98 pages • 3 hours read
Margaret Peterson HaddixAmong the Hidden
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1998A 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.
Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Luke watches as the trees in the distance begin to fall. His mother tells him to get inside and hide, so Luke obeys. He always obeys. Luke’s family maintains a farm in the middle of the woods, but now the woods are being leveled to make room for more houses. Before going inside, Luke takes a deep breath of fresh air and worries that it may be the last time he’s ever allowed outside.
At dinner, Luke asks why his parents chose to sell the woods around their home, but his parents clarify that it wasn’t a choice they were given. The government takes what it wants. Luke is 12 years old, but he sometimes imagines the government as a big, scary person who tells everyone else what to do. Luke asks if he’ll have to stay away from the windows once people move into the new houses, sending his father into a rant about how he should already be staying away from the windows.
Luke doesn’t know what will happen if he’s seen, but he knows there will be consequences. Luke’s older brother Mark complains about having to take on Luke’s chores now, but their mother assures him that Luke will do what he can.
The family hears tires pulling into their driveway, so Luke instinctually goes to hide. He knows his parents will clear his plate at the table and move his chair to the side so it’s as if Luke never existed.
Chapter 2 Summary
Luke is an illegal third child. He has two older brothers, Mark and Matthew. Until he was six, Luke never asked his parents why he had to hide. He’d always assumed that that was what younger kids did, and eventually, he’d get to join his brothers at school and do fun things around town with them. However, on his sixth birthday, he realized that he could remember Mark’s sixth birthday and knew Mark hadn’t been hiding before then.
Luke’s mom explained that the Population Law was very new when she fell pregnant with Luke. She believed it wouldn’t last long, and she wanted to have her third child so badly that she didn’t do anything about her pregnancy. She thought by the time Luke arrived she would be able to show him off. However, once her pregnancy started showing, she began to hide, and she’s kept Luke hidden ever since. The television told her of the Population Police, who had ways of finding hidden children and would “do anything to enforce the law” (10). Mom told Luke how she wished for four children, but she is happy to have at least three.
After that, Luke did his best to hide and keep Mom safe and happy. He convinced himself he didn’t want to go to school or make friends. He knew he would always be safe at home with the farm animals and his family. However, now the woods that protected Luke from sight are going away.
Chapter 3 Summary
Luke plays idly with a toy train that’s been in his family for years. However, he wishes he could go outside because it’s a beautiful day. His dad catches him peeking through the window shade and drags him away from the window, scolding him. Dad is more on edge now that there are no trees around the house. Luke goes to his bedroom, which is also the attic, so his dad won’t see him cry.
Mark bangs on Luke’s bedroom door, pretending to be the Population Police. Luke is used to this prank from Mark, and Mark never does this in front of their parents. Luke tells him it isn’t funny and doesn’t let on that his heart is racing from the idea of being caught. Mark comes in and reassures Luke that he and Matt never talk about Luke. Neither do their parents. Mark asks if Luke wants to play checkers, but Luke doesn’t want to be around Mark and asks to be left alone.
Luke is bored of his windowless bedroom and his toys. He wonders what the point of playing with toy cars would be if he can never drive a real car. He wonders what would happen to him if his parents and brothers went away and never returned. He imagines he’d wither and die in the dark.
Luke glances up and notices some light leaking in through the vents at the top of the attic. He remembers his father complaining about the vents letting the hot air leave in the winter. He stands on a box to peek out the vents. He can only see at a downward angle, but it’s better than not looking outside at all. On one side of his room, he can see cornfields. On the other side, he can see workers taking away the felled trees and digging holes for plumbing fixtures of future homes.
Luke’s mom knocks on his door. Luke decides not to tell her about the vents. She tells him that things could be worse, but Luke worries this means things will get worse.
Chapter 4 Summary
A few days later, Luke follows his morning routine of cracking the door to the stairs and asking if the shades are pulled. He can see his brothers and father at the kitchen table and smells his mother cooking bacon at the stove. This morning, his mother stops him on the stairs. One of the workers asked Luke’s dad yesterday if they have air conditioning. They do not, so it looks suspicious to have the shades pulled on a hot day. Luke is to eat at the bottom of the stairs, out of sight of both windows.
Luke is upset. His mother brings his plate to him and apologizes. Luke can see his spot at the table is empty. His chair is gone completely. He eats his breakfast on the stairs, but he doesn’t enjoy it at all. He wants to protest, but he keeps his feelings to himself. It hurts him to see the rest of his family eating at the table without him.
Chapter 5 Summary
Luke now eats every meal on the stairs. He quickly realizes how low Mother’s voice is. He can’t hear her very well from the stairs. His brothers also say their meanest comments under their voices, so Luke can’t defend himself when they pick on him. He knows they’re picking on him because he can hear his mother scold Mark and Matthew. Luke begins tuning out the meal conversations entirely. It’s not worth it to try to listen.
The family receives a letter from the government, which stands out among the bills and letters they usually receive. Letters from relatives were a treat, with Mother reading them aloud to the family. Luke feels like he knows his relatives, even though they don’t know he exists. Mother only writes them about Matthew and Mark.
