64 pages • 2 hours read
Watt KeyTerror at Bottle Creek
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2016A 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 33-41Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 33 Summary
Cort knows he cannot drop down to where Rusty is waiting for him but the only other tree he could move into has Elmo the bear in it. He uses his spear to poke the bear, making him climb up higher, before leaping into the bear’s tree. Rusty is attacking the base of the tree, but Elmo only climbs higher, giving no sign of wanting to attack Cort. However, there are no more sturdy trees between Cort and the water. Worse, the water itself is full of alligators surrounded by the partly-eaten bodies of deer, hogs, and snakes.
Chapter 34 Summary
Cort’s only option is to jump onto a weaker tree, past the alligators on the bank. It is not much of a plan and he is sure he is going to his death, but he sees no other option. He remembers his father’s advice not to agitate alligators by thrashing around or acting scared but to try and be as calm as possible. He leaps onto the tree, which snaps, dumping him into the water. Despite the alligators all around, Cort manages to calm his terror and walks, and then swims, as calmly as he can. He even feels some relief to be away from the dangers of the mound although he is afraid for the girls. He begins to think about the next problems: finding his way and crossing the fast-flowing river.
Chapter 35 Summary
Cort recognizes that he has reached Bottle Creek and uses the flow of the water to navigate, as he has previously with the direction of the wind, giving him a rough idea of where he needs to swim. He sets out across the vast expanse of water. As he swims, he thinks of his mother and is surprised that he is not angry with her and only wants her to be safe. The troubles she and his father has faced now seem like a ridiculous waste of time (156). He tries to understand his mother as someone who just wants to be happy and concludes that women do not want to be with smelly men who live on the river, hunting and fishing.
Cort loses all hope when he sees the river. It is simply too vast and fast flowing for him to cross. He even makes peace with this, and almost welcomes the idea of dying “knowing I’d done what I could before the world went black” (158). He grabs hold of a tree and lets the current take him, watching another tree dragged under the water for yards before being flipped into the air. He knows the task is impossible, but he also knows that the girls are waiting for him; he cannot quit now. A refrigerator floats past and he half crawls in, attempting to kick his legs to propel it along before he accepts that he has no strength left to even try.
Chapter 36 Summary
Cort drifts down river, at peace with his fate. The refrigerator bumps into something; he hears his name and is surprised to find his father there in a boat. When his father pulls him aboard, demanding to know where the girls are, Cort begins to cry before leaping at his father in a rage, telling him he hates him. Cort feels nothing, but when his father apologizes, he manages to clear his head enough to tell him that the girls are at the mound. He warns his father that they need guns to get past Rusty, but his father doesn’t have any.
Chapter 37 Summary
They travel upriver as fast as they can, and Cort’s father radios the sheriff to get an ambulance out to them. He tries to convince Cort to treat his wound and wrap himself in towels, but Cort refuses. He tells his father that the mound is full of deer, hogs, bears, and snakes.
Chapter 38 Summary
Cort directs his father towards the mound and feels himself “being pulled back into the nightmare” (171) as he hears the sounds of hogs and other animals ahead. His father directs him to snap off the navigation light pole to use as a weapon. It is narrow and made of aluminum, but it is all they have. As they get to the mound, they see that alligators have turned the water into a “bloody soup” (172).
Chapter 39 Summary
Cort’s father begins to ground the boat at the mound, but Rusty charges into the water and rams the boat. Cort falls onto the hog’s back and into the water but manages to swim under the boat and escape, pulling himself back aboard. Cort’s father is shocked by the ferocity of the beast but hits on an idea, making a lasso to try and catch Rusty. With Cort driving the boat, Cort’s father eventually manages to get the loop around Rusty. The hog is enraged, slamming against the boat, and pulling back so hard the engine cuts out. Cort’s father manages to reel the hog in and tells Cort to go and rescue the girls while he holds the creature at bay.
