40 pages • 1 hour read
Craig ThompsonBlankets
Fiction | Graphic Novel/Book | YA | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
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BetaChapters 3-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “Blank Sheet”
Craig opens the chapter with a metaphor that compares his adolescence to his and his brother’s attempts to balance on top of the thin layer of ice that forms on partially melting snow. He explains that he was “competing with [his] own clumsy humanity that had lost synchronization with the earth” (134). He is also in constant conflict with his faith, and when he suggests during Sunday School that he wants to spend eternity in heaven drawing, because that is what he likes to do, his teacher criticizes him and tells him that drawing is not how people show devotion to God. He wants to draw God’s creation to show his devotion, but his teacher refutes this by telling him that God has “already drawn it for us” (138). He reflects back on this experience at the end of high school, doubting his passion and believing it to be selfish. He wonders if he should join the ministry as his pastor suggested. Craig is desperate to find a way to unite his faith and his passion for drawing.
Raina reignites Craig’s “faith in the notion of making marks on paper” (142) when she sends him a love letter in the mail after camp. He begins drawing again and sending his drawings to her. The two exchanges notes, flowers, and more. Craig sees Raina’s writing as its own form of drawing and draws out the loops of her letters which he connects to his phallus. Craig states that this was the only time he masturbated all senior year because the discipline he developed through his faith prevented it and led him to feel guilty afterward.
Craig gets sick with a terrible lung infection and simultaneously stops hearing from Raina. She calls him two weeks later from a payphone in Wisconsin, stuck in a blizzard. She explains that her parents are divorcing, and stresses are mounting in her life, and that she was on her way to see Craig but got stranded in the storm. Craig is worried for her but thrilled to know that she cares so much about seeing him, and he slowly regains his health.
Craig and Raina arrange for Craig to visit her during winter break, and Craig’s strict parents agree with some conditions. Craig meets their demands and goes to visit Raina, who picks him up halfway between their states with her dad. Her dad is friendly, and the first thing he discusses with Craig is the amount of snow in Wisconsin. Raina’s dad keeps babbling on about various things, and “the only word Raina squeezed in amidst her father’s babble was a simple exclamation: snow” (179).
The three are depicted driving through a sweeping snowstorm. When they arrive, Raina has a surprise for Craig: a beautiful quilt she knit for him with all the patterns that remind her of him. Craig meets Raina’s brother and sister, who both have Down’s syndrome; her sister Laura is overly friendly, and her brother Ben is shy and standoffish towards Craig. Raina’s dad regrettably has to leave and find somewhere else to go, so he asks Raina to tuck Laura in for him and disappears into the snow.
As Raina takes care of Laura, Craig goes and sits down on her bed and begins reading his bible. He has a flashback to a moment as a child when he drew a picture of a naked woman and was deeply shamed by his parents who told him that Jesus was disappointed in him. He gets off her bed, feeling uneasy, and then Raina’s mother comes home. She is even more friendly towards Craig, welcoming him openly. She is also stressed by the divorce and leans on Raina for support. Craig cannot stop feeling like he is being watched and judged by Jesus and his followers, and even though Raina is clearly upset and drained by everything, he cannot bring himself to comfort her. He falls asleep in the guest room with toys and dolls watching him.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Static”
Craig oversleeps and wakes up in a daze the next morning. He finds Raina and Ben in the kitchen. Ben sees Craig and immediately leaves, but Raina makes Craig comfortable by giving him some cereal to eat. Raina’s dad stops in to take Laura to school, and Raina and Craig help get her ready. While Raina brushes Laura’s hair, Craig notices that she looks quite beautiful, noting that “the outward characteristics we use to identify mental disability have less to do with physical features, than with motor coordination” (237).
Craig and Raina decide to spend the afternoon driving up the mountainside together to marvel at the snow and the shadows from the trees; Craig notes their length, and Raina calls them “ambitious” (245). They lie down and make snow angels, watching the shadows change shape. Raina mentions “eskimo kisses” and “butterfly kisses” (252), and the two flirt together before finally kissing. Craig includes many drawings of snow and trees throughout this section, illustrating the natural beauty that he and Raina are swept up in. He ends the chapter with four patterned drawings of the process snow undertakes when it falls as single snowflakes and combines itself into a patterned pile, much like he and Raina are doing together.
Chapter 5 Summary: “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up”
Raina’s older sister shows up at the house with her husband in the hopes of having Raina babysit the baby for her. Raina happily obliges because she deeply cares about her family and introduces the baby to Craig. It is Craig’s first experience holding a baby, and he compares baby Sarah’s deep blue eyes to Raina’s. Raina and Craig talk about Raina’s family, and Raina explains that her older sister is already talking about divorce with her new husband. Raina’s brother and sister were adopted as an “act of gratitude to God for blessing them with a healthy family” (272), but Raina’s parents feel like failures for not allowing them to blossom as much as they could have.
