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.
Journal 2-DigressionChapter Summaries & Analyses
Journal 2 Summary
Crabbe explains that he is having a hard time putting into words why he ran away from home because he has always been somewhat inarticulate, was always told what to think by his family, and no one at school was ever interested in his feelings. He claims running away from home was the one independent act of his life, so he is not sorry he ran away.
He recalls reading “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner,” a short story in which an athletically-talented but poor teenager sentenced to reform school intentionally loses an important race in order to demonstrate his refusal to go along with others’ plans for him. Crabbe says the story proves the point that “[s]ometimes words don’t count” (20). Crabbe says he wanted to do something like the runner to express his thoughts and feelings. What he terms his “escape” is that act.
Journal 3 Summary
Crabbe explains that it’s hard to runaway without being detected, but that in his case, he was able to pick a place his parents would never suspect as a hiding place: a campsite he stayed at with his father years ago. This was part of the only such trip his father ever took with him. Crabbe’s plan is to hide downriver from this campsite.
In spring of his senior year, he begins secretly to gather the camping equipment from their trip, hiding it from the family maid in his room. He gathers clothing by keeping some items he claimed to have donated and is able to steal food despite the sharp eyes of the family cook. He plans to leave the week before his final exams, which he imagines his parents believe will launch him into scholarships at the university, a successful career, or fame. He calls the exams “phony and moronic” and looks forward to being able to “show all of them” (25).
Journal 4 Summary
Crabbe has three conversations that serve as omens of the time to run away from home. Mr. Grant, his PE teacher, catches him skipping PE and accuses him of drinking alcohol after Crabbe falls off a locker room bench. Grant finds alcohol when he goes through Crabbe’s locker. Crabbe suspects most people would label him an alcoholic but denies it. Throughout the school day, he drinks alcohol purchased with a generous, no-questions-asked allowance from his parents, he reveals to the reader.
Grant turns him into the principal, Mr. Frazier, nicknamed The Beet by the students because of his ruddy complexion and bald head. The principal, who is a member of a club attended by Crabbe’s father, lets Crabbe off with no punishment. Crabbe believes this outcome is because “the system protects its own,” especially smart, affluent kids like him (31). He feels contempt for this system but worries the principal will call his parents.
Crabbe figures out Frazier has called his home because of the tense atmosphere at dinner that night with his parents, who sit around a table with a reproduction of an expensive brass candelabra on it. Crabbe’s father is a corporate lawyer who drinks throughout the day and his mother is a stereotypically-thin woman who is addicted to valium.
During the dinner, his father lectures him on the need to meet his potential, which Crabbe believes his father perceives as making lots of money. His mother cries and wonders why, given all the advantages they have given him, he is so ungrateful. Crabbe sees his father’s lecturing him about drinking as hypocritical and laments that he and his parents have never able to escape the dysfunctional ways in which they interact with each other.
His parents leave for a dinner party. Reviewing the three conversations of that day, a slightly-depressed and drunk Crabbe decides he should run away that night.
Digression Summary
In this chapter Crabbe discusses the relationships between teachers and students at his high school. Crabbe believes that teachers are not really interested in what students think and as a result it does not “pay to be honest, to be yourself” (34). He believes teachers are only interested in having students regurgitate what the teachers believe are the right answers.
It has taken Crabbe a long time to learn this. He recounts encounters with several teachers, most of whom serve as inauthentic mentors that lead him down the wrong path. Ms. Wase, a history teacher, once became angry with Crabbe because he spoiled her lesson plan by giving all the answers in response to an initial question she asked. In a French class, the teacher ceased calling on Crabbe to write on the board once he realized his answers contained no errors that he could call out. Crabbe ultimately concludes the purpose of school is not to learn: school is “stupid and ass-backwards anyway” because the teachers know all the information but insist on having students who don't know the information to provide answers” (36).
