67 pages • 2 hours read
Kate DiCamilloThe Tiger Rising
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2001A 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 16-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
Sistine returns from her call and wonders why Rob and his father don’t have a phone. Rob explains that they’ve got nobody to talk to. Sistine looks up at the stars and shares that her parents met when they walked into each other while they were both looking up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Sistine was lucky enough to travel with them last year “when they were still in love” and see the Chapel herself (58). She offers to go to Italy with Rob sometime and show him. Sistine notes that the tiger can’t see the stars from its cage and repeats that they need to free it. Sistine asks how Rob’s mother died. Rob replies that she died from cancer, but that his father told him not to talk about her. Sistine pressures Rob to quickly say his mother’s name. He quietly says “Caroline” (60). Sistine promises to return so they can plan how to free the tiger. Sistine’s mother arrives. She has her daughter’s angular profile, but slightly lighter-colored hair and a “tighter” mouth (60). She impatiently tells Sistine that she looks like a “hobo” (60), and to get in the car. Sistine’s mother tells Rob that Sistine only listens to her father, whom she calls a liar. This angers Sistine. She calls her mother a liar and storms into the car. When they are gone, Rob quietly repeats his mother’s name.
Chapter 17 Summary
While they are folding sheets together in the laundry room, Rob asks Willie May whether she thinks it is wrong to keep animals in cages. Willie May tells Rob about the time her daddy gave her a little green parakeet in a cage. She named him Cricket because he sang to her all the time. Willie May hated to see him caged and set him free. She never saw Cricket again, but sometimes she dreams about him. Willie May’s daddy beat her when he found out what she had done, and he told her that the bird didn’t have much chance at a good life and probably ended up being food for a snake. Rob experiences a sudden memory of his father shooting a little bird out of the sky just to prove he could. The bird died, saddening Rob’s mother and Rob. Rob’s father told him not to cry “It’s just a bird” (66). Rob tells Willie May that he knows “something that’s in a cage” (66) and Willie May responds that everybody knows something caged.
Chapter 18 Summary
Beauchamp, the owner of the Kentucky Star shows up at the motel. He is a big man with “orange hair and an orange beard” (67). He jokes with Rob, saying he’s glad Rob is working for free around the place, and how Rob’s lucky he can do what he wants because he doesn’t have a mother telling him what to do. Beauchamp’s own mother, Ida Belle, works in the motel. Beauchamp offers Rob a job taking care of a “wild animal” (68) the likes of which Rob’s never seen. Beauchamp tells Rob to get in his red jeep and he’ll show Rob the animal. Rob demurs, but Beauchamp asserts that he’s the boss and Rob needs to do what he says. Rob climbs into the jeep, moving aside a grocery bag full of meat. Beauchamp drives recklessly through the woods, excited to surprise Rob. Rob knows they are going to see the tiger.
Chapter 19 Summary
Rob pretends to be surprised and impressed when Beauchamp pulls up to the tiger’s cage. Beauchamp tells Rob that he got the tiger as payment for a debt. Beauchamp admits he isn’t sure what he is going to do with the tiger: possibly put him in front of the motel to drum up business, or maybe kill him and make a coat out of him. Beauchamp says the tiger needs meat twice a day and he offers to pay Rob to feed him. Rob agrees, and Beauchamp gives him a set of keys. Beauchamp explains that Rob will not use the big keys that open the padlocks. A smaller key opens a little food door in the cage. Beauchamp demonstrates how to feed the tiger by tossing some meat through the door. Beauchamp steps back quickly when the tiger jumps on the meat. Beauchamp is sweaty and his hands are shaking. Rob asks the tiger’s name, but Beauchamp replies that it has no name. Beauchamp angrily rattles the cage to introduce Rob to the tiger. As they drive back to the motel, Rob knows that when Sistine finds out he has the keys, she will demand they free the tiger.