The two get under the quilt Raina made, and Raina shows Craig her family photo album. Craig notices that most of the pictures are of Raina and Ben together. Raina and Ben have a special bond, and Raina feels protective over Ben. They then come across a photo of Raina on her own, and Raina gives it to Craig. Craig imagines the moment in the image, including a drawing of Raina’s father snapping the shot and Raina, as a child, running happily through the snow.
Raina reveals that after high school, she wants to spend her time focusing on caring for baby Sarah and making sure she is happy and healthy. Craig says he does not have any plans for after graduation. Raina’s mom comes home, and a minute later Raina’s dad, Laura, Ben, and Raina’s sister arrive as well. Craig feels overwhelmed by the chaos of it all.
Craig finally realizes why Ben is so cautious of him—Ben is looking out for Raina, as the two have a very protective and close relationship. Craig reflects on the way he neglected protecting his younger brother from the babysitter, and how much the experiences of him and his brother being molested made him despise the idea of growing up, gaining an adult body, and performing the sin of fornication. Raina asks him to sleep in her bed tonight, and he is suddenly plagued in his head by countless bible verses warning against the sins of the flesh. Raina comes back in from changing, and she appears to him as an angel, instantly removing his anxieties once more.
They set the alarm for two hours before Raina’s mom wakes up, and Craig returns to the guest room at 6am and recites a psalm: “Thank you, God, for your perfection creation, with skin as soft and pale as moonlight…” (309). He wonders for a moment if he should feel guilty, then realizes he feels “as clean and pure as the snow” (313) and his guilt subsides. The childish side of Raina and Craig comes out to play the next morning, and the two rush off into the snow.
Chapters 3-5 Analysis
Craig experiences his first real identity crisis when he convinces himself that drawing is selfish and that he has “wasted [his] God-given time on escapism” (58). Craig believes that he is not only neglecting to serve God fully, but he is making God unhappy because of the inappropriate nature of some of his drawings. He becomes so upset that he burns everything in a type of religious ceremony. Demons are shown flowing out of his body, and he becomes lost afterward, unable to figure out where to turn.
As a child, Craig’s Sunday School teacher tells him that drawing is pointless because everything beautiful is already around us, and it seems as though Craig will never stop being discouraged. Although his parents do encourage his talent, they tell him to use it for the good of God rather than his own pleasure: “God gave you a talent and we don’t want you to use it for the Devil” (207). It is not until Craig starts exchanging love letters and drawings with Raina that he begins drawing again. However, the guilt is still deeply rooted in him and when he goes to stay with Raina, he is extremely reserved at first.
Craig grows in many ways when he goes to see Raina for two weeks. She has two older siblings with intellectual disabilities, her parents are divorcing, and she lives in a larger city. All of these experiences are completely new to Craig, and at the same time, he is experiencing love and physical affection with Raina for the first time. During these two weeks, Craig goes from being a shy, guilt-ridden boy to a confident man. Raina’s character is fully revealed when Craig goes to visit, and she is shown to be a caring, responsible, and intelligent person. Craig is constantly impressed by her insights, what she knows, and the amount of responsibility she willingly takes on with her siblings, baby niece, and parents. Craig is still naïve, though, and does not make the connection that Raina’s obligations are already too high to sustain a real relationship with him. He finds this out later upon returning home.
As Craig has these new experiences with Raina, his memories regularly shift back to his childhood. These shifts provide stark contrasts and similarities between the experiences he had as a young boy and the experiences he has with Raina. The moments he shares from his childhood also provide context and background information for why Craig is so reserved and scared to fully connect with Raina. His experiences in a strict religious household, hearing about Hell in Sunday School, and being molested by his babysitter, all held him back from being affectionate or experiencing any type of sexual awakening. There is something enticing about Raina that breaks Craig out of his shell and allows him to finally experience life and pleasure without feeling guilty. Their affection is fairly innocent at first, as they sleep next to each other, cuddle together, and kiss when they have a moment of privacy.
That Craig leaves these moments feeling pure as snow speaks to his development as a character as well as the important motif of snow. Despite his prior belief that sexuality is “dirty,” he comes away from his experiences with Raina feeling clean and childlike, as evidenced both by the way he thanks God for the experience and the way he and Raina play in the snow the next morning. Craig’s understanding of God is already beginning to change, and this foreshadows his ultimate dismissal of organized religion near the end of the novel.
