50 pages • 1 hour read
Marion Dane BauerOn My Honor
Fiction | Novella | Middle Grade | 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.
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BetaChapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
The boys begin to race. While Joel is keeping track of the sandbar and learning how to navigate the river’s current, he notices Tony struggling behind him. He stops and tells Tony he’ll “never make the swim team next year” if he doesn’t improve (26). He suggests practicing at the local pool, but Tony is adamant that he doesn’t want to because he doesn’t want others to see them practicing. Joel thinks that Tony is embarrassed, although Tony doesn’t admit it. Joel asks Tony if he is okay to swim, and they continue the race. Joel hears Tony “blowing and puffing like a whale” behind him so he thinks he’s okay (27). He begins to think that maybe they can practice in the river for the swim team and considers the apology he will give Tony after the race. When Joel reaches the end and calls back for Tony, he realizes that he doesn’t see Tony thrashing behind him anymore. He scans the bank for his friend. He thinks Tony is playing a prank, but he finds Tony’s clothing exactly where he laid it earlier. As he walks through the river, he realizes that Tony must have been pulled under.
Chapter 5 Summary
Joel continues looking for Tony in the water, diving several times into the Vermillion’s turbid waters. The fourth time he dives he ventures further from the shore and is caught in a sucking force within the water. Joel’s near drowning gives him a clue that “Tony was dead…dead!” (33). He struggles to reach the surface and grasps at a floating solid, dark object above his head that he thinks is Tony’s body but sees is a log. Exhausted, he gets out of the river to look up at an “inverted china bowl” sky (33), and hearing “a single bird” singing, he becomes aware that no one is nearby. He thinks of how he will pummel Tony if he is hiding nearby, then considers that this must be “a terrible dream” (35). A car quickly passes by in the distance crossing the bridge but doesn’t stop. He runs up to the bridge to flag down a passing vehicle.
Chapter 6 Summary
Spotting another car coming in his direction, Joel stands in the center of the highway’s lanes. The driver is an older teenage boy with a blonde teenage girl seated right beside him. Joel barely manages to convey what is happening, and once he understands, the boy dives into the river. Joel considers getting into the river again, but he recalls the memory of being dragged by the current, and his “knees buckle.” The girl is fearful and concerned for her friend’s safety. Joel tries to persuade him to look more, but the boy informs Joel that it’s nearly impossible to find something in a river like this one. The older boy tells Joel he is sorry. He says that they need to go to the police to report the drowning, and Joel remembers the words his father told him earlier that day: “You’re on your honor, Joel” (44). Joel isn’t ready to face what has happened and fears being punished for his disobedience, so he tells the teenagers that he will go himself and they shouldn’t get involved. The girl agrees because she skipped work that day and doesn’t want to get caught. The boy continues to insist but relents, and they leave Joel by himself.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Joel’s shock and horror are the central focus in the minutes after Tony has drowned. He is wrestling with the stages of grief as he slowly comprehends the loss of his best friend in these harrowing chapters. Time moves very slowly and then very quickly following Joel’s realization that Tony is gone: “Questions came at Joel in a barrage, leaving no space for answers” while he is thinking quickly but acting slowly (31), paralyzed by uncertainty. The author conveys just how unprepared Joel was for this tragic day by exploring his experience in-depth.
Joel notices as he swims that the current is tricky. When Tony is thrashing about, Joel can’t “figure out why he had never noticed what a poor swimmer Tony was before now” (25). There is animosity between the boys over their argument, and the conflict between them about what they wanted to do that day is clarified: Joel realizes that Tony is not comfortable admitting when he doesn’t know something. Tony’s courageous, confident exterior is a façade: He was terrified of the water, but for a mixture of reasons—pride, recklessness, a desire to prove himself—he makes the fatal choice to enter the Vermillion.
Joel is overwhelmed with questions as he looks for Tony, and his fear, panic, and shock are contrasted with the smooth river surface and the still, peaceful atmosphere. The author’s natural descriptions lend a feeling of complete isolation, highlighting Joel’s despair and uncertainty as he has no idea how to save his friend or if he can still save him. Joel nearly drowns, “swirling, spinning, being pulled toward the bottom” as he searches for Tony (32). When he realizes the shape he thought was Tony’s body is a log, he lunges onto the log above the surface in gratitude for his own life yet also in defeat, unable to save Tony.
Joel continues to move through the stages of grief as he flags down help. The older boy he meets searches for Tony but quickly realizes that it is a hopeless situation. Joel, in a desperate state of denial, enjoins him to search more. Joel is traumatized by what happened earlier and cannot even step near the river, describing it as “a presence, a lurking monster waiting to pounce. A monster that swallowed boys” (36). The teenage boy tells Joel that Tony’s body likely won’t turn up for weeks or possibly months, but Joel can’t accept the boy referring to Tony as a body rather than by his name—he hasn’t given up on the idea of Tony miraculously being alive. When the teenage girl touches Tony’s blue shirt, Joel resists “an impulse to tell her to keep her hands off Tony’s things” (40).
The accumulation of lies and deception begins at the end of these chapters. When the teenage girl tells her boyfriend that she doesn’t want to go to the police, her deception adds to the stack of lies that contribute to Joel’s guilt. The author demonstrates how lies build upon each other in a rapid fashion, and when the teenagers leave, Joel is left alone with a situation he is not equipped for. When Joel says, “I’ll go to the police” (45), he makes another promise that he doesn’t intend to keep. The author emphasizes that Joel is making another dishonorable choice that aggravates his guilt.
