44 pages • 1 hour read
T.R. Simon, Victoria BondZora and Me
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | 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.
Chapters 14-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary
Carrie and Zora follow a monarch butterfly to the Blue Sink. There, they meet Mr. Ambrose. Mr. Ambrose is a white man who helped deliver Zora when she was born. The girls sit next to him as he fishes. He asks after Zora’s family and how school is going for both of them. Carrie is not used to talking to white people. Zora tells Mr. Ambrose that they know that a “gator man” killed Ivory and “stole his head” (73). She recounts seeing Sonny wrestle with Ghost, Old Lady Bronson’s fall, and their meeting with Ivory. She also tells him about the book they saw in the bookstore. She wishes they had been able to learn more from it. Zora admits that Mr. Pendir is the suspected gator man.
Mr. Ambrose gives his own theory about Ivory’s death. He thinks that white people in Lake Maitland are nervous at the idea of Black people killing each other. He worries that white people will form lynch mobs and hang Black people if the unrest continues. He also blames turpentine workers, thinking them untrustworthy. While Mr. Ambrose affirms that he does not want to see anyone die, he exclusively uses racial slurs to refer to Black people.
Chapter 15 Summary
Carrie understands that Zora’s story about Mr. Pendir is not a lie, but rather her way of contextualizing things and making sense of what is happening. At recess, girls at school continue to tease Zora for her story and accuse her of lying. Zora is angry at the accusations and gets into a fight with some of the girls. She insists that she does not tell lies, she tells stories.
Carrie walks Zora home. When they get to Zora’s house, there is a package waiting for her from Mr. Ambrose. It is the book about alligators. Mr. Ambrose includes a note, telling her that “knowledge unties knots” (79).
Chapter 16 Summary
Carrie and Zora meet up with Teddy at the Loving Pine. Carrie has a crush on Teddy. Zora tells him about their trip to Lake Maitland and their conversation with Mr. Ambrose. She swears Carrie and Teddy to secrecy and then shows them The Myth and Lore of Gator Country. The book contains a story called “The Envious Gator King,” about a gigantic alligator with white scales named Cane. Zora wonders if Cane could be related to Ghost, though Ghost is not white. Teddy argues that “Color difference don’t mean folks ain’t related” (82). In the story, Cane stood out in the swamp because of his white scales and became envious of the other alligators. He killed other alligators and tried to take their skin. Afraid, the other alligators made Cane their king. Cane became covetous of song and decided that he wanted a human voice so that he could sing. He killed people with beautiful voices, but he still could not sing. Cane’s spirit still possesses other alligators and forces them to continue his “hunt for the perfect human voice” (83).
Zora believes that the gator king’s spirit has come to Eatonville and possessed Mr. Pendir. Though there are flaws in Zora’s reasoning, she remains convinced. The story instructs people looking for the gator king to sing him a lullaby to free the souls of those he has killed. The children plan to sneak out of their houses that night and go to the Blue Sink to try to defeat Mr. Pendir. Since Carrie has the best voice, she will sing the lullaby.
Chapter 17 Summary
Carrie waits until her mother is asleep then sneaks out to meet Zora and Teddy at the Blue Sink. They lie down in the grass. Carrie starts to sing the lullaby her father used to sing to her. As she sings, she imagines him stroking her hair while she sleeps.
The swamp comes alive with sounds. The children hear a soft, eerie voice calling out to them; Carrie thinks that the voice is Ivory’s and starts running. She trips in the dark and falls, badly injuring her shoulder. Zora and Teddy rush to see if Carrie is okay; she sees a tall figure standing behind them.
Chapter 18 Summary
The voice that the children heard was in fact Mr. Pendir’s. Mr. Pendir picks Carrie up and brings her to Zora’s house. Carrie is still addled by her fall and continues singing, hoping to free Ivory’s soul. Mrs. Hurston and Mr. Pendir set Carrie’s broken shoulder, and Mr. Pendir makes her a splint. The children realize that Mr. Pendir is not a monster; he is kind, humble, and fully human.
