The Honest Truth

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2015

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2 ½

Chapters 3-4 ½

Chapters 5-6 ½

Chapters 7-8 ½

Chapters 9-10 ½

Chapters 11-12 ½

Chapters 13-13 ½

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Mount Rainier

To Mark, the mountain symbolizes a hidden truth that he must uncover—either about himself or, more broadly, life—though he’s somewhat unsure of his own question. Mark assumes that climbing the mountain means certain death, but a kind of death he chooses for himself. He would rather die pursuing truth and adventure than fade away in pity and comfort. Mark’s resolve only further solidifies as the mountain’s truths remain obscured by clouds and storms, refusing to reveal its secrets to him.

Mark believes his journey holds a certain outcome, but the mountain still manages to surprise him:

White and shining, painted impossibly bright by the moonlight. Shocking, unmovable white against the black of the sky and the storm and the darkness. Mount Rainier is an awesome mountain. It is fierce and it is proud. It is almost angry against the sky. […] I yanked at my clothes and pulled my camera free and held it up to everything I’d been seeking. I didn’t know if the mountain, so grand, could fit in the small frame of the camera. But I held it up and I pointed it and pressed my gloved finger on the button (212).

Mark finds that life is stormy and difficult, but the meaning at its center is expansive and full, like the mountain that the camera lens may or may not capture completely. The unobscured mountain visually reflects the essence of truth—a brilliant white against the darkness, unmovable, proud—and it exists there regardless of the clouds and storms covering it. Just because Mark can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not standing strong and defiant. Upon seeing the mountain’s full glory, all the turbulent emotions that cloud Mark’s judgment “blew away like the clouds from the mountaintop” (213), and Mark gazes upon the unobstructed mountain. He realizes that even in the storm with no one around, he doesn’t want to die, and he’s not truly alone in his impossible endeavors. The mountain gives Mark the answers he seeks, but he now understands that his true destination isn’t farther up the mountain but back down to where his friends and family await.

Camera/Photography

Mark’s camera—or, more broadly, photography—acts as a motif that depicts how Mark processes the meaning of living. Mark briefly mentions that his grandfather gave him this old-fashioned camera, which requires him to replace the film. The only other gift Mark keeps from his grandfather is the pocket watch, which he smashes in the first chapter. Both of his grandfather’s gifts reflect time, though in different ways: The pocket watch marks time’s passage while the camera preserves moments.

Mark has a negative attitude toward time, hating how it refuses to slow down even for someone who doesn’t have much left. Taking pictures gives Mark a sense of capturing a moment before time swallows it: “I like…the feeling of catching something. Of saving something. [...] It’s like, I don’t know, grabbing a little piece of life. All this stuff happens, all these little moments go flying past, and then they’re gone. And then you’re gone” (82). His camera preserves moments that are precious or important to him, both for his own reassurance and proof of his life experiences after he’s gone. Though, in the story, Mark rarely uses the camera for happy memories; more often, he takes pictures of formative people and places—the run-down diner, his young bus conversationalist, Wesley’s receding truck, and the mountain itself. In the face of death, Mark desperately wants his short life to matter, and he doesn’t want all his life’s profound moments to die with his body.

Haiku

In the novel, haiku poems serve as motifs to reflect Mark’s longing for simple, comprehensible truths. Mark wishes that life came with easier answers: how to be a normal kid, how to make his parents happier, how to stop cancer in its tracks. Throughout the novel, Mark names the few certainties he finds in life, followed by the phrase “That’s the truth.” Mark and Jessie both mention how haiku is their favorite poetic form. Mark never explains why, but the way he composes haikus offers the reader hints: “An idea came, slow and shy. I nodded. I counted a couple of times on my fingers, my mouth moving silently with the words” (7). At this moment in the story, readers don’t yet understand that Mark is generating an idea as he counts syllables on his fingers (following the poetic form’s five-seven-five syllable pattern). Crafting a haiku calms Mark, and he finds comfort in the poem’s predictable pattern because uncertainty clouds everything else in his life. Haikus always follow the same rules, and their short length guarantees that the subject isn’t too complex. For example, Mark composes a haiku that reads, “Across far, dark miles / a friend can still hold your hand / and be there with you” (22). Though brief, this haiku carries a lot of emotion within a simple gesture—holding hands across many miles—to express the strength of Jessie and Mark’s friendship.

Jessie’s viewpoint incorporates haikus more consistently, beginning and ending each half-chapter with three lines that follow the correct syllable pattern, though they aren’t specially denoted in any other way. Mark’s haikus are always separated by extra spacing, italicized, and centered on the page. Like the remaining text, Jessie's haikus are left-aligned, use a consistent font, and lead directly into (or follow) the text. The way the haikus frames Jessie’s sections indicates that she has more poetic tendencies than even Mark, and Gemeinhart allows her creativity to become part of expressing her viewpoint.