47 pages • 1 hour read
Tristan BancksTwo Wolves
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “Culpam Poena Premit Comes”
Ben heads down the slope to a stream to drink water. There, he opens his notebook and calculates how much money his father has hidden in the bag. Thinking over the situation, he realizes that his parents are in trouble. Just as he does so, a voice asks him what he is doing.
Chapter 11 Summary: “My Side of the Creek”
The voice turns out to be Olive, who followed Ben down to the creek. Ben tries to run away from her but eventually decides to spend time with her. The two of them build a raft and discuss the events of the last few days. As they finish, their parents call them back to the cabin to have some lunch.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Knife”
When they arrive at the cabin for lunch, Ben discovers that the bag and the black plastic are no longer in the rafters. Ben’s father gives them presents: Ben receives a Swiss army knife, and Olive gets a skateboard. Ben’s mother receives a diamond ring, and she thanks Ben’s father while commenting that this is the “first real present” he’d gotten her in 15 years (76). Ben and his family spend the evening together, and after all the gifts, Ben wonders whether he is correct to be suspicious.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Detective Ben Silver”
Ben awakens in the middle of the night to find his parents outside the cabin, arguing. Ben stays awake to listen and discovers that his father believes they need to “sit tight” for now. Ben tries to stay awake and listen more, but realizing that he won’t be able to, he sets up his camera to record the cabin overnight and falls asleep.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Evidence”
In the morning, Ben leaves the cabin to go watch the tape. He hears his father say that he “wish[es] we hadn’t done it” and that if they can’t get passports in time, they could flee out into the desert (83). Ben goes to the raft he and Olive built the day before and tries to float on it down the creek. However, the raft falls apart, and Ben is forced to drag the damaged vessel back to shore. Ben spends a few hours repairing it but is interrupted by a loud gunshot.
Chapter 15 Summary: “The Hunt”
Ben hides in the trees and discovers his father walking along the ridge nearby, awkwardly holding a rifle. Ben turns on his camera to record what happens next. His father aims the rifle and fires at some movement in the trees. Ben reveals himself to his father, who explains that he’s hunting for rabbits. Ben wants to ask his father about what he recorded the previous night, but in fear of getting in trouble, he decides instead to be subtle. However, Ben’s father does not reveal much additional information. Ben impulsively asks about their passports, and his father becomes tense.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Notebook”
Ben’s father butchers a rabbit and cooks it for dinner, though the result is unappetizing. Ben draws in his notebook for a while, then writes a note wondering if his parents have kidnapped him. As the family sits down to eat, Ben’s father steals Ben’s notebook, in which he’s been writing about the mysteries he has discovered so far. His father mocks him for what he wrote, and Ben attacks him, knocking him onto the ground. Ben’s father gets the better of him, however, and takes the notebook into the cabin to continue reading it.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Trapped”
Ben dreams of taking the raft and escaping from his father. He’s awakened by Olive, who tells him that their parents have locked them in the cabin and taken off in the car. Ben surmises that his parents didn’t actually sell their company, they’re being pursued by the police, and Ben’s investigations have led to him and his sister being locked in the cabin. Olive tells Ben that she desperately needs to go to the bathroom, and Ben agrees to tell her a story to keep her from smashing the window to escape.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Hole”
By nightfall, their parents still have not returned. Ben, afraid of his father’s anger, is trying to carve a trapdoor into the floor so they can escape without breaking a window. Eventually, he succeeds, and the two children escape underneath the cabin. The two of them head down to see the creek in the dark and hear a sound that causes Ben to run.
Chapter 19 Summary: “The Plan”
Ben and Olive run back to the cabin and crawl through the hole they made so that if their father is returning, they won’t get in trouble. Ben hides the evidence of his escape hatch, and their parents return to the cabin. Their mother and father seem panicked and exhausted, and they tell the two kids to pack their things. Ben yells at his mother out of frustration but is scolded by his father. Ben angrily leaves to go to the car but slams the door with such force that he shatters the window. He sees his father’s new phone and opens it to see what he can find. The phone shows three calls made earlier that day, and Ben jots down the numbers in his notebook. Ben also finds a web search for Ray Silver, his father’s name, and sees pictures and a news article that scare him.
Chapters 10-19 Analysis
In these chapters, the raft that Ben and Olive build functions as a metaphor for their relationship with their father. Ben initially creates the raft once he figures out that his father stole money, leading to their flight; in the moment of greatest distress and confusion, he builds something that literally will allow him to escape. However, Olive interrupts him, and the two of them work on the raft together. This moment foreshadows the later chapters in which Ben and Olive become separated from their parents while fleeing through the woods and must work together in order to survive. In a moment of dramatic irony while constructing the raft, Olive remarks, “Imagine we’re lost […] and we’ve got to survive and we need to finish our raft so we can get food. And if we don’t find food we’ve got to eat each other”—a comment that foreshadows Ben and Olive’s eventual escape down the river and struggle to survive in the unforgiving wilderness. This is also the first instance in the novel of Ben and Olive working together toward a mutual goal, a dynamic that drives the plot of the rest of the story. While Ben struggles to deal with his troubling family dynamic on his own, working with his sister shows that difficult emotions and relationships can be better managed in community with others.
The raft, however, sinks when the kids test it. Just as the construction of the raft embodied Ben’s desire to flee his family, the breaking of the raft symbolizes his inability to move past them at this point in his journey. Despite Ben’s desire, a literal escape proves impossible. Ben’s dream, in which he escapes his father in the form of a wolf using a raft, emphasizes the raft as a literal and metaphorical means of salvation. This is reinforced by the later chapters in this section, which detail Ben and Olive’s attempts to break out of the cabin their parents have locked them in. Both of them have a strong desire to flee—to find food and use the restroom—but when they actually try, their metaphorical raft breaks apart and they become stuck, by both their resources and their mutual fear of their father’s anger. Ben eventually does succeed in cutting a trapdoor in the floorboards of the cabin, but their escape is stymied by their parents’ unexpected return. It’s not until later in the narrative, when Ben uses the trapdoor to help his family escape the police, that his metaphorical raft stays together.
Following the construction of the raft, Ben discovers his father attempting to hunt rabbit in the woods for dinner, the outcome of which is a metaphor for Ray’s character as a whole. Ben’s father is successful in hunting the rabbit, but to unclear ends—as Ben says, “Why are we eating rabbit? We’ve got real food inside ” (96). Ben’s father cares less about the practicalities of eating a rabbit than he does in his own image as a tough outdoorsman, the sort of man who would kill and eat a rabbit just because he could. This serves as a smaller example of the unclear nature of his initial theft. In the same way, his failure to properly cook the rabbit parallels his failure to escape with the money. These symbols and metaphors contribute to Ray Silver’s character, demonstrating, in small ways, the hypocrisy and obliviousness that define his larger, more consequential decisions.
The chapters in this section show turning points for many of the novel’s character arcs. Ben’s father continues down his aggressive and domineering path; Ben’s mother becomes more and more passive and accommodating; and Ben and Olive strengthen their sibling relationship. Just as the first section revealed each character and their various conflicts with the others, this section deepens those conflicts, demonstrating the contours of each and the ways in which those conflicts might evolve. By the end of the chapter, Ben and his father are already at the point of physical blows over Ben’s increasing defiance and his father stealing his notebook. The escalation in conflict increases, in turn, the novel’s tension and helps form the structure that will inform the reader’s understanding of the novel’s second half.
