44 pages • 1 hour read
Alice HoffmanIncantation
Fiction | Novel | YA | 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.
Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4, Chapter 8 Summary: “Blood”
Andres and Estrella meet every night under the olive tree where the hawk first landed. When Catalina catches them, Andres tries to explain the different love he feels for her. Catalina is furious and rejects him. When confronting Estrella, she wonders what else Estrella has lied about.
Catalina approaches the Inquisition officials and turns in Estrella’s grandfather for witchcraft and “Judaizing.” Though she exaggerates many things, Catalina correctly recalls seeing Estrella’s grandfather place blood on the door frame during Passover. Even though it was only chicken’s blood and not a stolen child (a frequent charge in instances of blood libel), this is dangerous evidence. She also describes how the deMadrigals don’t eat chorizo and how they keep pigs as pets, claiming the pigs sleep in bed with the women. The last piece of evidence she gives is the secret name “Sarah,” which she heard Estrella’s grandfather call her grandmother.
Friar deLeon, who reports all of this to the deMadrigals, urges them to leave after seeing Catalina wearing fine clothes made of silk and satin in court. However, the soldiers come to arrest Estrella’s grandfather too quickly. The soldiers confiscate and destroy many of the family’s possessions. Abra is able to hide her emerald ring in her shoes, but the soldiers place Estrella’s grandfather in irons and take the livestock with them. Again, Friar deLeon urges the family to leave, but they can’t leave Estrella’s grandfather behind.
Estrella disguises herself with a shawl and sneaks into the courthouse. Catalina is there watching the trial, looking proud and wearing Estrella’s pearls. After reading the charges, the judge poses a test, asking Estrella’s grandfather to eat sausage made from Dini’s meat. He refuses, saying he is ill and that the court is unjust and does not serve the truth. The court places a metal mask over his face, breaking his bones so that he cannot move. When it looks like he will comply, they release him from the mask. Instead, he spits the sausage out. The court decides to bring in a rabbi from the juderia. It is the same man whose books were burned at the beginning of the book. He denies all the accusations aimed at Estrella’s grandfather.
To try and force a confession, the court arrests Abra, Catalina’s mother having claimed that Abra laid blue eggs filled with human blood. The soldiers drag Abra away by the hair when she leaves the house to fetch water from the well. The grandmother and Estrella go to watch the trial and witness how Abra falls into the judge’s trap. She agrees to some of the things she is asked about being a healer, but the judge twists her words to mean outlandish things. Andres comes to the courthouse and tries to get Estrella to leave. Estrella’s grandmother is in denial over what is happening, but the three of them flee to the woods. That night while they are sleeping, the authorities stone the grandfather to death. He dies refusing to confess his supposed sins. Estrella sends Andres away to protect him.
The next day Estrella sneaks away to find her imprisoned mother. Outside the Plaza are dozens of people calling out to those in prison. The soldiers build a bonfire in the center with green wood. When Estrella sees her mother, Abra tosses a rotten onion wrapped in wool. An old lady sees it and grabs it first. When she sees nothing of value in the wool, she gives it to Estrella. Inside the onion, Abra hid the emerald ring.
Estrella goes to the Muslim doctor for help. He is wearing the blue coat his wife made him from Abra’s wool. The doctor offers to make a white powder that will kill Abra in a merciful way. When Estrella brings this back to the prison, hidden in a brown onion, she runs into a woman who recognizes her. This woman tells her to run away; the crowd then pushes the two apart.
Back in the woods, Andres is waiting, having ignored Estrella’s pleas to stay away. Estrella asks him to deliver the onion to her mother and send word to her brother to flee to Amsterdam. She trusts him with the emerald ring to pay for their passage.
Part 4, Chapter 9 Summary: “Earth”
Estrella has come to understand that Jewish people are vulnerable to the changing rules of the world. As she waits with her grandmother, the future looks bleak. After four days in which Andres does not return, Estrella’s grandmother says that he took the emerald ring and that Estrella was a fool for trusting him. Her grandmother starts pulling out her hair and saying prayers Estrella hasn’t heard before. In order for them to remember it, they agree to go back home one last time. Estrella does this as a gift to her grandmother, who is now so unlike the intimidating woman Estrella feared.
At dusk they go back to the house, covered in black shawls. Inside, everything is gone—the table, the doors, and the animals. Standing in Catalina’s yard, Estrella throws a stone through the window. Catalina appears and is still angry; she feels betrayed that her cousin has fallen in love with Estrella. Estrella is shocked at her selfishness and tears her own clothes in a sign of Jewish mourning. She utters a curse against Catalina and leaves.
