41 pages • 1 hour read
Elisa CarboneBlood on the River
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The chapter begins with a prophecy delivered to Chief Powhatan “sometime before the Christian year 1607” (1); it foretells three battles between the Powhatan tribe and a tribe that travels from the Chesapeake Bay. At the end of the third battle, “the Powhatan kingdom will be no more” (1). After the prophecy, the chapter goes on to introduce Samuel as he robs his mother’s locket from a pawn shop in London in October 1606. Samuel’s mother died recently, and his father had “drunk himself to death” (4) years ago, so Samuel is now alone. After he steals the locket and puts it on, he sleeps under “the severed head of a traitor” (4) that is positioned on top of London Bridge on a pole. The pawn shopkeeper and his son find Samuel, and he wakes up to a kick in the ribs; when the two men discuss Samuel’s fate, they attempt to tie his arms with rope. Samuel fights the men when he hears that he might be punished by hanging, but he loses consciousness when the shopkeeper’s son hits him on the head, “just like my father used to” (5).
Chapter 2 Summary
Samuel escapes punishment thanks to a sympathetic magistrate who decides Samuel should be placed in an orphanage. Samuel meets Reverend Hunt for the first time, who tells him that he has “a lot to learn about right and wrong” (7) and teaches Samuel to make decisions based on love. Reverend Hunt helps Samuel face the truth about his decision to steal the locket from the pawn shop, which was based on anger, but Samuel doesn’t understand how he can “make decisions based on love when there is no one left to love” (7). At the orphanage, Samuel fights other boys, including a boy named Richard; soon, Samuel learns that he is to travel to Virginia, in the New World, with the reverend as a servant to Captain Smith with the orphan named Richard, who is to serve Reverend Hunt. The boys at the orphanage are fearful about the New World, but Samuel wants to “go for the gold” (8), unlike Reverend Hunt who hopes to bring Christianity to the natives of Virginia.
Finally, one December morning, Samuel, Richard, and the reverend go to the harbor and see the three ships that will be making the passage to Virginia. Samuel looks for his master, Captain Smith, and secretly doubts his ability to fulfill his expected role as a page, or “an apprentice to an officer” (9). Samuel meets Captain Smith after the captain approaches the reverend complaining about the excessive number of gentlemen going on the voyage in search of fortune. After Captain Smith moves on to locate Captain Newport, “the leader of the whole expedition” (12), Reverend Hunt points out several of the gentlemen to Samuel and Richard: Sir Edward Maria Wingfield, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, Captain John Ratcliffe, and Captain Christopher Newport, who is missing an arm. As the boys prepare to board the ship called the Susan Constant, they don’t talk with each other, and their silence doesn’t bother Sam; after all, he “ha[sn’t] needed anyone since my mum died” (13).
Chapter 3 Summary
Samuel describes the conditions on the ship as well as the long room “running almost the length of the ship” (14) where he and the other passengers spend their days and nights. He envies the freedom of the animals traveling on the ship, as they can access the fresh air up on deck, where he is prohibited to go unless he is emptying “slop buckets or get[ting] the stew pots for our meals” (15). The gentlemen complain all the time of the seasickness, the smell, and the difficult conditions, suggesting that the ship turn around and go back to England; Captain Smith is unsympathetic, reminding the gentlemen that they are not allowed to quit having signed contracts that commit them to the expedition for seven years. Samuel, Richard, and a 9-year-old boy named James share a bed, and Richard and James have become friends even though “James is a gentleman’s son and Richard is a commoner” (16-17). Samuel chooses to keep his distance from the boys and to “[t]rust no one” (17), a motto for life that he feels has served him well. One day, Master Wingfield’s impatience “boils over” (17) and he announces that he believes the ship should turn back; in response to this announcement, Captain Smith shames him and the other gentlemen who voice their agreement, calling them cowards and liars. Captain Smith’s words anger Master Wingfield, and a fight seems inevitable until Reverend Hunt steps in and “makes a fragile peace” (18).
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
These early chapters of the novel introduce the protagonist, a young Londoner named Samuel. He is poor and orphaned, but streetwise and tough, and his difficult upbringing has encouraged him to believe that he has only himself on whom he can rely. Samuel enjoyed a loving relationship with his mother, who recently died, but suffered abuse at the hands of his father, which explains why Samuel is suspicious of men and prepared for bad treatment at every interaction. The first three chapters also establish the novel’s setting; the reader meets Samuel in the fall of 1606, mere months before the first ships set sail for the New World from England, marking the start of the Age of Exploration for the English. The Spanish have already traveled to the New World, and the men of England’s Virginia Company are eager to follow suit, to find gold, and to locate a passageway to the Orient, where treasures await.
Challenging power dynamics and class issues are also presented in these early chapters, establishing these ideas as important themes of the novel and foreshadowing conflict amongst the men who oversee the expedition to the New World. Captain Smith, for whom Samuel works as a servant, is a commoner, and he holds just as many prejudices about the gentlemen as they hold about him and the other common men; problematically, many of the assumptions Captain Smith makes about the gentlemen come true, and conflicts result. Samuel’s own conflicts with others make for an interesting parallel to the conflicts between the groups of men competing for leadership; he also holds close beliefs that may be true about himself and others, and as the events of the plot unfold, Samuel grows up and learns more about the perspectives of the people and the world around him. This growing appreciation of different perspectives is another important theme of the novel.
