87 pages • 2 hours read
David ArnoldMosquitoland
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2015A 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.
Part 6
Chapter 33 Summary: “Peach Gummies”
Mim writes to Isabel to talk about the Claire situation and how “the older I get, the more I value bad examples over good ones” (264). Mim goes inside the gas station to get snacks and sees her picture next to a missing person report in the paper. Mim gets in the truck and eats a pack of gummies without talking. Finally, after Beck keeps asking her what’s wrong, she says that they need to make another unexpected stop.
Chapter 34 Summary: “Ashland Inn”
They all get a hotel for the night. Mim takes a shower, and when she gets out, Walt and Beck are gone. She panics, thinking they’ve abandoned her, but soon they walk through the door with snacks. Walt soon falls asleep, and Mim and Beck stay up late talking on the couch. Beck thinks back to when he punched Poncho Man in the diner after he molested that young girl in the bathroom; he says the young girl reminded him of Claire because of the look being so “fucking pained, you know? Crushed. By the world” (276).
As Beck is talking, Mim falls onto the floor in a trance-like state, remembering the moment between her and Poncho Man in the bathroom. When she becomes conscious, her head is on Beck’s lap. He realizes what happened between Poncho Man and Mim, and he tells her that it’s not her fault. Eventually, he carries her to bed and lies down beside her. They cuddle, although it’s not at all a sexual act. She says, “I’m Madagascar. And you’re Africa” (277), implying that they fit together perfectly.
She wakes Beck to tell him that she was afraid he had left her earlier. He says he would never leave her that way. She says that what she feels for him isn’t just a crush, and he says he knows. She knows she feels real love for him, but she doesn’t say it. He kisses her forehead and says that he’s too old for her, at least for now.
Chapter 35 Summary: “Olfactory Lane”
Mim writes to Isabel to clarify some things that she’s said before. Namely, she believes that you should never be someone you’re not, she loves her imagination, good people do exist, and friends are invaluable.
Chapter 36 Summary: “Breaking News”
Mim thinks about when her dad and Kathy first told her that Kathy was pregnant. The first thing she realized was that her dad had cheated on her mom with Kathy. Her dad and Kathy said they were going to name the baby Isabel after her dad’s late sister. They gave Mim a journal and encouraged her to write to baby Isabel as a way to work through her feelings.
Part 6 Analysis
Mim has been running away from her dad and Kathy as much as she’s been running towards her mom in Cleveland. However, in these chapters, she’s forced to confront and deal with her past. When she sees her picture in the missing person report in Chapter 33, she recalls the moment the photo was taken. It was picture day at school, and her dad fought with her over what to wear and how to do her hair. She hoped her mom would intervene, but instead she seemed subdued. By that point, Mim’s parents’ marriage had already begun to deteriorate.
Mim’s journey to visit her mom is also her way of running from her past. However, when Mim decides to visit her childhood home in Chapter 35, it’s her way of attempting to confront the past. As she walks around each room, she vividly recalls some of her most painful memories, including when her dad and Kathy told her they were pregnant. This act of confronting the past is compounded when Kathy appears; rather than working through things internally, she’s forced to tangibly deal with them by talking to Kathy.
Chapter 34 is the pinnacle of Beck and Mim’s emotional bond. Beck realizes that Mim was sexually assaulted by Poncho Man, and he helps her deal with that trauma and her fear of abandonment. Although the hotel room could have been ripe for a romantic encounter between Beck and Mim, he upholds his brotherly, platonic role. He listens as she opens her heart to him, and they cuddle rather than kissing. This scene solidifies Beck as a good guy; as much as Mim wanted something romantic to happen between them, Beck would have become a morally ambiguous character had he allowed anything sexual to happen.
