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“The Afterlife”-“Miami, Florida”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter Summary: “The Afterlife”
Brent causes a car crash after the party. While he is unscathed save for a mild concussion, he kills another driver, a high school senior named Lea Zamora. Lea was a star student and active participant in her community. Brent is wracked with guilt and stops going to school. He does not tell anyone that he tried to kill himself. He sends an apology letter to Lea’s father, who sends the letter back to him “mutilated” (37).
Brent’s parents hire a lawyer and psychologist to argue against a prison sentence for him. The judge sentences him to probation and orders him to meet with the Zamoras, if they so desire, to discuss restitution. Although Brent is relieved, he realizes that he wants to be punished. Brent meets with Mrs. Zamora, Lea’s mother. She describes her grief over Lea’s death. Brent’s parents are ready to pay the Zamoras. Mrs. Zamora, however, requests that instead of payment, Brent builds whirligigs with Lea’s likeness, as Lea’s grandfather used to build. Brent is to set them up in Washington, California, Florida, and Maine—the four corners of the United States. Brent’s parents protest but Brent agrees.
Brent reflects on these events as he watches the sunrise from a bus near Seattle. He thinks that he is in his “second life[…] its moment of birth had been the crash” (34). He looks through his whirligig manual, which is full of “tiny, masculine-looking” notes by a previous owner, and studies a photo of Lea (42). Brent hitchhikes to a campground at the base of Mount Vernon. He shares a camp site with a Canadian cyclist who is on a tour of the U.S. Brent and the cyclist play Go. Afterward, Brent watches Fourth of July fireworks with a “distanced perspective,” finding that he newly questions “much that he’d taken for granted before” (49). Going to sleep, Brent wishes he knew the names of constellations, trees, flowers, and birds.
In the morning, Brent starts to build his first whirligig, a harp-playing angel with Lea’s face. He immediately breaks a saw and snaps off one of the angel’s wings. “Frightened by his anger in the face of this setback,” Brent forces himself to study the whirligig manual, deriving comfort from the previous owner’s “patient, precise script” (51). Deciding to turn the angel into a harp player, Brent works on the whirligig for two days, feeling satisfaction from “toiling in atonement,” like Hercules of Greek mythology (52).
Chapter Summary: “Miami, Florida”
This chapter is told from the perspective of a Puerto Rican street sweeper.
The narrator lives in Puerto Rico until his family has to sell its farm to a power company. The family moves to the big city of San Juan, where other children make fun of the narrator. His parents argue with each other while city residents in general argue over politics. One day, he sees a man killed by a bomb.
Soon afterward, the family immigrates to Miami. The narrator does not speak English and struggles in school. At 14, he drops out and becomes a dishwasher. Though he likes the job, he is disturbed by the discord in the kitchen, particularly between the chefs, who argue over which music to play. After four years, he starts a job in a different restaurant where he learns to speak English and meets his wife, Constantia, who is a waitress there.
The narrator and Constantia move in with her mother. He gets a higher-paying job “fixing holes in the street” and they have a baby (58). The child dies as a 1-year-old. A year later, they have another baby, Raul. Constantia is excessively anxious and no longer joyful. Her grandparents come from Puerto Rico to live with the couple. They argue about politics, watch TV loudly, and object to Raul speaking English. The narrator’s unruly young cousin also moves in with them. The narrator loses his job. To make more money, Constantia starts babysitting and the house is soon full of crying babies.
The narrator longs for peace and quiet. Watching TV one night, he sees a shearwater bird flying over the ocean and it strikes him as “very peaceful” (60). He rises early and drives two hours to the Gulf. He has breakfast at a restaurant where he sees a wooden marching band on the wall. Afterward, he gets on a fishing boat to look for shearwater birds. A flock of shearwaters follow the boat, and he is disappointed to see that they are noisy and fight with each other over fish. He realizes that, “people are always in a group. Like that little band. And whenever there’s a group, there’s fighting” (62).
The narrators soon starts working as street sweeper. He finally finds peace during his nighttime shift, before rush hour starts.
“Afterlife”-“Miami, Florida” Analysis
When “Afterlife” opens, Brent is already obviously changed. Less self-absorbed and insecure than he was in the first chapter, he accepts his outsider status instead of studiously adjusting himself to fit in. Struck by gratitude for life, he has a new curiosity about nature. As he camps, he realizes he does not know the names of any of the birds, trees, or stars that surround him. The character of the self-sufficient, worldly cyclist further underscores the limitations of Brent’s current knowledge and experience.
Having begun his journey of repentance, Brent is also less depressed than he was in the immediate aftermath of the crash. His comparison of himself to Hercules, the Greek mythological hero who kills his family in a bout of insanity and must perform labors to atone for his crime, shows that he views his work of building whirligigs as a cleansing act. As he builds his first whirligig in Washington, he must combat his craving for instant gratification and starts to acquire perseverance. The previous owner of the whirligig manual, whose notes exhibit patience, helps Brent in this process and comes to represent another member of Brent’s unknown community, or karass, a concept that is introduced in this chapter. As with the characters in alternating chapters who come across Brent’s whirligigs, the previous owner of the book is unknowingly connected with Brent across time and place.
Brent and the narrator of “Miami, Florida,” are likewise in a karass, yet they are separated not only by time and distance but also by their different socioeconomic backgrounds. The narrator’s story of immigration and financial hardship presents a strong contrast to Brent’s privileged background. Brent’s privilege is especially evident in “Afterlife” as his parents hire a lawyer and psychologist and are ready to give the Zamoras a check as restitution for the death of their daughter.
For the unnamed narrator of “Miami, Florida,” the whirligig of the marching band represents the realization that living in groups as humans do necessarily entails discord as well as cooperation. This epiphany is similar to Brent’s musings on the interconnectedness of people in the last chapter but, as do the other characters who encounter the whirligigs, the narrator extends and applies the whirligig’s symbolism to his own situation.
Later, in the “Apprentices” chapter, it becomes evident that the marching band on the side of the restaurant is the whirligig Brent builds in Florida. Someone must have moved it from its original location on the beach, another example of rippling consequences.
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