Dad finishes his dinner and opens the letter from the government. The family is being ordered to give up their hogs. The new neighborhood’s residents will not want to live next to hog smells, so the family must surrender their hogs permanently. Mother and Dad worry about how the family will stay afloat without the meat and profits from their hogs.
Chapter 6 Summary
Two weeks later, Dad, Matthew, and Mark load the hogs into a trailer attached to Dad’s pickup truck and take them to markets and auctions. Luke watches through his attic vents. At dinner, Dad brings in a tax bill from the government. The family is surprised to find they’re being charged three times as much as they normally are. The value of their land has gone up with the neighborhood being built around them, so now they owe more in property taxes. The family is upset because they now owe more than what they’ve made off the hogs, which was supposed to last them a while.
Luke is sad to hear this, but he also has grown attached to the houses, as he’s watched them come together from foundation to finish. Watching the construction has been his only entertainment for a while now. That, and his mother’s regular visits to the attic to tidy up and spend time with him.
Mother announces that she got her work permit in the mail and will be applying to the factory soon. No one else is surprised by this information, but Luke is taken aback. Luke wants to ask who will stay home with him while she’s gone, but he realizes this isn’t about him: The family needs more income.
Chapters 1-6 Analysis
The first six chapters of Among the Hidden delve into a dystopian world that slowly encroaches on the last freedoms of protagonist and illegal third child, Luke Garner. These chapters establish the parameters of Luke’s limited existence and create a contrast between Luke’s life and the lives of his brothers who are allowed to exist freely, introducing the theme of The Effects of Privilege.
In Chapter 1, Luke takes what he believes to be his last breath of fresh air as he observes the forest around his family’s modest farmhouse begin to come down in the distance. The government has bought the land surrounding the farm and has begun developing the land into housing. Luke realizes this means he “will never be allowed outside again. Maybe never again as long as I live” (1). With the trees disappearing around the farmhouse, Luke’s family must make changes to their daily routine of allowing Luke to work outside on the farm. The trees that once protected the family’s privacy are no longer going to be around, so to Luke and his family, these trees symbolize safety. When Luke longs for the trees again, he’s also longing for safety and freedom.
The government is quickly established as the main antagonist as the first chapter progresses, with Luke wondering why they’ve taken the land around the farm and his parents explaining the “Government wanted it. You can’t tell the Government what to do” (2). Luke’s life has been so sheltered from the world outside his family home that he sometimes imagines the government as “a very big, mean, fat person, two or three times as tall as an ordinary man, who went around yelling at people, ‘Not allowed!’ and ‘Stop that!’” (2). Luke’s mental depiction of the government reveals both his naive interpretation of his situation and the overbearing reputation of the government.
As the chapters progress, the situation for Luke and his family worsens. Not only is Luke now confined to indoor spaces because he no longer has the protection of the forest around his farmhouse, but also his family begins to treat him differently too. In Chapter 3, Luke’s father bans him from looking out the window, and Luke becomes even more confined to only rooms with covered windows. In Chapter 4, Luke’s isolation grows deeper as he’s asked to “eat sitting on the bottom step” of the stairs leading to the attic (20). The Garners are concerned that people will be suspicious if their shades are pulled all the time, so Luke must now remain in the few areas of the house where he cannot be seen through a window. From the stairs, Luke can see “Dad, Mother, Matthew, and Mark eating in silence, a complete family of four” (22), showing how aware Luke is of the difference between him and the rest of his family.
In addition to things worsening for Luke, the family’s financial situation begins to suffer when the government sends a letter declaring the family get rid of their hogs because they’d be disturbing to the residents of the new housing development. Without the hogs, the family loses one of their sources of food and income, and in Chapter 6, the family receives a bill for their taxes that costs them more than they can afford, even after selling the hogs. As a result, Luke’s mother, who’d previously spent all her time at home with Luke, must now take a job at a factory, removing Luke’s only comfort and company from his daily routine.
The theme of The Effects of Privilege is introduced in these chapters through the contrasts between Luke and his brothers. Chapter 2 details how Luke always believed he would one day be old enough to do the things his brothers did, but “[s]omehow, Luke never got as old as Matthew and Mark” (7). Luke recalls that while his brothers could ride in cars, visit town, go to school, and play in the front yard, Luke always had to remain out of sight. By being born first and second, Matthew and Mark are bestowed privileges that Luke cannot have. While Matthew and Mark get to live normal lives, Luke wonders why he cannot live the same way as them. These differences borne of privilege show how privilege can affect one’s upbringing and impact one’s self-worth.
In Luke’s new life of being confined to the attic for most of the day, Luke does find a secret source of solace in the vents at the top of the attic. When Luke stands on a chair or trunk, he can see through the vents and witness the world outside his attic. Luke keeps these vents a secret from the family, fearing they’d ban him from viewing the world through them if they knew. These vents become an invaluable source of knowledge and entertainment for Luke and become an important factor in the events that unfold in the next chapters.
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