Run

This section of the novel enriches both Tip and Kenya’s characters and introduces the story’s falling action. Patchett also explores the significance of family bonds in this section, highlighting one of the novel’s themes, Awareness of Privilege. Her development of Tip’s characterization at this late stage in the novel closes the story with emphasis on Kenya and Tennessee’s positive effects on the Doyles. Patchett expresses this through a blending of the novel’s themes: Advantage becomes equity, definitions of “loved ones” are expanded, and readers are left with the idea that a family’s enduring love and support comes from the legacies it leaves its children more than its stories about itself.

The bonding exchanges between Tip and Kenya highlight the theme of Awareness of Privilege, much like Kenya’s scenes with Doyle in earlier sections. For example, Tip teaches Kenya about the gentrification of Dartmouth Street in Boston: “The rich people came in and pushed the poor people out and fixed it all up so that every house looks the same” (217). He adds, “they get rid of poor people too. I mean, the black people, the brown people” (217). The central result of this, according to Tip, is that it removed anything “interesting” from the area (216). When Kenya innocently retorts that Tip “still live[s] here,” the conversation abruptly ends when Tip responds that “[y]ou have to be poor and black” to get pushed out by gentrification, and “I was only black” (218). This exchange highlights Tip’s obliviousness to the insensitivity of his explanations. Unlike Tip, Kenya is one of the area’s poor Black people, and she has lived in both Roxbury and Cathedral—where he claims that gentrification has displaced the poor people of Dartmouth Street. Tip explains the term in his customarily academic, detached way, and he does not fully connect Kenya and Tennessee’s life to the explanation that he offers. This exchange highlights his lack of Awareness of Privilege using the novel’s motif, “I Did Not See…,” yet Patchett leaves readers to assess Tip’s character in this scene for themselves.

As for Kenya’s character, subsequent scenes with Tip show her to be an inquisitive, intelligent, and driven elementary school track star. Moreover, the mutual benefits of their relationship become clearer, as Tip uncharacteristically shows her warmth and generosity. For example, at Tip’s lab, he ignites Kenya’s imagination. Kenya had mistakenly thought that the creation of new knowledge was no longer possible, the narrator hints, because at her public school she is accustomed to seeing older maps, textbooks, and other teaching resources. Furthermore, their trip to Walden Pond will not only give Kenya access to this local historical site, but it will create an opportunity for their further bonding. At Walden Pond, Tip can show her biological fieldwork, in which she shows interest: “Thoreau studied fish there?” (234). This sequence not only shows Tip’s ability for growth and patience, it also suggests his growing care for Kenya. These scenes enrich both characters and allow the reader to glimpse new avenues that each will open to the other.

Kenya’s character has a markedly positive impact on Tip in this section. This reflects Sullivan’s exuberant attitude following his visit with Tennessee in Chapter 6. In Kenya’s character, Patchett depicts a valuable family legacy passed from Tennessee to her young daughter: care for others. This highlights the theme of Differences Between Family Legacies and Family Stories. Like Tennessee’s time with Sullivan, Kenya’s time with Tip shows that there is something about this young girl that can enliven the most aloof heart. Patchett’s narrator reveals that she and Tennessee inspire Tip to pursue medicine to better understand Tennessee’s death. Yet, when Kenya senses Tip’s unhappiness, she encourages him back toward ichthyology: “You are insane! she emailed him day after day. I am going to the Amazon without you” (288). This informal tone signals to the reader the growth of their relationship; the implied familiarity fills in for the temporal jump of four and a half years. At the end of the novel, Kenya shows love for Tip, which she defines as his letting go of guilt and suffering to pursue work he loves, much like Tennessee Alice Moser recommended to Tennessee in Chapter 8.

The closing scenes of the novel, however, throw a slight shade over Kenya and Tip’s relationship, subtly threatening a possible future rivalry between them. Kenya receives Bernadette’s Virgin Mary statue from Doyle, as he now has a daughter to whom he can pass it. As she is the family’s only daughter, she receives the statue without inciting beauty-related rivalry among sisters; however, jealousy among the siblings still concerns Bernard. He stored the Virgin Mary in Tip and Teddy’s old bedroom for years until meeting Kenya, planning to pass it to them. The narrator hints at this following Tip’s graduation from medical school: “[N]ow that they had moved away, all three of the brothers longed to have it with them” (291). Tip bluntly asking for the statue for his graduation from medical school further suggests potential jealousy. For Tip, the statue is the only thing precious enough to palliate his “penance,” or unhappy new career choice: “Give him that statue and he’d go ahead with the plan, he would take that residence at Vanderbilt that he was already declining in his mind” (291). Doyle assumes his sons will not be happy about Kenya receiving the Virgin Mary, but tries to stave off jealousy among his children by not telling his sons about his change of plans for passing it down: He encourages Kenya to “put off telling her brothers” for as long as she is able (295). Kenya hence begins and ends the novel by being asked to keep a secret by an adoptive parent. Thus, at the novel’s end, Patchett leaves readers to question if the both families’ difficulties with honesty will be passed to Kenya, or if Tennessee’s legacy of compassion will triumph.