Walk Two Moons

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1994

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-20

Chapters 21-25

Chapters 26-30

Chapters 31-35

Chapters 36-40

Chapters 41-44

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 36-40Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 36 Summary: “The Visit”

Phoebe and Sal take a bus to Chanting Falls the next day. Ben is also on the bus, though he’s visiting the hospital rather than the university. When the bus arrives, Phoebe and Sal find Mike’s dormitory. Phoebe, however, is too frightened to go to his room: “What if we knocked on his door and he opened it and pulled us inside and slit our throats?” (229). Instead, the girls go out onto the quad, where they see Mrs. Winterbottom and Mike sitting together on a bench. As they watch, Mrs. Winterbottom kisses Mike on the cheek.

Chapter 37 Summary: “A Kiss”

Upset, Sal runs back toward the bus stop. However, in her confusion she overshoots and ends up at the hospital, at which point she realizes Phoebe hasn’t followed her. Acting on “a hunch” (230), Sal asks the hospital receptionist to see Mrs. Finney. The receptionist says only family can visit patients in the psychiatric ward, but tells her Mrs. Finney and her son might be outside on the hospital lawn. Here, Sal finds Ben with a woman in a bathrobe: “‘This is my mother,’ he said. I said hello, but she didn’t look at me. Instead, she stood and drifted off across the lawn as if we were not there. Ben and I followed” (231). Mrs. Finney’s behavior reminds Sal of her own mother’s distraction and depression after her hysterectomy. As Sal prepares to leave, she and Ben finally kiss, and Ben asks if it tasted like blackberries to her as well.

Chapter 38 Summary: “Spit”

Gram is pleased to hear Sal and Ben kissed, but concerned about Mrs. Winterbottom kissing Mike. Sal continues her story. Back at the bus stop, Phoebe explains what she saw after Sal left: “They sat there on the bench having a gay old time. […] Did you notice her hair? She’s cut it. It’s short. And do you know what else she did? In the middle of talking, she leaned over and spit on the grass. Spit! It was disgusting” (234). The girls return to Phoebe’s house, where Prudence excitedly tells them Mrs. Winterbottom called, and is returning the next day. She notes, however, that her mother “sounded nervous” and asked Mr. Winterbottom “not to make any prejudgments” (235); she also said she would be bringing a guest. Phoebe storms off without explaining what she saw in Chanting Falls. When Sal returns home, Mrs. Cadaver is there. She tries to strike up a conversation about Mr. Birkway, but Sal ignores her.

Chapter 39 Summary: “Homecoming”

Sal goes to Phoebe’s house the next morning to provide moral support. When Mrs. Winterbottom arrives with a man (Mike Bickle), Mr. Winterbottom angrily tries to send Sal and Phoebe away. They insist on remaining, although Phoebe is shocked by her mother’s changed appearance: “She was wearing lipstick, mascara, and a little blush on her cheeks, and her clothes were altogether unlike anything I had ever seen her in: a white T-shirt, blue jeans, and flat back shoes. Dangling from her ears were thin silver hoop earrings” (239-40).

Mrs. Winterbottom tries to hug her husband and Phoebe, but Mr. Winterbottom demands that she explain herself. At that point, she begins crying, explaining that she has never been able to live up to her husband’s standards of respectability, and that she’s afraid he’ll never forgive her for what she’s about to say: Before marrying, she had a child—Mike—whom she gave up for adoption. She explains that when Mike sought her out, she felt the need to process her feelings away from her husband and daughters.

Mr. Winterbottom says he doesn’t care about respectability, but he’s hurt that his wife didn’t share this part of her life with him. Mike offers to leave, but Mr. Winterbottom stops him: “I think we all need to sit down and talk. Maybe we can sort something out. […] I did always think a son would be a nice addition to this family” (243). Sal excuses herself, and Phoebe—who’s still angry—steps outside with her. On the porch, they find Mrs. Partridge leaving a message.

