69 pages • 2 hours read
William Pene du BoisThe 21 Balloons
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1947A 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.
Themes
Balancing Risk and Planning
Both the protagonist, Professor Sherman, and the Krakatoans he meets enjoy adventurous, satisfying lives made possible by daring risks intelligently taken.
Wishing to enjoy a year of peaceful solitude after a career of hectic school teaching, Sherman reasons that a lengthy balloon flight will do the job. This has its risks, so he works out carefully the things he needs to reduce the dangers of his proposed adventure. He wants the balloon to be extra-large so that it can stay aloft for weeks or months; he also orders a lightweight gondola in the shape of a tiny house that contains all the necessities. His system uses a long fishing line that cleans clothes by dragging them through seawater. His bed inflates with hydrogen so as to be ultra-lightweight and, when not in use, float to the ceiling, out of the way.
Ultimately, this system fails when birds, fighting over Sherman’s discarded garbage, break his balloon. Ever resourceful, he offloads everything to keep the craft afloat until it can reach land, then realizes he must cut away the tiny house while hanging onto the deflating balloon until it crashes on the shore of an island.
Sherman meets the secretive community that lives on the island. Chosen carefully for their intelligence and ability to solve problems creatively, the 20 families stand watch over enormous diamond caches hidden in caves. Every aspect of their lives on Krakatoa is carefully reasoned. They figure out how to hide their ship by docking it in a harbor unseen by residents of nearby Sumatra. They clear only the inland jungle, leaving an outer fringe that hides their presence from passing ships. The residents learn how to sell diamonds, a few at a time, enough to provide them with whatever supplies and comforts they desire. They design a balloon life raft that can rescue them from the island within 10 minutes if an eruption becomes imminent.
Krakatoans resolve the competition over ownership of the mine by building restaurants that systematically feed everyone, a process that keeps shares of the mine evenly distributed. They solve the problem of the island’s constant earthquakes by building their homes on foundations made of diamond boulders.
To avoid the dangers of boredom, the colony sets up a meal rotation that changes cuisines every day in a 20-day sequence. The children build and enjoy an amusement-park-type ride that lets them soar over the island and finish with a boat race.
Sherman calls the islanders “incurable romantics.” Realizing the residents cannot let him leave, he decides to embrace the challenge of living on Krakatoa. He is just figuring out how he can contribute to the group when the island becomes dangerously unstable, and everyone escapes on the balloon life raft.
Led by founder Mr. M, the evacuees continue their rational system of risk management while onboard the floating platform, keeping the balloons stable, rationing food, and selecting a country into which to parachute. Mr. M thoughtfully asks the F family to remain onboard after the others have left to help Sherman manage the craft until it’s time to crash-land on open water. The Fs finally disembark, Sherman puts the platform down at sea, and a passing ship rescues him.
Both Sherman’s adventure and that of the islanders require a willingness to take bold risks and the smarts to reduce the dangers with carefully thought-out procedures or devices. Thus, they all get to enjoy the thrills of an adventurous life by using reason, science, and engineering. It’s a smart bargain that generates a sense of aliveness without injuring the participants. They extract the thrills and toss away the dangers.
Building Community
Communities band together by sharing a common goal or trait. The Krakatoans start out by sharing only the fabulous wealth of their diamond mine, but this drives a wedge through them. To resolve this problem, they find common ground in making a ritual out of good dining in a diverse cultural setting.
When the Krakatoans first arrive on the island, they revel in the tremendous riches of the mountain’s diamond caves: “Upon seeing the mines, we all became rather piggish” (84). Then they compete to acquire each other’s ownership shares. Realizing that the community is becoming unstable, the families hit on the idea of opening restaurants, each with a unique and delicious menu of delicacies. Soon every family has a restaurant with a different menu, and they’ve earned back their mine shares.
The families draw up a constitution—a “Restaurant Government”—that requires each family, in sequence, to provide a given day’s meals. Each restaurant serves a different country’s cuisine, and the families rename themselves after the first initial of the culture they represent. This system is whimsical and eccentric, but it unites the colony in a single cause—representing the food, architecture, and culture of 20 different nationalities. The communal meals bring everyone together, three times a day, to a common event. One result is that everyone enjoys contributing to each other’s housing by helping to design and build the homes and provide interesting labor-saving conveniences. The colony’s children band together to create an amusement park. Their first ride, the Balloon Merry-Go-Round, is a great success that also affords the kids a chance to do some boat racing.
Members often sail to other countries bearing diamonds for sale; the cash they receive gets spent on supplies for the Krakatoan village. This project, too, bonds everyone in a common goal, and, like a club or secret society, they share an oath to keep private their source of wealth.
Instead of a futile, pointless fight over an endless resource, the families discover and cultivate a much more valuable asset—the strength of shared community values. These values define the success of the Krakatoan colony; the diamonds merely fund the group’s togetherness.
Ingenuity as an Engine of Happiness
Life is enhanced by ingenuity, and Sherman and the Krakatoans make ample use of that skill to get more out of life. Many of their inventions are playful or whimsical, and all display an intelligence that makes them a source of delight.
For his giant balloon’s basket house, Sherman designs a mattress that’s inflated with hydrogen; when not in use, it rises to the ceiling, out of the way. He’s older, so instead of climbing up and down a ladder to the roof, he builds a veranda around the flying house on which, no matter the hour, there’s always a shady place where he can enjoy the view. He washes his clothes by attaching them to a fishing pole line, unreeling it until the clothes reach the ocean and dragging them in the water until they’re refreshed.
The Krakatoans display endless ingenuity as they adapt to life on a dangerous island. Their motto, “Non Nova, sed Nove,” means “Not New Things, but New Ways” (76). To avoid boredom, each of their houses is designed after a different culture. Says Mr. F.: “Building my house was as enjoyable to us as a huge set of toy blocks is to a young child” (96). The islanders invent unique devices—self-cleaning bedsheets, a room filled with moving furniture, beds that can be raised above the roof, disappearing dining-room tables and chairs, automatic dishwashers and dryers—that add convenience to their lives in playful and fanciful ways unheard of in 1883 and rarely even today.
The community’s escape raft is powered by balloons; their children play on a merry-go-round that flies up and soars over the island; they sunbathe by letting the earthquake-driven rolling beach sands turn their bodies this way and that until they’re browned all over. They use giant blocks of diamond to undergird their houses.
After being rescued, Sherman refuses to speak about his adventure until he has reported it to his Explorers’ Club. This is also a playful gambit that generates tremendous interest in his lecture. Even San Franciscans exhibit ingenuity as they prepare for Sherman’s triumphant return: Grocers hang melons from their ceilings in imitation of blimps; children figure out how to commandeer a decorative street balloon and use it to fly across the neighborhood; one balloon company designs a horse-drawn floating couch powered by balloons. (It explodes by accident.) The Explorers’ Club roof dome, festooned with balloons, floats away and lands on an Indian reservation, where the residents cleverly convert it into a house.
Inventive whimsy thus figures prominently in the story. It suggests that people—both children and adults who are still children at heart—ought to have access to ingenious contraptions that add convenience and delight, and that, with a little ingenuity, new ones can be developed all the time.
