93 pages • 3 hours read
William BellCrabbe
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1986A 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.
Crabbe’s Journal: 18-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Journal 18 Summary
Crabbe returns to the campsite that night and is surprised that he does not cry for Mary. He sleeps on and off for two days, after which he decides to finally open the pack that contained the secrets Mary did not want him to know. He cries, finally, recognizing that Mary was the only person he ever loved.
Inside the pack is the secret of Mary’s life before the wilderness. Mary was once a history professor at the University of Toronto and married to a physics professor she deeply loved, based on the love letters in the pack. Both were anti-nuclear activists. During a demonstration, her husband suffered a head and spinal injury that would either prove fatal or leave him with paralysis and severe brain damage.
As he reads the documents, Crabbe recalls several important ideas Mary taught him, including the idea that life is neither fair nor logical, and that maturity can never be achieved until a person stops blaming others. He also recalls how she told him, in response to his complaints about his life in Toronto, how lucky he was to have a family, a home, and enough money to have interesting experiences. She told Crabbe that if he did not like his life, it was no one's responsibility but his own to change it.
The most important thing she told him was that a “life without fairness is always worth living; a life without significance isn't,” and it is up to the individual to figure out what is significant (146). As he considers this conversation, he suddenly realizes that Mary was probably hiding in the wilderness because she ended her husband's life with a mercy killing, an act that allowed them lives in accordance with their values but that was also murder, according to the law at the time. Crabbe admires Mary for her actions, then burns everything in the pack.
Journal 19 Summary
A few days after burning the contents of the pack, Crabbe wakes to four inches of snow on the ground. Because he does not want to be trapped in the wilderness for the winter, he decides to head out, despite the heavy snowfall. Because of the low temperatures and heavy snow, he has a difficult time making his way to the main road. He builds a temporary shelter, where he begins to think about what he will do when he returns to Toronto.
He knows that he wants to live life on his own terms once he returns, and he is ready to take the responsibility for doing that. In fact, he says, “if I can make it out of the storm I can handle the rest of it” (156). He realizes that he is capable of standing on his own two feet. He doesn't need the help of his parents and he doesn't need Mary, a teacher who believed that being a successful teacher involved making yourself obsolete. With the optimistic thought that he is “healthy, strong, reasonably smart, and young” and thus ready to assume control over his life, Crabbe falls asleep (157).
Journal 18-Journal 19 Analysis
These chapters unravel one of the mysteries of the novel—Mary’s identity before the wilderness—and also reveal the adult Crabbe. Mary’s life as a professor, symbolized by the contents of the pack, is at last disclosed as Crabbe goes through the contents of the pack. Crabbe’s reconstruction of her life further humanizes Mary and shows that Crabbe now has greater insight into the interior lives of other people, something he lacked before he ran away. The last chapter in this section also demonstrates that Crabbe’s self-perception has shifted. Having internalized the lessons Mary taught him, and having survived the flight from the camp, Crabbe understands that he is an adult with the autonomy to make his own decisions.