A neighbor warns Estrella that her brother has already been arrested. Estrella rushes her grandmother from the house and takes what food is left there. Her grandmother decides to take Estrella’s grandfather’s notebook with them. Despite the risks, they go to see Luis, who is in the Plaza with the others. Fifty people are already tied up on stakes. Because Luis was studying to be a priest, they have treated him even worse than the others. They have shaved him, stripped him, and beaten him. They broke his bones one at a time. Seeing this, Estrella confronts Friar deLeon about his silence. He insists he needs to live to protect the crypto-Jewish community. However, Estrella argues no one will be left and calls him a coward.
Some in the crowd mock those tied up. They call out to Abra that if she is good at magic, she should transform into a bird or a snake. Estrella is hopeful that Abra got her tablets but then sees that Abra snuck them to Luis. For her beauty, the judge has allowed Abra to be garroted instead of going into the fire alive. When the pyres are set alight, some people run and try to help, but others strike them down. The well water in the Plaza is always black with ashes from this point on.
Part 4, Chapter 10 Summary: “Sky”
Sneaking through the Muslim quarter, Estrella and her grandmother are covered in ashes. Not knowing Arabic, they cannot understand what people are yelling at them. They run to the doctor’s house. Hiding in the stable, Estrella sees that her grandmother is shutting down. In her mind, she buries her mother, brother, and grandfather in a white cloth under an almond tree. It comforts her to imagine them always near the water. Her grandmother refuses to eat, but Estrella has faith in Andres. She knows that forgetting the people they loved would be the real darkness. She coaxes her grandmother to drink some water.
Later, the doctor comes outside to pray near the red flower. He pretends not to see them but says aloud that it is alright for people to sleep in the stables. He urges them to leave by morning so they are not discovered. Estrella realizes that knowledge is the key to the 10 gates that her family taught her about and that she saw in her dreams. The gates are made up of different materials, just as her grandfather had said. The gates corresponded to ashes, bones, grass, heart, stone, love, sorrow, blood, earth, and sky.
When Estrella and her grandmother leave the Muslim quarter and make it back to the hills, Andres is waiting for them. He has secured two mules and passage to Amsterdam. From Amsterdam Estrella and her family will depart to live on the other side of the ocean, in Hispañola. They will continue to light candles and say prayers; even though they will fit into their new life, they will always be different. That night Estrella and her grandmother bathe in the mikvah pool. As they clean the ashes from themselves, Estrella memorizes the stars. She instructs future sons and daughters to listen to her and to remember.
Part 4 Analysis
Building up to the climax, when Estrella confronts Catalina, this section contains all the death and destruction foreshadowed throughout the book. As Estrella stands outside of Catalina’s house, the two are in very different positions than they were at the start. Despite Catalina robbing Estrella of her treasured possessions and bringing her family to ruin, Estrella is able to stand up for herself in a way a less mature version of herself could never do. When she curses Catalina, she does it with knowledge she learned from her grandmother: “May you know another’s suffering, may you know it all the days of your life, now and forever, until you understand what you have done” (66). In this way, Estrella curses her with empathy. She wishes for Catalina to know the consequences of her actions, not to be punished for the sake of punishment. Even in her rage, she cannot do what Catalina did: hurt someone permanently for a wrong she feels.
The testimony that Catalina provides shows how quickly the truth disappears when a person is dehumanized. While some of the events Catalina describes have a basis in fact, others are extreme lies. This shows that Catalina is capable of understanding the events of the deMadrigal household but chooses to say what the Inquisition wants to hear. This has devastating practical consequences, helping to seal the family’s fate. However, it also hurts Estrella more personally, striking at the core of who she is. By twisting the good things about Estrella’s family, Catalina creates a mockery of those memories. When Estrella remembers the chickens and the blue eggs that were turned into evidence against Abra, she wishes a curse upon the person who takes them and vows to never eat eggs again.
Throughout the falling action and resolution, the narration shifts into Estrella’s vantage point from the future. This gestures toward what awaits Estrella, even as the main narrative concludes with the actions of Estrella in the woods with her grandmother and Andres. The latter gives significance to Estrella’s decision to bathe in the mikvah, the water of which is “so clear and so clean, [it is] as though the pool [has] come directly from heaven” (72). This description of heaven-sent water was previously applied to the well at the Plaza, which after the burnings is permanently stained black with ash. Transferring the description to the mikvah shows Estrella’s acceptance of leaving her home. As the narration details what will come of her travels, her decision to continue practicing her faith in secret is embodied by her participation in the mikvah in the present moment, crystallizing the theme of Finding Identity Within Traditions.
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By Alice Hoffman
