59 pages • 1 hour read
C. C. HarringtonWildoak
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2022A 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 34-42Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 34 Summary
After Maggie leaves him, Rumpus plays for a while and then settles down in the branches of the old oak. When it begins to storm, he seeks shelter inside the tree’s hollow; he has never experienced thunder before and finds it terrifying. The next morning, he explores a bit and goes to a stream to drink. Intrigued by a fish, he bats at it and is surprised when he actually catches his first prey. Before he can figure out how to eat it, he is distracted by the appearance of a fox. On his way back to the old oak, he sees a field of sheep. He instinctively wants to chase them, but then he smells blood and the scent of the fox, again, and he decides that he wants nothing to do with a place where something has been recently killed. He heads back to the ancient oak, hoping that Maggie might have returned with meatballs.
Chapter 35 Summary
The narrative flashes back a few hours, to when Maggie wakes after a night filled with frightening dreams about Granville. She rereads the letter she has received from her mother, in which Evelyn assures Maggie that her animals are receiving good care and that Evelyn misses Maggie. She says that she and Maggie’s father will come for a visit early in the next week because Vince wants to see for himself that Maggie is making progress. In a postscript, she mentions that the photo of Maggie and her parents that Maggie found in her luggage was taken by the Helford River; she says it is one of her favorite places in the world. Evelyn suggests that Maggie ask Fred to take her there. Soon after, Fred calls to Maggie to get moving because the two of them are about to make this proposed visit to the Helford River.
When they arrive at the river, Maggie asks Fred about the disagreement between him and her father. He explains that, after his own service in World War I, he became a conscientious objector. This angered Vince, who thought that Fred should serve in World War II, just as Vince did. Fred hints at the horrors of war and tells Maggie that Vince’s service broke him inside. This brokenness is what causes Vince to be so rigid and controlling. After they spend some time happily searching for shells along the river, Fred takes Maggie to a nearby village pub for lunch. Maggie is dismayed to hear villagers talking about sightings of Rumpus and speculating about what a terrible danger he might be to their animals and children.
Chapter 36 Summary
Rumpus spends the remainder of his day playing and napping. He is beginning to feel more at home in the forest, but as night comes on, he wonders why Maggie has not come.
Chapter 37 Summary
The narrative flashes back briefly, continuing with Maggie’s perspective during the pub lunch. As the villagers discuss calling a meeting about Rumpus, Maggie leans farther back in her chair, trying to overhear. The chair tips too far back and crashes . People rush over to help Maggie get up, and they think that her stutter is the result of a head injury. Fred steps in and explains, and he then tries to comfort Maggie, but Maggie is not embarrassed about the staring and whispering—she is upset about the idea that the villagers might harm Rumpus. As soon as she and Fred return to the cottage, Maggie grabs the only food she thinks will not be missed—a can of spaghetti and meatballs—and heads for the clearing.
Chapter 38 Summary
Rumpus is excited to see Maggie and greets her enthusiastically, but he can tell that she is upset about something. He refuses the canned food, and Maggie finally realizes that he does not want cooked meat. Since Maggie does not seem to want to play, Rumpus watches her for a while, “and they [are] quiet, saying lots of things without saying anything at all” (233).
Chapter 39 Summary
When Maggie finally arrives home, Fred presents her with a box filled with the shells she collected at the river. Impulsively, she hugs him and thanks him for the lovely day. They play Scrabble and draughts, and Maggie tries to forget about the problem of Rumpus and the villagers for a while. The next morning, however, Fred receives a call about the village meeting. Maggie goes with him to the crowded meeting hall, where various villagers testify about their encounters with the “monster” cat and advocate that Rumpus be captured or killed. Fred tries to reason with them, saying that the cat is surely just a large farm cat, but Lord Foy interrupts. Lord Foy manipulates the villagers, casting aspersions on Fred’s character and insinuating that he is losing his mental faculties. He portrays the forest as a dangerous place and himself as a hero for cutting it down. He suggests that they set a trap for the big cat and send out a hunting party. Maggie suddenly feels that she can no longer be silent.
Chapter 40 Summary
At the moment that the village hall erupts into applause at Lord Foy’s suggestion, Rumpus is fully alert, stalking a small black beetle along a branch in the ancient oak.
