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“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”-“Bellevue, Washington”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter Summary: “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”
On the bus, Brent identifies constellations using a book he bought in San Francisco. By now, he feels familiar with the atmosphere of bus travel. A pair of thieves try to rob him at the bus station in San Diego, and he wards them off by shouting loudly. Feeling rattled, Brent takes a cab to a hostel. The clerk tells him that the hostel only accepts foreigners and encourages Brent to claim that he is Canadian. Brent keeps up the lie throughout his stay, though it makes him uncomfortable and leads him to stay mostly quiet among the other hostel guests.
Going up to his room, Brent hears another guest playing a concertina. He remembers the self-sufficient cyclist from Washington and wishes that he had more skills and interests to keep himself entertained. At breakfast the next morning, Brent meets Emil, a German boy a year older than him. Though the two boys look very similar, Emil speaks three languages and has a wide knowledge of history and natural science. Brent admires Emil and agrees to go sightseeing with him, rather than begin work on his whirligig. They visit the San Diego Zoo and several museums. Brent is amazed that someone his age goes to museums “voluntarily” (71). Brent stops in at a music store and buys a harmonica and instruction book.
During dinner at the hostel, Brent marvels at the other guests’ cooking abilities and animated conversations, which are full of detailed descriptions and debates about world affairs. Brent practices playing his new harmonica on the back lawn, becomes discouraged after the first few exercises, and looks at the stars. The next morning Brent wakes up to find that Emil has left him a copy of Two Years Before the Mast.
He starts building his whirligig, choosing a more complicated design, this one in the shape of a spouting whale. The book’s previous owner has left notes on the design, the sight of which cheer Brent. The whirligig takes three days. The work is challenging and absorbing. He takes breaks to play his harmonica, adding “drop by drop to his store of perseverance, which supplied both tasks” (76). Brent mounts the whirligig on the front porch of the hostel.
Chapter Summary: “Bellevue, Washington”
It is the first day of fifth grade for a boy named Anthony. He has hidden a radio in his sleeve to listen to the Mariners play the Yankees. The students are asked to write about their summer vacations. As Anthony writes a simple essay about his vacation, he recounts his summer in more detail in an imaginary dialogue with a baseball announcer.
His birthday was in June, he says, though the actual date of his birth is unknown because he was adopted from Korea as a baby. For his birthday, he asked for a baseball mitt but received “two shirts, a microscope, a new music stand” and a CD by Sarah Chang, a Korean violin virtuoso (77). Anthony’s mother pushes him to excel, believing he has great potential because he is Korean. Over the summer, she forces him to practice the violin and attend science camp. Anthony resents the pressure. He believes he is not an exceptional violin player and wants to quit.
Anthony also recounts a camping trip with his family. At the campsite, he came across Brent’s harp-player whirligig. His mother pointed to the whirligig and said, “Look how she practices all the time” (80). Anthony threw a rock at the whirligig, breaking the “pledge,” as he puts it, for people of Asian background to stay “quiet, hardworking, and polite” (81). His mother blows up a photo of the whirligig and puts it on Anthony’s wall, as a reminder of the value of constant practice.
Anthony had a big recital at the end of the summer. His mother started working part-time, however, and he was able merely to pretend to practice. At the recital, Anthony plays terribly, forgetting sections, and stops early. His music teacher tells his mother that Anthony needs to rest, drawing on the example of the whirligig: “If it turned all the time without stopping, it would break” (84). After this, Anthony’s mother lets him quit violin and promises to put less pressure on him to excel academically.
Anthony finishes his essay about his summer with an intentional misspelling, reveling in the freedom to make mistakes, and starts listening to the baseball game on his secret radio.
“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”-“Bellevue, Washington” Analysis
Brent’s admiration of Emil shows a departure from his ideal conception of himself in the first chapter, when he fantasized about driving a Jaguar while wearing a Calvin Klein t-shirt. Emil—like the cyclist, the concertina player, and the other guests at the hostel—presents Brent with an example of an independent individual with a rich inner life. Emil and Brent’s physical similarity emphasizes their differences. Emil speaks three languages, reads novels, and is actively interested in history and science. As Brent thinks enviously with regard to the concertina player, Emil has the power to “entertain himself and others” (68). “Fantasizing he was beholding his own double,” Brent sees Emil as an example of who he can become (70).
In “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” Brent makes further progress in his efforts at self-improvement. He begins learning the names of stars and teaching himself to play the harmonica. As with building the whirligigs, he must overcome the initial frustration inherent in learning a new skill, thereby building up “drop by drop[…] his story of perseverance” (74).
Juxtaposed with the Bishops’ family dinner in the first chapter, the dinner at the hostel is a much more joyful, stimulating, and communal event. After his life at home, Brent is amazed to hear the other guests describing sights they have seen in detail and debating politics. By confronting him with the limitations of his life before the car crash, Brent’s experience at the hostel forms an important step in his personal transformation. Brent’s discomfort at the hostel is due not only to his inexperience and ignorance relative to the other guests but also to his sense of guilt, which is worsened by his having to lie about being Canadian. At this point in the journey, he is still not quite ready to fully rejoin society.
While Brett looks to acquire new knowledge and musical skill, Anthony wishes for a reprieve from being forced to do so by his mother, who racially stereotypes him. By the end of his narrative, the whirligig becomes a symbol of rest and freedom, transforming from his mother’s conception of it as an emblem of work.
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