Chapter 19 Summary
Zora blames herself for Carrie’s injury. Carrie is bed-bound while she recovers, but Zora visits her every day after school. Carrie tries to assure her that what happened was not her fault, but Zora does not believe her.
A week after the accident, Teddy comes to visit Carrie. He brings peanut brittle that his mother made for her and a beautiful turtle shell from his collection. Carrie is touched by the gift, which is one of Teddy’s most prized possessions. Teddy hopes that, even though Mr. Pendir was not the monster they thought he was, their singing still freed Ivory’s soul. They wonder who might have killed Ivory.
Chapters 14-19 Analysis
In this penultimate section of the story, the children all make great strides in The Coming-of-Age Experience. All three of them are scared to go to the Blue Sink and sing to release Ivory’s soul, but they choose to do it anyway. That choice requires real courage, even if there is no real gator king. The moment when Carrie sings the song, all of the children think that they hear and feel something happening around them. This is a climactic moment, both in the story and in their lives. They might not yet fully understand how Ivory died or who Mr. Pendir is, but they have proven that they are willing and able to do difficult things to ensure the safety of their community.
Coming of age also means recognizing that Mr. Pendir is fully human, and that he is not the one who killed Ivory. That recognition forces the children to acknowledge that they were wrong, which requires maturity and growth. Their coming-of-age journey is not yet complete, as they do not have the answers that would help them understand what really happened, but they are learning to view others with more nuance and insight.
Until now, The Power of Storytelling was what kept Carrie and Zora safe from the truth. It helped them feel as though they understood what was happening. Zora clings to the story of the gator king even though there are clear holes in her narrative because having a story is easier than living with uncertainty. Even when Carrie recognizes that Zora’s theory about Mr. Pendir being the gator king cannot be fully true, she is unable to completely dismiss it because she has no answers to replace it with. Even though the children all recognize that there is no gator king and that Mr. Pendir is human, Zora still believes that she saw him with a gator snout. She has always insisted that she tells stories, not lies. She may not have understood what she saw, but she did not completely invent it. Even though the children have to let go of the gator story, they still feel the power of storytelling when they are singing at the Blue Sink. The lullaby that Carrie sings feels cathartic, even if there is no gator king. Stories still have to play themselves out to completion.
The children continue to reckon with The Complications of Race and Belonging, even though they still do not have all of the answers. Zora wonders whether Cane could be related to Ghost even though they are not the same color. Teddy’s response, that color is not necessarily a determinant of family relations, is telling. It foreshadows the truth about Gold: that she is actually Black, even if she looks white. Teddy does not know about Gold; he is simply basing his observation on the people he knows in Eatonville, who of course display a degree of variation in their skin tone and appearance even among families.
The theme of race and belonging is particularly notable with the introduction of Mr. Ambrose, the only significant white character in the story. Mr. Ambrose lives in Lake Maitland, not Eatonville. Zora considers him a friend, and she trusts him because he was there when she was born. She thinks this gives them a special bond. Although Zora likes and trusts Mr. Ambrose, he is very much representative of the racist attitudes common among white people at this time. He is outwardly nice to the girls, but he exclusively refers to Black people with the n-word throughout their conversation. The girls tell him their theory about Ivory’s death, which he must know is not true, as no adult would believe in a human-alligator hybrid. Nevertheless, he feeds into Zora’s beliefs by giving her the book about gator myths.
Mr. Ambrose’s immediate assumption is that a Black person killed Ivory, though he has no evidence for such a belief. In fact, it is strange that he is so confident in his assumption, because he also acknowledges that white people often form lynch mobs and kill Black people. Although Mr. Ambrose is nice on the surface of things, he clearly still believes that Black people are inferior to white people and that Black people are inherently violent. His concern that Black people are killing each other in Eatonville reveals deeper anxieties: If Black people are killing each other, this racist rhetoric implies, they might soon start killing white people.