Once he realizes this, Crabbe does the minimum he needs to get by. The only teacher who challenges him is his 12th grade English teacher, Peters, who threatens to come down on Crabbe if he does not begin to work up to the potential indicated by his very high IQ and essays. Crabbe observes that the other teachers probably hated Peters because of the eccentric way he dresses but also because his passion for his subject and insistence that students think for themselves disrupts the system. More evidence of his subversion is that Crabbe’s father sees Peters as a dangerous man. Crabbe’s relationship with Peters was an important one because it made him begin to think about his future. Because of this thinking, Crabbe began to put together a plan to “cut out of the herd” by running away (39).
Journal 2-Digression Analysis
In this section of the work, Crabbe makes his first effort to explain his motivations for running away, we learn details about his class position, and Crabbe reveals the troubled state of his relations with the important adults in his life. This information contributes to character development and reinforces the young adult themes of the novel.
At this point in the novel, Crabbe still lacks substantial insight into his own behavior but understands the importance of achieving clarity in regard to the reasons for his actions. He says, for example, that running away was “the one intelligent, independent, creative thing I've done in my life, and the one thing I've done for me” (19).He also lacks insight about his use of alcohol. Although he reveals that he drinks throughout the day, even while in school, behavior typically associated with alcoholism, Crabbe claims that he is not an alcoholic. Nevertheless, his craving for independence and for a means of self-expression are what drive most of his actions in the book.
That point is underscored when, in the first of several allusions to other literary works, Crabbe mentions “The Loneliness of the Distance Runner,” another piece of young adult literature, as the best approximation of why he decided to run away. The summary of the work establishes a thematic connection between it and Crabbe’s own growing narrative, especially in terms of the importance of the assertion of autonomy in a world that essentially coerces children and young adults into conforming to adult expectations. Adults also discount the emotions of young adults, an idea Crabbe raises when he notes in the first paragraph of “Journal: 2”:“At school nobody is particularly interested in your feelings and they only pretend to be interested in your ideas” (19).The distinction between words and actions that he makes after the summary indicates that Crabbe already has some notion of what kind of adult he wants to be—specifically, an adult who is not a hypocrite.
Although Crabbe identifies with the long-distance runner, the deep contrast between their socioeconomic statuses and access to support systems gives the reader an inkling that Crabbe lacks awareness about the upsides of his affluence. Crabbe realizes this only later in the novel, however. In “Journal: 3,” we learn that Crabbe’s father has sufficient wealth to purchase camping equipment and use it once. His family has both a maid and a cook. Although he rejects his family’s expectations for his life as an adult—his academic success and a lucrative profession afterwards, in imitation of his father—they are outcomes that are supported by his family’s affluence.
In “Journal: 3,” Bell focuses on the importance of relationships and the problem of adult hypocrisy. The adults in Crabbe’s life are portrayed as clueless and hypocritical. The cruel nicknames with which he labels these adults indicate the deep divide between the lives of young people and adults. The hypocrisy of adults is especially troubling to Crabbe, as shown when he notes the broken capillaries on Coach Grant’s nose (usually caused by long-term abuse of alcohol) while Grant scolds him about drinking, and the nicotine stains on Principal Frazier’s hands during Frazier’s lecture to Crabbe about substance abuse. The dinner scene with Crabbe and his parents reveals their inability to engage authentically with each other and their concern with the trappings of their affluent lifestyle, the emptiness of which is symbolized by the candelabra, a reproduction of the real thing.
The only adult who serves as a positive example of adulthood is Mr. Peters, Crabbe’s English teacher. In the digression, Crabbe says Peters “woke [Crabbe] up” (37). Peters, unlike other adults, emphasizes the importance of thinking and independence, seems genuinely interested in his students as individuals, and is not afraid to express his feelings; he presents himself authentically, and expects the same in his students. Peters’ insistence that Crabbe go against the grain of apathy, and those disappointing conversations with the other adults, serve as “omens” that convince Crabbe to act (33).
