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 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 5, Chapter 1 Summary
All three of the boys narrate the chapter. As they draw closer to the graveyard, the taxi slows because of the immense crowds. Rat says he believes in ghosts and that on Sampalo, the ghosts of drowned sailors walk out of the ocean and cry on their old doorsteps. They get out and walk slowly with the crowd.
Raphael says he cleaned the blood off his arms—sustained during the jump to the children’s building—and Gardo says they need to make a plan. They wonder if “where we lay” could mean the family grave and decide to look for it.
Rat feels bad because they are now looking for letters, and he can’t read. Around them, parties are starting, and he wonders how they will find a particular grave in such an immense cemetery. There is an office with lists of names. After waiting in line for three hours, Raphael pays a guard to give him the location of the grave of “Mrs. Angelico,” who he claims he is paying his respects to. They walk up a hill, looking for “B24/8,” the location the guard gives them. No one notices them, however: “We were amongst wealthy people in very fancy clothes, and we felt even greyer and dirtier, but there was nothing for it, and still nobody was worrying about us—no one seemed to see us, like we were the ghosts” (197).
Rat says that after it is dark and they are worried that they will never find the grave, “we saw the brightest light”(197).
Part 5, Chapter 2 Summary
The three boys narrate again. They discover that “[t]he brightest light was the poor part of the cemetery, where thousands of candles were coming together as everyone streamed in after work” (199). The boys have been on the wrong side of the wall, on the side of the graveyard reserved for wealthy people.
Gardo works out the system and finds the grave of “Maria Angelico, wife of José Angelico” (201). On the stone, under the name, are the words, The brightest light. Gardo knows they are where they are supposed to be but doesn’t see how the money can be hidden here. There is a stone above Maria’s grave because the poor people’s boxes are stacked on top of one another. The stone above has the fragments of the words, To harvest. My child. It is accomplished. Love and hope.
The name on the stone is Pia Dante. With Pia dead, they know that José truly lost everything. They look around and try to figure out if they are supposed to break into the graves, but none of them believe the money is hidden in them. Then a small voice asks what they are looking for. They look up and see a little girl on a grave above them.
Part 5, Chapter 3 Summary
The girl has black hair and is wearing a school dress. She says she is there to wait for her father, José Angelico. She is Pia Dante, and she has been waiting for him for a week. Raphael wonders if they are talking to a ghost.
Part 5, Chapter 4 Summary
Pia is malnourished and looks tired. They take her away and buy food for her. Pia tells them that she often met with her father at the grave because their family is there. She isn’t tall enough to read her name on the grave.
Gardo pays a boy at the restaurant 50 pesos to let Pia sleep in the back that night. Rat lays her down and covers her with a blanket. Gardo notices that Rat is crying, and it is the first time he has ever seen him in tears. Gardo buys a bottle of brandy and makes each of them have a drink for courage because “nobody goes among the graves on All Souls’ Night after midnight, because that is when the dead are left to themselves again, so the ghosts are getting sad” (210). They split up to hunt for tools that they will use to smash the slabs in the grave later. When they gather again, they break through the walls of the tomb and find the coffin. They ease the box out and lower it to the ground. They open the coffin, and there is $6 million inside. They have a plan for the money: “None of us suddenly thought Let’s keep it all” (214). Raphael says that they never considered changing the last part of their plan.
Part 5, Chapter 5 Summary
Rat narrates, saying that he will be Jun-Jun from now on. The boys want him to tell the last part of the story. But, he says, “[w]ho cares who did what when the whole point was we did it together?” (215).
They tie up the money in a sack and a sheet and carry it over the wall on their backs. They find some trash boys gathering whatever they can use on a cart. They pay them and put the bags on the cart.
They go to the Mission School, and Jun sneaks in through a window. He leaves several handfuls of money and a drawing of flowers on Father Juilliard’s desk. He sees a cupboard full of school uniforms and backpacks that have been donated by a charity. He takes several of them and throws them out the window. The boys fill their backpacks with money. At the dumpsite, they remove the bands that hold the bundles of money together. They climb to the top of belt fourteen and begin throwing handfuls of money into the air, sending it down into the dumpsite.
They also find a letter from José Angelico in the money, and Gardo puts it in his shirt so they can read it later. They climb down, and Gardo tells them that they have a train to catch.
Part 5, Chapter 6 Summary
Chapter 6 is narrated by Raphael, Gardo, Jun, and Pia. They begin by thanking everyone who has helped them tell their story. The train runs all night, and they exit at the ferry port on the way to Sampalo. They spend nine hours on a boat that takes them to a place called Fort Barton. They step out onto a beach and look around. The place is “more beautiful than creation” (221). They say they have bought boats, no longer need to lie, and will live the rest of their lives as happy fishermen.
Part 5 Analysis
Two pivotal discoveries are the anchors of Part 5: the discovery of the money and the discovery that Pia is hiding in the graveyard. As in Part 4, most of the section is devoted to the characters moving from place to place and then navigating the immense graveyard, which is swarmed with crowds of people celebrating the Day of the Dead.
At the graveyard, Raphael is given one final opportunity to notice how invisible the boys are to the affluent people. Even though they are dirty and thin and wear shabby clothes, the people around them will not look in their direction. When Raphael says it is as if they are ghosts, given the setting, it is a reminder that all of them, poor and rich, will one day end up in a graveyard.
Given the peril the boys have gone through to get to this point, there is relatively little danger or anxiety in Part 5 beyond the difficulty of locating the grave and then the logistics of getting the money back to the dumpsite.
Part 5 ends with the boys’ act of incredible generosity. While it is probably impossible for them to take all, or even most, of the money with them, they do not have to give it to the people of Behala. The act is also one of vengeance against Zapanta—something that several characters have expressed a desire for—because the money is returned to the people it was stolen from, to the dumpsite, where it will improve the lives of the people who are seen as trash.
Even given the difficulties of Behala, it has been their home, and Raphael and Gardo have conflicting emotions about what it means to leave their families behind, particularly without saying goodbye. The news of the stolen money will certainly spread, which will result in Zapanta’s humiliation but also in his wish to punish whoever did it. There is no chance for the boys to remain behind. As Rat announces that he will be known as Jun from then on, he is showing another aspect of the metamorphosis that they have each undergone.
When they describe Sampalo as a paradise and state that they are determined to remain happy at all costs, it is clear that they have made peace with their decision. Their decision to remain together also shows that, despite the friction they occasionally feel, Raphael, Gardo, and Jun belong together. And because they bring Pia with them, she will never have to know what it means to be without family.