Chapter 40 Summary: “The Gifts”

Gramps announces that they’ve arrived in Idaho, and suggests spending the night in Coeur d’Alene. Gram initially doesn’t respond, and Gramps grows worried. She insists she’s fine, though, so Sal continues her story. Phoebe takes the message from Mrs. Partridge: It’s the saying about moccasins again. Before Mrs. Partridge can return to her house, Sal and Phoebe confront her, and she admits that she’s been leaving the messages: “I thought they would be grandiful surprises—like fortune cookies, only I didn’t have any cookies to put them in” (247).

Phoebe walks out into the yard and spits. On Phoebe’s encouragement, Sal also tries it: “It might sound disgusting, but to tell the truth, we got a great deal of pleasure from those spits. I doubt if I ever could explain why that was, but for some reason it seemed the perfect thing to do” (248). Afterwards, Sal goes next door and finally allows Mrs. Cadaver to explain how she and Sal’s father met. When Sal returns to her own house, she finds Ben waiting for her. He shows her a pet chicken he got for her, which he named Blackberry. Gram asks whether the story is over, and Sal say that it is, because explaining how Phoebe and her family adjusted to Mike’s presence would mean beginning a new story. Gram falls asleep, still breathing unevenly.

Chapters 36-40 Analysis

Given that Phoebe’s story serves in part as a way for Sal to reflect on her own experiences, it’s appropriate that she concludes it just before reaching the endpoint of her own journey: the site of the bus crash and the cemetery where her mother is buried. Mrs. Winterbottom’s experiences also continue to echo those of Sugar Hiddle in important ways, even as she returns and Sal’s mother does not. One apparently minor parallel—the fact that both women cut their hair short before or during their absence—has symbolic significance. Because contemporary Western society tends to associate long hair with femininity, the decision both women make to cut their hair implies a rejection of female gender norms (or, at least, some aspects of those norms). In Sugar’s case, the choice seems bound up in both her feelings of inadequacy as a wife and in her need to assert her own identity as distinct from her family; she remarks that she “knew [her husband] wouldn’t like it,” perhaps implying that she chose the style to assert her independence, or even in an attempt to goad her husband into an argument (90). Mrs. Winterbottom, meanwhile, adopts a shorter haircut as part of a new and more self-consciously attractive style. Coupled with the revelation that she had a child out of wedlock, the change is a visible reminder of her sexual agency, which she fears has no place in the Winterbottoms’ “respectable” family life.

However, in yet another example of characters failing to “walk in one another’s moccasins,” it turns out that Mrs. Winterbottom’s view of her husband was incomplete. Mr. Winterbottom doesn’t care that his wife had a child before marriage, except in the sense that her secrecy on the subject implies a lack of trust. With that said, he admits that he no longer feels he knows his wife, and Phoebe seems to feel something similar; Sal describes her as having to grow accustomed to her “‘new’ mother” (249), as though her “old” mother had died. In a figurative sense, Phoebe therefore experiences a loss similar to the one Sal undergoes, as she’s forced to come to terms with the knowledge that her mother was never really the woman she thought she was.

Sal’s visit to the hospital provides yet another variation on this theme of parental loss. Creech doesn’t specify what exactly is wrong with Mrs. Finney, but her behavior makes it clear that she’s too enmeshed in her own internal world to serve as a mother to her son; in fact, she doesn’t even seem aware Ben is with her. However, the fact that her absence from her son’s life is clearly not an act of intentional neglect furnishes Sal with a new lens through which to view her own mother’s actions; her actions after the stillbirth weren’t a rejection of Sal, however much it might have felt like it.

Of course, the shared experience of “losing” a mother is likely also a factor in Ben and Sal’s mutual attraction, which comes to a head in these chapter. The fact that Ben picks up on blackberries’ significance to Sal is especially noteworthy, both because it suggests that he’s a sensitive and perceptive person, and because it further develops the symbolism surrounding the fruit. Up until Sal and Ben kiss, Sal has associated blackberries primarily with her mother. The fact that they now take on a romantic meaning doesn’t override their earlier significance, but it does suggest that Sal is learning to move beyond her mother’s death and find joy in new experiences and people.