Chapter 40 Summary
As Rusty rages against the boat, Cort jumps ashore and runs up to the tree. The girls are limp, hanging from the life vest straps but they are still alive. He gets Francie out of the tree and climbs back up to untie Liza, who falls limply into her arms, knocking them both out of the tree and 10 feet onto the ground below. Winded and hurt, Cort is still delighted to find Liza alive. However, there is a sudden snapping noise, and Cort’s father warns him to get off the ground again. Before he can get the girls back in the tree, Cort turns around to confront Rusty, “his bloody, torn face inches from my own” (180).
Chapter 41 Summary
Cort pushes the girls behind him, but there is nothing he can do to fight Rusty. However, from nowhere, Elmo the bear suddenly charges the boar and attacks him. The fighting is long, savage, and bloody, and Cort and the girls cannot get past them to the boat. Cort’s father is ashore, armed only with a stick, and can do nothing to help. As Elmo begins to win the fight, Cort begins to cheer for him, only to realize that the bear is as dangerous to them as the hog.
Although fatally injured himself, Elmo manages to overpower the boar, slowly choking out his life. Cort’s father manages to get round to them and lead them back to the boat. As if he really is helping them, Elmo does not release his hold on the dead boar until they are safely away. Francie wants to help the injured bear, and Cort agrees for a moment before accepting that it is “foolish to think I have any control over the natural way of life and death out here” (185). He knows he has seen the brutal reality of life in the swamp, just as his father had warned him, and he knows now not to take it for granted.
Chapters 33-41 Analysis
Cort begins to accept the possibility that he will die in his desperate attempt to save the girls. In confronting and overcoming this, he also has moments of reflection that change his relationships and attitudes. His first moment of accepting the likelihood of death comes in his escape from the mound: He must jump into a tree with a bear who might also be rabid, then try and use a smaller tree to get past Rusty and the alligators. He is certain that some part of this will lead to his death, but, in a return to the theme of responsibility, he is prepared to risk his near-certain death to save the girls, whom he has firmly taken on as his responsibility.
Escaping this situation, he finds space to think as he swims away and discovers that his relationship with his mother has changed. Cort is surprised that he is no longer angry and that the conflict between her and his father now seems pointless. However, while he is happy to have gained some understanding of his mother, it also forces an uncomfortable idea on him: the belief that women do not want to be with smelly men who live on the river, meaning that this would hurt his chances of a relationship with Liza. Aware of the unhappiness that this caused his father, he vows to turn away from a lifestyle and sense of belonging that once brought him great joy: “I don’t want to be this. I won’t be this” (157).
The theme of responsibility is present again in these chapters as Cort confronts the reality that he cannot survive crossing the river, that he is on the edge of exhaustion but has done everything he can to help the girls. In this moment he almost welcomes the idea of dying, as though he has fulfilled his responsibility. However, even this is not enough; returning to his complicated relationship with his father, with the lifestyle he has just decided to turn his back on, he remembers his father’s advice (that quitting is not part of who they are), and refuses to give up on his responsibility to the girls.
At the peak of his desperate commitment to his responsibility, his enforced moment of growing up and looking after others, Cort’s father returns, starting to lift the burden from him. Cort is in tears of relief and terror, but he is also furious with his father for putting him in the position of having to save himself and the girls. It is only when his father admits that he has let him down, that he should never have neglected his own responsibilities so that Cort had to take them on, that Cort calms down enough and continues the task of saving the girls, this time with his father’s assistance. With his father’s assistance, Cort fulfills his responsibility and saves the girls. However, when the plan goes wrong, it is actually Elmo the bear who saves them, killing Rusty at the last minute. Cort is tempted to understand this as the swamp being on his side, a return to the comfort and safety of familiarity.
However, as if he is commenting on the novel or books like it, he recognizes that such symbolism would be trite and overly romantic, reminding himself that his “imagined friendship with the beast was something born out of desperation” (184). Instead, he recognizes that this is the harsh reality of the swamp and that, while he might interact with it sometimes, he is not in control of the natural world.
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By Watt Key
