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64 pages 2 hours read

Jonathan Auxier

The Night Gardener

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2014

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Part 3, Chapters 40-47Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3: “Departures”

Part 3, Chapter 40 Summary: “The Last Story”

Hester is coughing blood, and Kip pulls over. Molly blames herself for Hester’s injuries, but Hester says that curiosity caused them. She knew the house was dangerous, but she had to see it for herself. As a storyteller, she hopes for the impossible, and now she can die happy because, as she says, “[F]or one perfect moment, I saw something impossible” (279). Hester means to set out on her own to compose her final story. Before she goes, she gives Molly a package to unwrap later. Then she walks into the woods. Molly and Kip watch her until she is out of sight.

Part 3, Chapter 41 Summary: “Alone in the Dark”

Kip and Molly speculate about the Night Man’s inability to go past a certain point and his pained reaction to the breaking of the tree branch. They decide that he is attached to the tree somehow and that the tree’s gifts are another form of attachment: giving people what they want so they’ll stay but not giving them what they really need. Kip shows Molly the healing balm he got from the tree but never used because he didn’t want to become beholden to it. He also reveals that he knows the truth about their parents’ letters, for the tree offered him the gift of healing balm to heal his leg and allow him to walk normally.

Molly finally tells Kip what happened on the night their parents died. After leaving Ireland, their family was locked in the bottom of a boat with many others seeking to get away. One night, a storm ripped the boat apart, leaving only one lifeboat intact. By the time their parents fought their way to it, there was only room left for two, so they put Molly and Kip aboard before the storm swept them away. Kip wants to be angry that Molly didn’t tell him sooner, but he understands why the letters gave Molly hope. He felt the same hope when he received the healing balm from the tree, and when he asks her what kind of person that makes him, she says, “It makes you a regular person. No more, no less” (290).

Kip throws the healing balm into the fire, and Molly is impressed by his bravery. Kip wishes that his parents could see them. He is sure they would be proud and that they’d say the Windsors need help. Molly cannot argue with Kip’s logic, and although the thought terrifies them both, they resolve to go back to the house and face the Night Man once and for all.

Part 3, Chapter 42 Summary: “Return to the Sourwoods”

Back at the house, Kip examines the bridge that connects the island to the mainland, finding the tree’s roots embedded in its underside almost all the way across. Alistair arrives to reprimand Kip for disappearing and throws Kip’s crutch into the river. Instead of getting angry, Kip tells Alistair that he feels sorry for him because his mother will die thinking her son is a “selfish, mean-headed bully who never did a kind thing for no one...and she’ll be right” (297). Although it is difficult for Kip to walk without the crutch, he walks away, looking back to see Alistair staring at him from the bridge.

Part 3, Chapter 43 Summary: “Body of Evidence”

After collecting the letters from her room, Molly finds Mr. Windsor at his wife’s bedside. Molly warns him about the danger of the tree, but Mr. Windsor refuses to listen, believing that he can fix everything with more money. Molly drags him outside, where Kip has dug up one of the graves to reveal Dr. Crouch’s body surrounded by roots. Mr. Windsor is horrified by the other graves, especially the one for Penny, and he explains that the tree killed his parents years ago. Mr. Windsor fears the tree, but he also fears going out into the world without its help. Molly gives him a choice. Either he can wait at the house for a miracle that isn’t coming “or [he] can come with [Molly and Kip] and live” (304).

Part 3, Chapter 44 Summary: “Flight”

Mr. Windsor chooses to leave the house, and as a result, the day is a flurry of activity and packing. Kip brings oil and chemicals from the kitchen. Once they cross the bridge, he plans to pour “every drop of oil on the beams and light the whole thing up” in hopes that the flames will stop the curse (307). As they’re getting ready to leave, however, Fig and Stubbs arrive.

Part 3, Chapter 45 Summary: “Unwelcome Guests”

After tying the family up, Fig and Stubbs search the house for valuables while Molly and the others worry about the disappearing daylight. Fig and Stubbs decide to search the family’s clothes, starting with Constance. To distract them, Molly pretends that she knows where the Windsors’ money is hidden—in a locked room on the second floor where the men will find “everythin’ you deserve” (315). Fig and Stubbs cut Molly loose and drag her upstairs.

Part 3, Chapter 46 Summary: “Trust”

From downstairs, Kip and the others watch as Molly and the men enter the room and close the door. Moments later, the door flies open, and Fig and Stubbs rush out carrying bundles of promissory notes that they throw at Mr. Windsor. When Penny and Alistair go to examine them, Mr. Windsor tells them to leave the notes alone because “[they’re] done taking things from the tree” (318). The Windsors are worried, but Kip says everything will be all right as long as they trust Molly.

Part 3, Chapter 47 Summary: “Comeuppance”

Upstairs, one of the men decides to cut open the tree to see if there are any more notes. However, on the second swing of the axe, the Night Man appears and grabs the blade, and a cold wind sweeps through the room as he steps from the tree. Molly runs, locking Fig and Stubbs in the room. Downstairs, she frees the rest of the family, who run with her, except for Kip and a determined Alistair, who will slow down the Night Man as long as they can. Alistair breaks a branch off a wall, and he and Kip run into the night, with Kip yelling “Catch as catch can” (325).

