Shades of Gray

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1989

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-10

Chapters 11-14

Chapters 15-17

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 15-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 15 Summary

On a rainy day, Meg and Will play checkers. He plans to ask the doctor to come, but not right until school starts. Will realizes that Meg wants to learn how to read, and he tells her that he will teach her how to.

Chapter 16 Summary

Will and Uncle Jed go to Mr. Riley’s store, and Will is glad that the men do not criticize Uncle Jed for taking in James temporarily. There is a letter for the family from James. Hank taunts Will, and Will trips on his own accord. When Mr. Riley asks Will if Hank pushed him, he does not deny it, which causes Mr. Riley to whip Hank severely. On the way home, Uncle Jed explains to Will that even though he did not overtly lie, he was still dishonest. Will hates the thought of disappointing his uncle.

The family learns that a school will open in the fall. Meg is upset that she will be with much younger kids when school starts because she cannot read, but Will tells her that he will get her up to level by the time school starts. The family reads the letter from James, and he has sent them a lot of money to cover damages the Union inflicted on Virginia. Uncle Jed has to decide whether to keep the money because it was Confederate scouts who took their livestock. He wants to think about his decision because neither keeping the money nor sending it back can be undone, and he wants to do the right thing. He finishes by saying that sometimes people do have second chances to make things right. Will wonders what Meg would think about him if he learned of his dishonesty toward Mr. Riley. During an outburst during dinner, Meg declares that Will is neither nice nor rich, with Jim being both. Later, Will tells Meg that she is right in her estimation of him.

Will realizes that it was his pride that caused Hank to turn on him, and he goes to Mr. Riley and tells the man that he was dishonest and that Hank did not trip him. The boys decide the fair thing is for Mr. Riley to whip Will, but the man refuses, saying that Uncle Jed is the only one who has that right. The boys walk back to Uncle Jed’s house to convince Uncle Jed to give Will a whipping. They talk about how hard it was for Will to dine with the Yankee soldier even though the man was not in the state when Will’s father was killed. They have a rock-throwing contest, which Hank wins, and then Hank also wins a running race. When they get to Uncle Jed’s house, Jed is surprised, but he agrees to the whipping if that is what the boys want. Just as Jed is about to whip Will, Hank stops the man. Will asks Hank to teach him how to throw better, and Hank agrees.

Will now feels more peace about going to live with the doctor because he will not feel like he is running away from Hank. Later, when Will and Meg are talking, he tells Meg that he defended Uncle Jed, saying that he was not a traitor but was just against the war. Will does not know when he realized this. He tells Meg he knows Uncle Jed is not a coward and apologizes for his original opinions about Uncle Jed. Meg and Will both realize how much courage it took Uncle Jed to refuse to fight in the war.

Chapter 17 Summary

Will starts teaching Meg how to read, and she wants to learn first how to spell her name. She promises to work hard. Uncle Jed has decided that the right thing to do is to keep James’s money because they helped him when he needed it, and now he is doing the same. Will tells his uncle that he agrees, and he calls his uncle, Uncle Jed, for the first time. Will apologizes to Uncle Jed for the bad opinions he had about the man.

Will meets his uncle in the barn, and the barn is about ready for livestock they can buy with James’s money. Will mentions that his uncle must have been fairly confident they would have animals again since he went through all that work to rebuild the facilities, and his uncle tells him that things will usually work out and that life is easier when a person believes that. Uncle Jed gives Will the day off of work because it may be the last break Will can take before school starts because they have a lot of work to do.

Will writes Jim a letter thanking him for the book and explaining how he now understands that both the Union and the Confederacy had good men. Meg asks him what the letter from the doctor was about, and he explains that the doctor offered Will a place to live. The family is relieved when they learn that Will is going to stay with them instead of going back with the doctor.

Chapters 15-17 Analysis

While Will previously stayed loyal to his belief in honesty, he breaches that loyalty in Chapter 16 when he implies that Hank was responsible for tripping him when he was not. Will does not rectify this immediately, and he allows the boy to get whipped. Hank has done plenty in the past to Will to warrant the whipping, but he did not trip him. However, Will’s conscience is not what makes him rectify his mistake. The main motivating factor for going back to the store is that he does not want Meg or his uncle to be disappointed in him, which shows how much he has come to respect the family: Their esteem is important to him. It also shows, however, how beholden he still is to the opinions of others since he does not make this choice based on his values but rather on the desire for the esteem of others.

To his credit, after his error is pointed out to him by Uncle Jed, Will later feels remorse and guilt over his actions. He shows integrity when he returns to rectify his mistake. It takes courage to confront Mr. Riley because the man could get angry at him, and it could further inflame Hank’s anger. However, Will does it anyway. When he agrees to a whipping to avenge Hank’s whipping, he also shows his courage. All along, he has expected courage from other people, and in this set of chapters, he demonstrates that he is willing to act courageously himself. This scene also demonstrates he is still more motivated by Hank’s opinions than by his own. He agrees to the whipping until Hank calls it off, at which point Will goes along with him. If Will had been solely motivated by his own sense of justice, he would have continued to insist on the whipping to avenge his lie. Will is learning lessons every day in his life with his relatives, who are teaching him to value Other People’s Perspectives as he grows and matures.

Hank and Will’s journey to Uncle Jed serves as a hero’s journey. A hero’s journey occurs when a character goes on a trip for one purported purpose but ends up learning something in the journey that is completely unexpected. The purported reason for the boys’ journey was so Hank could watch Uncle Jed whip Will in retaliation for the whipping Hank got. On the way, however, they have contests and do not fight with each other. By the time they get to the barn, Hank stops Uncle Jed from whipping Will, and Will asks Hank to teach him how to throw as well as Hank does. These are important points of growth for the boys. Hank demonstrates that he is able to let his anger go, while Will shows he is able to swallow his pride and ask Hank for help. While the boys undertake the journey to avenge a misdeed, they both end up learning life lessons that help them grow as individuals and in their friendship.

Uncle Jed faces an ethical dilemma when he is forced to decide whether or not to keep the money from James. On the one hand, Uncle Jed values honor and honesty. Complete honesty would require him to send the money back, but the danger in this is that he could offend James and hurt him. On the other hand, Uncle Jed values gratitude and friendship, and he believes these values dictate he keep the money. Rather than rushing into a decision, he takes his time to consider the options, just as he did when considering whether to fight in the war. In this case, he decides that keeping the money is the most moral decision to make. It is not a simple decision, however, because of the competing values involved.

By the novel’s end, Will has come to respect his uncle as well as to understand that Uncle Jed was neither a traitor nor a coward, having grasped that there are Different Definitions of Courage. Will has learned to see the shades of gray referred to in the novel’s title. He now recognizes that good people fought on both sides of the war and that some good people did not choose sides at all. No longer is a person’s character defined in Will’s eyes solely by the choices they made in regard to fighting. He has grown enough to understand that people are individuals and that individuals can differ in opinions. While at the novel’s beginning he could only see black and white, he is now mature enough and has experienced enough to be able to see nuance and respect people who are different from him.