with a man who is not her husband. She is drunk and angry and tells Charlie to get in the car. Charlie refuses, declares that he hates her, and walks away with Eliza. In the clearing, Eliza tells Charlie that she has a letter that Laura wrote for Jasper. Eliza tells Charlie that she killed her sister. Charlie relays what he learns in one long stream of consciousness paragraph starting with the word “Thisiswhathappened” (258). Laura was sexually abused by her father and found out that she was pregnant. Her mother refused to believe her, and her father beat her for telling what happened. Later that night, Eliza followed Laura to the clearing, and, not realizing her sister’s intentions, watched as she took her own life. Eliza tried to help Laura, but it was too late. She saw the letter and grabbed it, hiding again when Jasper appeared. The letter explains that Laura believed Jasper left town without her and that she felt ashamed of the life growing inside of her.
Charlie is upset with Eliza for keeping the letter because if she had left the letter where it was, Jasper would never have thought that Laura was murdered and would not have brought Charlie into the situation. This would have stopped him from accusing Lionel of murder, reading all the stories about killers, and discovering his own mother’s infidelity. Eliza is the one who carved “sorry” into the tree trunk. Charlie explains what he and Jasper did with Laura’s body. He tells Eliza that Laura’s death is not her fault. Likewise, Eliza does not hate Charlie for hiding Laura’s body, but she wishes that he had told her. Charlie and Eliza talk about leaving Corrigan together. Eliza starts to cry, and Charlie understands that rubbing her shoulder is more useful than words. Later, Jasper arrives, and Chalie and Eliza explain everything. Upset, Jasper bursts away and dives into the water. When he does not come up, Charlie goes in after him. As they struggle, Charlie reflects that Jasper is Randall McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and that he, Charlie, is a barnacle clinging to him, trying to glean boldness from him. He understands that Jasper originally sought him out because could not deal with everything alone. The realization that even Jasper feels fear makes Charlie understand that fear is something that no one can escape. Then he realizes that perhaps life is about “how well you walk with the weight” (278). This is his new definition of courage.
Charlie tells Jasper that they want to go with him when he leaves town, but Jasper refuses because the townspeople would accuse Jasper of kidnapping. Eliza plans to tell the authorities the whole truth but promises to keep Jasper’s name out of it. Charlie counters that that would also be a lie. To protect Jasper, he asks her not to tell people what happened to Laura. The three walk back to town the next day, and Jasper goes to talk to Lionel. People have been patrolling the area, looking for Eliza and Charlie. The sarge takes Eliza into the station and tells Charlie to go home. Charlie sees kids flying kites and reflects that while people want to tie others down with things like jewelry and poems, holding on to something does not “make it yours” (288).
Chapter 7 Analysis
An’s garden represents diversity, and the attack on the garden likewise represents the attempts that some people in 1960s Australia took to squash that diversity. Many of the plants in An’s garden are not native to Corrigan; this is a central part of the garden’s beauty and appeal. The garden and An himself are both attacked because people are angry about having a Vietnamese family living in their community. Symbolically, this scene shows that some of the townspeople are violently opposed to diversity and try to drive all manifestations of it away from the town. By contrast, other people like Wes are willing and able to stand up for An and protect him, and others bring new plants to help him regrow his garden afterward. Thus, the novel demonstrates an optimistic streak as the author shows that some people welcome diversity.
Throughout the novel, the sharing of misery is said to help alleviate it. This becomes evident in Chapter 7 when Charlie becomes afraid that he will tell Eliza all that he knows about Laura because he feels a need to unburden himself. He knows he cannot share this both because it could turn Eliza away from him and it could also get Jasper in trouble. Still, the need to tell her is so overwhelming that he fears he might break down and do it anyway. At other times, Charlie also wants to tell Jeffrey what happened. Through this, the novel maintains the view that secrets are burdens and that these burdens can be lightened when they are shared. The telling of secrets requires purposeful sharing, however, where the person is cognizant of the repercussions that could happen if they share their secret. Similarly, the stream-of-consciousness style that Charlie uses to tell the secrets leading to Laura’s death demonstrates how overwhelmed he is by what he learns, and it also demonstrates his imminent and overwhelming need to share it. With this stylistic choice, the author conveys Charlie’s anxiety by using paragraph breaks and combining multiple words into one to create a sense of breathless urgency and suspense. Charlie narrates the entire story in one long paragraph, and the writing style illustrates his intense need to get the words out, implying that holding the information in for another second would cause him physical pain. Thus, the act of storytelling becomes an act of release, and just as Charlie was once focused on Using Literature to Broaden Perspective, the author now makes it clear that Charlie’s act of telling the truth of this particular story is equally necessary for his own emotional well-being and personal development.
As the novel’s plot accelerates toward its climactic moment, Charlie’s willful idolization of Jasper hints at the underlying theme of The Role of Freedom in Personal Growth, for by persistently viewing Jasper as being fully fearless and more capable than himself, Charlie robs himself of the agency necessary to move toward a more mature state of being. Charlie has idolized Jasper all along, and this becomes most evident in the moments when Jasper demonstrates a weakness of his own: fear. For example, when the two teens go to confront Mad Jack Lionel, Charlie senses Jasper’s fear, and this is unnerving to Charlie because he holds the naïve view that Jasper fears nothing. The realization of Jasper’s fear could have two effects on Charlie: It could make him believe that Jasper is not a hero, or it could make him realize that even heroes get scared. At this point in the novel, it mainly serves to make Charlie more scared because he no longer has his rock to believe in. Later, when Charlie goes into the water after Jasper, Charlie demonstrates a new maturity as he himself becomes more able to face his own fears. This scene provides a sharp contrast to his paralyzing fear at the beginning of the novel, for rather than shying away from the drama unfolding before him, he dives into the water and tries to help his friend. When he does this, he learns that part of being human is learning to live with fear and take action in spite of it, and he also learns that this is something that everyone must be given the freedom to do on their own. Thus, the scene also represents a progression of The Link Between Responsibility and Maturity.
When Charlie discovers his mother having an affair, he is able to see her clearly enough that she no longer has any control over him. Previously in the novel, she irrationally lost her temper, and she forced Charlie to do pointless manual labor as a punishment for his lack of obedience. The arbitrary nature of this punishment greatly angers Charlie, but he accepts it because his respect for his mother’s authority prevents him from standing up for himself even in the face of her mistreatment. Until he fully realizes The Role of Freedom in Personal Growth, he follows along with the decisions of the adults rather than making up his own mind. It is only when he realizes the extent of his mother’s betrayal that he is able to break her emotional hold on him and act independently as he sees fit. Having lost his respect for her, he rejects both her and her directives. This shift demonstrates that he is now willing to take on an adult role and make his own decision even when his mother is ordering him to do something different.
The teens in the novel are hidden away from the rest of the world while they are in the clearing. As such, they do not have to deal with the outside world. Charlie does not want to leave the clearing when he is with Eliza. He wants to stay hidden away and protected. This is what Laura wanted as well, but she was never able to make herself go back out into the world. She took her own life in order to avoid the harsh realities that the world presented to her. At the novel’s conclusion, although Charlie is reluctant to go back and face the real world, he still does so, and this acceptance shows that he is able to mature beyond what Laura was able to because he did not escape life’s consequences by seeking death or some lesser form of escape.
