63 pages • 2 hours read
Paul FleischmanWhirligig
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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Beta“Everybody, Swing!”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter Summary: “Everybody, Swing!”
Brent takes the bus to Maine, transferring in Port Authority despite his father’s urging to avoid it. He passes through Boston without visiting his relatives. In Maine, he stays in a bed-and-breakfast for the first time and finds it “too similar to a small dinner party with strangers” that forces him to lie about himself and his journey (116). Brent goes farther north, to a campground in Weeksboro. The campground’s owner tells Brent that he built the table on Brent’s camp site by refashioning materials he found at the dump.
At his site, Brent realizes that he does not have the whirligig manual and feels “abandoned” but “in his mind there materialize[s] the notion of a whirligig all his own, its plan found in no book in the world, its ingredients his remaining scraps and whatever he could find, as the campground owner had” (120). Brent goes to the beach to look for wood and meets a woman painting a crab shell. Brent likes the way she speaks to him “as an adult” and they talk for an hour (122).
Brent works on his whirligig for three-and-a-half days, playing his harmonica for breaks and going to the dump for more materials. He consults nature guides at the campground’s office to learn the name of birds and shells he sees. The whirligig is three times the size of the others he has built, and has the most faithful rendition of Lea’s face. He decides to mount it on a cliff behind the painter’s house.
The painter asks Brent about Lea, and he tells her that he accidentally killed her and, for the first time, admits that he was trying to kill himself. The painter tells him, “my sense of you is that you’re a good person, not a bad one”; Brent finds the painter’s forgiveness more meaningful than that of Jesus, who “forgave you no matter what you’d done” (129).
Brent goes into town and, hearing music coming from the Town Hall, walks into a contradance. As he watches the dance, Brent thinks of it as a “human whirligig.” A woman asks him to dance and “to his great amazement,” he agrees (130). Brent is thrilled by the feeling of being “accepted by all” and stays until the end (131).In the morning, Brent finds that while his guilt hasn’t just disappeared, he now feels “buoyant.” He decides to keep traveling for another three weeks and thinks he might build more whirligigs.
“Everybody, Swing!” Analysis
Brent’s completion of his final whirligig, the book’s climax, marks an important milestone in his journey of atonement. Having served his penance by fulfilling Mrs. Zamora’s request to build the four whirligigs, he is somewhat unburdened, though not entirely guilt-free. The completion of his assignment allows Brent to admit to the painter that he not only accidentally killed Lea but was also trying to kill himself, which he has not yet revealed to anyone else. His admission is also prompted by the increased self-respect he has built up on the trip through his labor and acquisition of new knowledge and skills. His attitude in the last chapter shows that he has come to know and accept himself.
By the end of Whirligig, Brent’s values and character have undergone a deep transformation. He is no longer the materialistic, insecure, and short-tempered character of the first chapter. Instead, he values the accumulation of knowledge, has developed perseverance and patience, and seems more comfortable with himself. His last whirligig, in addition to symbolizing the end of his penance, also represents Brent’s new independence. Without having the whirligig manual to rely on, Brent must be creative and self-sufficient like the campground owner, another character who comes to represent these newly admirable qualities for him. Without the notes of the book’s previous owner, Brent must also complete his mission alone, following the classic model of the hero’s journey, in which the hero goes through the final and most critical stage without any help.
At the start of the chapter, Brent is still uncomfortable in a social atmosphere in the bed-and-breakfast. By the end, however, following the end of his mission and the therapeutic conversation with the painter, he is able to be more at ease socially. In the final chapter, he also begins to view his whirligigs as a symbol for society at large. The contradance is a “human whirligig” and “the world itself was a whirligig, its myriad parts invisibly linked” (130, 133).
The painter’s forgiveness allows Brent’s reentry to society, symbolized by the contradance. At the contradance, a dance that that involves a lot of physical contact and cooperation, he feels like “a bee returning to the hive” (131). After longing for acceptance at school and feeling like an outcast on his trip, Brent finally fits in socially and is happy. The crowd, which resembles “a reunion of some sixties commune,” presents a strong contrast to the rich classmates that Brent was previously so desperate to fit in among, showing how much his values have changed over the course of his journey (130).
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