Part 3, Chapters 40-47 Analysis

The scene in Chapter 40 marks Hester’s last appearance in the novel, for she is dying from the injuries she sustained at the house. Thus, the final story she sets out to tell is a metaphor for dying alone and on her own terms. Her ability to die happy despite her sudden misfortune profoundly shows how every person’s definition of happiness differs. Although Hester is in pain and finds it difficult to move, she is happy because her knowledge of both the tree and the Night Man is the culmination of a life spent searching for wondrous, magical things. Hester never specified that she was looking only for happy or positive things. She simply wanted to behold something impossible, and the Night Man and the cursed tree fit that definition for her. The scene also recalls Molly’s hope at the beginning of the novel that she would have good stories to give Hester, and the nature of Hester’s end makes it clear that to the old storyteller, the good or evil nature of the stories never mattered; instead, she only wanted to hear tales she hadn’t heard before.

The title of Chapter 41, “Alone in the Dark,” is both accurate and inaccurate. Because Molly and Kip are together, they are by definition not alone. However, in this chapter, each sibling must come to terms with the decisions and actions of the other, and this is an internal task that they must achieve on their own. Thus, both characters are metaphorically alone in this chapter, despite their intentions to be united from this point forth. They are ultimately brought together by Kip’s observation that their parents would want them to help the Windsors. This chapter clears the air between the siblings and resolves their unspoken conflicts with each other. Molly finally tells the truth about their parents, admitting that she lied just as much for her own benefit as for Kip’s. Likewise, Kip’s decision to throw the healing balm into the fire symbolizes his internal strength. He desperately wants his leg to be healed so that he can walk normally as other people do, but he understands that giving up a piece of his soul to be physically whole means that he would lose an essential part of who he is.

Molly’s observation that Kip’s desire to heal his leg makes him a “regular person” with desires like everyone else emphasizes the reality that no matter what their differences, people, by and large, are more alike than they are different. Molly’s statement is a universal truth that people will always desire impossible things, and even if such desires cannot be fulfilled, having those desires is a normal part of the human experience. Related to this, the tree’s gifts represent the difference between wants and needs. Kip doesn’t need the balm—he gets along fine as he is. The same goes for Molly and the Windsors. Each receives something from the tree that they crave, but their lives were proceeding perfectly well before they started receiving those gifts, and their lives would continue even if they never receive such gifts again. Conversely, continuing to receive the gifts literally hampers the natural progression of the recipients’ lives, ruining their health and psychological well-being. Thus, the narrative emphasizes that just as wants are different than needs, some wants are particularly harmful, even poisonous. While wanting things is normal, the trouble comes from putting those wants ahead of everything else, which supports the book’s major theme of The Link Between Desire and Dependency.

The confrontation between Kip and Alistair in Chapter 42 is a turning point for both boys’ character development. Alistair has always gotten pleasure out of picking on people who seemed weaker or unable to defend themselves, and Kip has stood up to him since the beginning. Accordingly, this chapter shows Kip coming into his strength. Even despite his disability, Kip has grown physically strong, but that strength pales in comparison to his strength of character. By contrast, Alistair has become accustomed to getting what he wants, which has made him weak. He believes that throwing Kip’s crutch away will weaken the boy, thus allowing Alistair to feel strong. Instead, throwing the crutch away gives Kip more strength as he stands firmly despite the lack of the crutch, thus forcing Alistair to rethink how he has treated people and how he thinks of himself.

The fear that paralyzes Mr. Windsor in Chapter 43 exemplifies the ways in which fears prevent people from moving forward in life. When a series of bad business decisions made him lose his money, Mr. Windsor gave in to his fears of being unable to provide for his family. Instead of finding an honest way to pay off his debts, his fear led him back to the cursed house and the easy solution that he believed the tree would offer. By returning to a solution that has already been proven to be deadly, Mr. Windsor makes his situation worse and puts his family at risk. Only by destroying the tree and moving forward on his own two feet, as Kip does, can he set things right.

In a culmination of the novel’s many continuing themes, Chapters 45-47 show Molly using her storytelling talents to rescue the Windsors, herself, and Kip from their mutual predicament. Ironically, the group turns to the tree itself as a solution to the threat represented by Fig and Stubbs, using the tree’s gifts to feed the men’s greed and manipulate them into causing the tree harm. This ruse serves to bring the Night Man out of hiding, and his destruction of the men for harming the tree works in Molly’s favor. However, just like the usual “gifts” of the tree, this solution is a double-edged sword, for although the Night Man kills Mr. Windsor’s dangerous creditors, he is also angry enough to harm anyone he sees, not just those who directly caused harm to the tree. Therefore, even in Molly’s cleverness and resistance to the tree, it is made clearer that any action of the tree, while initially seeming beneficial, will only cause harm to those in its reach.

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