Chapter 20 Summary
Beauchamp tells Rob not to mention his new job to anybody. When Sistine arrives after school, she is excited to see the tiger. She did some research about tigers at school, and she believes they can safely release the tiger and it will go and live in the woods with native panthers. Rob notices that Sistine is still wearing the clothes she borrowed from him the day before. They run to see the tiger. Rob confesses that he now has the keys to the cage. Sistine is thrilled, but Rob refuses to let the tiger go. Rob tells Sistine about Willie May’s bird, and explains it isn’t safe for the tiger to be free. Sistine rages. She shakes the tiger’s cage and swears she will release the tiger herself, or her father will help her when he comes. To Rob’s shock, Sistine begins to cry. Rob remembers how his mother used to comfort him and he offers Sistine the same comfort. Rob puts his hand on the back of Sistine’s neck and whispers “I got you...I got good hold of you” (80).
Chapters 16-20 Analysis
In these chapters, we learn more about the complicated family dynamics between Rob and his father, and Sistine and her mother. Rob’s father is a “not-talker” like Rob. Rather than address and acknowledge his feelings of loss, Rob’s father attempts to bury memories of Caroline by not speaking about her and telling Rob not to talk about her (59). Rob’s father believes talking about his wife is pointless because it won’t bring her back, and it keeps them from moving on. The reason they leave Jacksonville is “[b]ecause everybody always wanted to talk about her” (59). Father and son run away from their memories.
We infer that Rob is closer to his mother than his father in temperament. Rob, like Caroline, is distressed when his father thoughtlessly kills the bird. Rob cries over the death, despite his father telling him not to, and reveals his empathy and sensitivity. When Sistine begins to cry, Rob understands her feelings. His mother, unlike his father, would allow Rob to cry, and comfort him with her presence. Because Rob learned this compassionate lesson, he can comfort Sistine.
Sistine indicates that she also has trouble relating to her parents. She takes her father’s side in the divorce, as indicated by her refusal to listen to her mother’s direction and her angry accusation that her mother is the real liar. Sistine’s mother calls her by a diminutive version of her name, “Sissy” (60), which is not how Sistine thinks of herself, or how she introduces herself to others, suggesting Sistine’s distance from her mother. Sistine does not want to believe her mother or hear criticism of her father. When Rob refuses to open the tiger’s cage, Sistine shakes the cage “as if she were the one who was locked up” (79). Sistine is trapped: She had no choice but to move to Lister with her mother and would rather be with her father. She feels angry and helpless. Willie May suggests that there are different kinds of cages when she comments that “everyone knows something in a cage” (66). The tiger’s cage will continue to be an important symbol of captivity—including captive emotions.
Rob’s suitcase is a cage for his emotions and memories, but it is beginning to open, thanks to Sistine. Rob still works to keep it closed (59), but despite himself—and unlike his father—Rob wants it to open. When he tells Sistine his mother’s name, he later savors the word out loud, “as sweet as forbidden candy on his tongue” (62). He is glad he lets this word “slip out” (60).
Beauchamp makes his first appearance in the novel and joins the ranks of irresponsible or unhelpful adults in Rob’s life, like Mr. Nelson and Mr. Phelmer. Although wealthy enough to own the Kentucky Star, the tiger, a jeep, and a gold chain, Beauchamp suggests that he is limited by his mother’s rules. He is immature: He drives his jeep too fast and plays chicken with trees in the woods, “whooping and hollering” (70). He irresponsibly lets young Rob do a job he himself is afraid of: feeding the tiger. Beauchamp’s manliness is connected to his possessions and his “deals” (76). He is proud to own the tiger, although he mistakenly calls it the “King of the jungle” (71), which usually refers to a lion. He tells Rob that getting a tiger as payment for a debt is “the way real men do business” (72). To Beauchamp, the tiger is a trophy, a mark of his wealth and success, which is why he does not name it; the tiger is an object. Rob’s father viewed the bird he shot in the same way. Rob and Sistine hold more empathetic views toward animals as creatures worthy of care and emotion.
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By Kate DiCamillo
