73 pages • 2 hours read
Andy MulliganTrash
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2010A 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 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary
A 63-year-old man named Father Juilliard says that he is the one compiling the various accounts of the story. He has been running the Pascal Aguila Mission School at the Behala dumpsite for seven years. His class sizes are dwindling, even though he tries to bribe the children with food. He meets Raphael, Gardo, and Rat in his classes, but they mostly stop coming after age 10. He thinks of the rules of the school and laughs to himself: “Rules are what we live by even though we all know they’re sometimes foolish” (53). One rule he likes is that no one can speak when they are on the chapel steps because the chapel is dedicated to Pascal Aguila, “one of the country’s lesser-known freedom fighters” (53). His picture hangs over the altar. Pascal was shot to death on his way to a trial in which he was going to be a witness against three senators who were stealing public tax funds.
The three boys come to visit him on a Thursday. Father Juilliard describes Gardo as the leader. Rat says they are there to use the computer for a quiz for school. He watches Raphael open a search engine. Father Juilliard makes sandwiches for them. He can tell they are working on something serious, but they deflect his questions and won’t give him details. The boys leave, and he never sees them again, but he says that three weeks later he learns that they lied about the quiz. They were researching Gabriel Olondriz, who is in his twenty-third year of a prison sentence. He also says Rat was working on something, but does not say what.
Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary
Raphael is arrested that night when the police come to search his house. He says that what he must write about is “very difficult,” but “it’s only me that can” (60). Two policemen grab his arms, and Gardo and his aunt scream for them not to take him. He is thrown into a car, and they drive him away. He asks the men where they are going, but they do not answer. He is taken to a building and walked down a hallway that has numbered cells on both sides. He is put in a cell, and a policeman comes inside with him. Raphael vomits and starts crying. Soon, a man in a gray suit enters and asks Raphael his name. When Raphael does not answer, the man says, “‘We’ll use six’” (64). Two cops take him out, up some stairs, and into a room with a six on the door.
The man in the suit and the boxer cop with the smashed nose are waiting. They tell Raphael he has to return the bag, but he says he found only money by trash belt four. When he tells them he was alone, the cop knocks him over and twists his wrist. Raphael admits he was with Gardo but Gardo didn’t see anything. When he says that the money is wrapped in an electric bill, they realize he can read, and they both lift him. The cop slaps him as the man in the suit chokes him. Raphael defecates in his pants. They open a window and hold him out of it, upside down. He doesn’t admit that he found a bag, and they pull him back in. They make him say that he is garbage and continue to threaten him.
Finally they let him go. On the street, he finds that “[m]y legs got stronger. I knew then that I could run forever” (73). He believes he is filled with the strength of José Angelico.
Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary
Raphael runs through the streets until he is exhausted. Again he ponders how important the items from the bag must be. He nearly died protecting them. He sees a statue of a soldier brandishing a sword and knows he is in the business district. He walks up to the statue and says, “‘They let me go. I did not give up’” (74). He thinks that even if he is garbage, he was still clever enough to get away from those men without telling them the truth.
Raphael reveals that when the boys were on the computer, they learned that José Angelico had been killed in the police station while being interrogated. He had been arrested for allegedly stealing $6 million from the vice-president. That is why he stuck to his lie in the police station, because he wants to honor José Angelico and his little girl. “I also think José was with me,” he believes, “because I know the dead come back” (77). From newspapers, they learned that Angelico had been adopted by Dante Jerome Olondriz, the son of Gabriel Olondriz, the man in Colva Prison. José worked as a houseboy for the vice-president for eight years. José had an 8-year-old daughter and no other family. Raphael decides he has to go to the prison and deliver the letter.
Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary
A woman named Grace narrates Chapter 4. She is the maid of Senator Zapanta: the vice-president who was robbed. She knows José, the senior houseboy, as trustworthy and quiet. His wife died, and his daughter’s name is Pia Dante. Pia boards with a family near her school. Grace is upset when she hears of the robbery allegations and of José’s death. She looks for Pia Dante at the house where she has been staying, but she is gone.
Part 2 Analysis
The chapters in Part 2 are even briefer than those in Part 1 and move quickly to put the characters in their places for the rising action to come in Part 3.
The introduction of Father Juilliard disrupts the expectation that only the boys will narrate, but it makes sense that an adult would see the importance of compiling the accounts, particularly when the boys’ focus is simply on surviving. He and Grace also provide an adult perspective on the political situation in Behala and give a more nuanced understanding of the issues than a child is able to.
The central piece of Part 2 is Raphael’s arrest and torture by the police. They are shockingly ruthless and cruel, especially given that they are dealing with a child. Raphael is helpless in their hands, and his plight is that of every person in Behala who can fall under police suspicion or who may run afoul of an influential, unscrupulous man like Zapanta. When the police can operate with no fear of consequences, there is little that anyone can do to defy them. But Raphael manages to, despite Gardo’s view that he is weak and childish. At first, not even Raphael seems to understand where his courage and obstinance come from. His insistence that José Angelico helps him endure shows that Raphael has depths to his thinking that go beyond his daily existence. As Part 2 ends, he is braver than when it began, and this will serve him well in Part 3.
