47 pages • 1 hour read
Cristina HenríquezThe Great Divide
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A 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 25-32Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 25 Summary
It is payday for Omar and the other canal workers. Miller is to dispense the workers’ pay, but he tries to strike a bet with one man rather than giving him his wages outright. He wants the man to complete more work than he typically does on that day to receive his wages. Although the man protests, Miller insists. The man works so hard in the humid heat that he dies. When Omar tries to confront Miller, Miller not only denies his role in the man’s death but also launches into a speech about how good American involvement in Panama has been for the country. He notes that before the canal project, the area was little more than a swamp and that foreigners brought development and economic prosperity to the region. He tells Omar to thank him for the outside help that he represents. Omar will not, and Miller strikes him.
Chapter 26 Summary
Doña Ruiz is at home drinking tea. She is determined to figure out the source of Francisco’s quarrel with his son Omar. She makes her way to Francisco’s home to speak to him. There, she asks about Omar, and Francisco has a chance to reflect. He realizes the error of his ways and vows to make peace with his son. He decides to head into town and find Omar at work. He is astounded by the number of English speakers he encounters there and by the development and proliferation of American flags. He feels as though he is in another city—another country even. He proceeds to the project site itself and is astounded by the scale of the construction. It seems as though the earth has opened a great mouth and is yawning. He asks for Omar by name, over and over, but no one knows his son. After many unsuccessful attempts to find Omar or even find a man who recognizes the name, he leaves the mine feeling a profound sense of sadness and defeat.
Chapter 27 Summary
Joaquín, Renata, and Valentina gather for their protest. At first, no one else shows up, and Valentina worries that their act of resistance will be a failure. But then, people begin trickling in. They are greeted at first by people they recognize— friends and neighbors from the village. However, as the crowd grows, Valentina realizes that many of the new faces are strangers. She asks several people where they have come from and why they are there, and she finds out that word of the protest has spread. People from nearby villages are worried that they will suffer the same fate, and they want to show solidarity with the people of Gatún.
Chapter 28 Summary
Ada has returned to the boxcar in which she spent her first night in Panama and is huddled up in a corner, trying to avoid the rain. Antoinette told her that she’d informed John Oswald of her absence from the house on the day of Marian’s death, and Ada ran. She is hiding out in the boxcar because she does not know what else to do. Unbeknownst to Ada, however, Michael the postal carrier has come to find her.
Chapter 29 Summary
Lucille and Millicent are at home when they are startled by a knock on the door. A Black doctor arrives and asks to see Millicent. After his examination is through, he tells Lucille that Millicent does not require surgery but rather a quick draining procedure that he would be able to complete right then. Lucille agrees and is grateful that a solution has been found for Millicent’s predicament. Although he does not make it explicit, the doctor was hired by the Camby estate. He drains Millicent’s excess pulmonary fluid and leaves.
Chapter 30 Summary
The protest continues to increase in size. Molly, the journalist who overheard Valentina at the newspaper office, arrives with her camera. Omar, who heard about the protest, is there. He feels a sense of guilt: He is one of the canal workers who will be employed to destroy the town. A lone police officer shows up, and although the protesters do not realize it, he is there not in official capacity but by accident. Still, he tries to establish order. He fails, and in the chaos that ensues, he falls into the river. The townspeople manage to rescue him and then wait to see if he will thank them or perhaps try to make arrests. He does neither. He runs away as fast as he can. It feels like a victory of sorts, and Renata is sure that they can carry on their fight. Molly snaps several photographs, but when she brings them to her editor, he refuses to print them, telling her that they do not cover “local disputes.”
Chapter 31 Summary
Ada has received a letter from her mother informing her of Millicent’s progress. She now has enough money to pay for her passage and she buys a ticket home to Barbados. As she is waiting for the train, she runs into Omar. The two are both sad that they will not see each other again but happy that they were able to forge a friendship, albeit brief. After Ada leaves, Omar returns home. For the first time in months, his father greets him with a hello.
Chapter 32 Summary
Six years have passed, and it is now 1913. John Oswald watches as the first vessel officially passes through the canal. He remained in Panama long after he planned to leave and is still working to eradicate malaria. The town of Gatún was moved, and there are rumors that it is to be moved yet again so that the government can turn the new site into grazing land. Omar has enrolled in a preparatory course and plans to become a teacher. In Barbados, Ada is studying under the tutelage of a local doctor. Her mother has a new, electric sewing machine, and she can work twice as quickly.
Chapters 25-32 Analysis
Miller, a white foreman who journeyed from the United States to take a job on the canal project, has already been portrayed as a deeply unethical man; in particular, he is characterized as racist and classist. (Miller himself is not a wealthy man, but still looks down on the workers in his employ.) He makes another cruel bet with one of the canal workers, refusing to pay the man’s wages unless he performs an unreasonable amount of work on payday. The man collapses from overwork and dies as Omar looks on, powerless to help. This ignites Omar’s social justice awakening, and he stands up to Miller, accusing him to his face of murder. Miller responds with violence, but he also with a justification for his actions in Panama. He explains that the United States is “civilizing” the country and that Panama would be lost without its protection and influence. This attitude is common amongst the white characters in the novel, and it underscores The Negative Impacts of Imperialism, since it one of the most overt expressions in the novel of US exceptionalism and dominance.
This theme is also explored through Francisco’s eyes. Francisco finds it in his heart to forgive his son and journeys to the site of construction for the canal where Omar is employed in search of him. On his way, he encounters many changes and is struck, not as Miller would be by the “progress” he sees, but by the obvious influence of the United States everywhere. In the hustle and bustle of the city he sees the death of an older way of life in Panama, and he is concerned for the future of his country. It is obvious to him that the United States only has its own interests in mind in its work in Panama, and he worries that his people will be even further disenfranchised by prolonged contact with their powerful northern neighbor. He is unable to find anyone on the job site who knows his son, and this event becomes a metaphor for the anonymity of the workers whom Henríquez seeks to counter with her own narrative: No one knows Omar’s name because, to them, he is unimportant. This novel is meant to show the opposite: that all of the individual lives impacted by the canal were unique and had value.
Valentina’s protest grows, and she realizes that in spite of her initial worries, their movement has the support of many Panamanians who worry that they, too, will be displaced by the canal. That they are able to send the police officer packing while still saving his life after he falls in the river speaks to the raw power of the people: They get rid of the representative of the law while still treating him with the dignity and humanity that he denied them. They do not sink to his level. Pleased at the size of her demonstration, Valentina cannot help but feel that “[t]he residents of Gatún have decided to give the North Americans a piece of their mind” (299). Henríquez juxtaposes this protest to the relationship between Ada and Antoinette to suggest the potential of solidarity and community.
The novel ends with Millicent’s recovery and Ada’s new career, both facilitated by a Black doctor hired by one of Henry Camby’s men. That Ada would begin a new life in medicine fits within the arc of her narrative; this will allow her to make use of both her intellect and her emotional intelligence. That she is aided in her new career by a Black doctor spotlights Black professionals in the Caribbean, another part of history that is often left out of white-dominated accounts of the region.