Chapter 41 Summary
Terrified, Maggie moves to the front of the hall and prepares to speak to the assembled villagers. When she is asked to give her name, she begins to stutter and cannot get beyond the initial “M” sound. Although she keeps trying, desperately urging herself to speak—if not for herself, then at least for Rumpus—Maggie cannot make it happen, and the crowd begins to laugh. Fred is immediately at Maggie’s side, and he gently takes her outside and gets her into their vehicle. Maggie is crying at the thought that she has failed Rumpus, and Fred tells her that they are headed home because he sees now that she has something to tell him, and this time he needs to listen. Once they are back at the cottage, Fred listens patiently while Maggie tells him the whole story. When Maggie finishes, Fred apologizes to her for not believing her earlier and asks her to take him to Rumpus while there is still time.
Chapter 42 Summary
Rumpus hears the voices of people in the forest, but when he peeks out of his den in the ancient oak, he sees that Maggie is not among them. He sleeps for a while in the hollow of the tree, hearing the people coming and going; eventually, he wakes enough to realize that the other forest creatures are agitated and that something is amiss. He creeps quietly through the brush, hearing the hunters talking about the certainty of catching him, and he then returns to the tree. After dark, the hunters make banging noises, shout, and whistle to flush him out; panicked by the unfamiliar noises and the presence of so many people with torches, Rumpus runs. The hunters spot him and chase him, shooting their guns. Rumpus takes the only path that seems dark and safe, but this is exactly where the hunters have dug a trap for him. He falls into a hole and is ensnared by a net. The hunters put him in a crate in the back of a truck. He hears Maggie shouting his name in despair as she sees that he has been taken.
Chapters 34-42 Analysis
In this section of the novel, the tension that has been building over Rumpus’s safety comes to a head. Despite the growth that Maggie has already shown, it might not be enough to save Rumpus—or herself. The novel portrays both Maggie and Rumpus as innocents endangered by larger forces, though it also hints that they are both more capable than they believe.
At the beginning of this section, Maggie’s nightmares about Granville are juxtaposed with her rereading the letter from her mother. This links Maggie’s fears about Granville with her father’s upcoming visit to Cornwall. Although the loss of Wildoak and the protection of Rumpus are uppermost in Maggie’s mind, she herself is in danger, too, because of her father’s plans for her. This passage immediately follows Chapter 34, in which Rumpus is characterized as innocently unaware of his own power in the encounters with the fox and the fish, suggesting that Maggie, like Rumpus, may have as-yet-unrecognized strengths that she can use in the upcoming encounter with her father.
It is clear that Maggie is making real progress on the project of Growing into Self-Acceptance. When Maggie first arrived in Cornwall, she was afraid to ask her grandfather about the rift between him and her father. Now, on the trip to the river, Maggie speaks up and asks what happened between them. She learns that her father, too, is suffering. A moment like this—when a young protagonist becomes aware of parents or other authority figures struggling with human weaknesses and fears—is a typical feature of the coming-of-age story, and Maggie comes away from this conversation with a more nuanced and adult understanding of her father. However, this scene is juxtaposed against the scene of her falling over in her chair and getting flustered in the pub, showing that Maggie still has challenges to face and overcome, although she has already made great strides. Significantly, though, when Fred tries to comfort Maggie, believing that she is embarrassed about the villagers’ reactions to her stutter, Maggie’s thoughts clarify that her concern is not for herself at all. Instead, she is angry at the thought of them trying to harm Rumpus. At the beginning of the novel, Maggie was crushed when people laughed at her stutter; however, now, Rumpus’s wellbeing is her primary concern.
Two more markers of Maggie’s progress occur later in this section. At the town meeting, Lord Foy appears and directly confronts Fred, and he succeeds in swaying the villagers against Rumpus. Maggie tries to speak up for Rumpus in these circumstances, which takes tremendous courage and conviction. She is ultimately unsuccessful in her attempts to communicate with the villagers, but it is not for want of trying. Immediately afterward, instead of giving up, she finally tells her grandfather everything that has been happening, despite the repeated skepticism he has expressed throughout the novel about Maggie’s claims that Rumpus is a snow leopard.
Rumpus’s dire situation stresses The Importance of Environmental Conservation. In the chapters from Rumpus’s perspective that are interspersed between the high-stakes chapters featuring Maggie’s failed attempts to advocate for him, Rumpus continues to innocently play and explore the forest, unaware of the looming danger. Maggie is evidently right to be concerned about Rumpus’s safety since he is still unaware of how to use his power to protect himself. Since human beings have stolen him away from his natural habitat and his mother, Rumpus knows nothing about hunting and caring for himself.
