44 pages • 1 hour read
Jen BeaginBig Swiss
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A 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 18-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 18 Summary
Before her first session with Om, Greta goes into a coffee shop and eavesdrops on two strangers talking. One man tells the other about a brawl in the alley between two bars, in which a townie stabbed a tourist from the city several times.
Greta limps into Om’s office, explaining that she has glass stuck in her right foot. Om examines her foot and asks Greta to tell him about where she was when her mother died. Greta had followed a schoolgirl crush to horse-riding camp. It hadn’t been a good experience and a horse named Honey had stepped on her right foot and broken it. As Om removes the tiniest grain of glass off her foot, he proposes that she has restrained herself from self-compassion since her mother died. The glass shard in her foot is a projection of her lack of self-love. Om uses the metaphor of the “straitjacket” to explain how Greta restrains herself.
Chapter 19 Summary
Sabine has bought two miniature donkeys, who finally arrive at her house. She explains that she’s heard that mini donkeys can heal a broken heart like hers. Both Sabine and Greta are accidentally high because they ate off unwashed pans Sabine used to make marijuana edibles. Greta immediately loves the donkeys. Donkeys are known to be intuitive, affectionate, and capable of long memory and grief.
Big Swiss calls Greta. They had planned to meet up one more time before Big Swiss’s trip to Ecuador, but Big Swiss tells her that everything has changed and they can no longer see one another. Big Swiss is in the ICU, where Luke has been hospitalized. The stabbing in the alley had been Keith stabbing Luke. Luke had been stabbed seven times and needed 82 stitches. It had been Luke who made the first move on Keith. After Big Swiss told Luke about her affair with Greta, Luke wanted some space and decided to prove himself by confronting Keith. Greta admits that she had also confronted Keith. Greta believes she should be in the hospital in Luke’s place. Big Swiss tells Greta that she would have let herself die, unlike Luke who values his life. Greta, Big Swiss claims, gives up too easily on everything. Greta reminds Big Swiss that she has suicidal ideations. Big Swiss says that Greta would never make the effort to die by suicide.
Chapter 20 Summary
Om prescribes Greta ketamine for her suicidal ideation. He explains to her that she’s not responsible for Luke’s hospitalization, that only Keith is at fault for that. Greta tells Om that she’s responsible for her mother’s death. Her mother had expressed a desire to die by suicide so many times that Greta told her mother that the only option was to actually do it. They had even discussed who Greta would live with in the event of her mother’s inevitable death by suicide. Rather than feel scared by the conversation, Greta had felt relief. Greta believes her mother’s death by suicide is related to her bipolar disorder. Greta finally remembers her mother’s suicide note, in which she thanked Greta for setting her free. Om notes that Greta associates “desire with her [Greta’s mother’s] death, and with suicide in general, which is why experiencing desire has been dangerous for you” (311). Om points out that Greta’s dilapidated home with Sabine replicates the closed-off nature of her childhood. He suggests that Greta reconnect with her inner child. He believes Greta has suppressed her inner child, dampening her ability to feel a range of emotions, including rage over her mother’s death by suicide. They name Greta’s inner child Rebekah. Greta says that transcribing her own therapy sessions has been awful because her voice is the same as her mother’s.
Chapter 21 Summary
The bees in Sabine’s kitchen have broken out of their enclosed hive and the kitchen is covered with thousands of bees. They ask Gideon, a beekeeper, for help. Gideon explains that the spray Sabine had used to kill the maggots in the hive killed the bees. The bees they see now are new ones that have arrived to steal honey from the empty hive. Gideon says the only option is to cut away the hive and get it out of the house, which saddens Sabine.
Sabine admits to Greta that when she had disappeared for over a month, she had been in rehab for her cocaine addiction. Sabine gives Greta her last two bags of cocaine to dispose of for her. Greta considers dying by consuming the cocaine. Instead, she throws the cocaine away and finds comfort in feeding the donkeys.
Chapters 18-21 Analysis
In the final chapters of Big Swiss, Beagin utilizes symbols and metaphors to represent the inner turmoil of Sabine and Greta. These symbols and Greta’s character development emphasize the theme of Physical and Psychological Trauma at the novel’s close. This re-emphasis highlights this theme as the novel’s central theme.
Greta mistakenly believes that there is glass stuck in her foot. The phantom glass echoes trauma from her past, when her foot was broken and her mother died. Her inability to remove the glass symbolizes her inability to resolve and heal the trauma surrounding her mother’s death. This inability work through the trauma is represented through Om’s metaphor of the straitjacket. Just as a straitjacket represses movement, so too does Greta’s unresolved anger. Not confronting her past has made her repress her growth as a person.
The beehive is an important symbol for Sabine’s characterization and the atmosphere of Greta’s home. Sabine deals with cocaine addiction while making her home a place of refuge for all creatures. The dilapidation of the beehive over the course of the novel represents Sabine’s worsening condition. When the beehive is removed during the resolving action of the novel, a core feature of Sabine’s home is removed, representing a crisis in who she and Greta are, as Sabine moves on from her addiction and Greta’s affair implodes. Sabine has adopted children, animals, insects, and Greta. These adoptions serve as a bandage for Sabine’s inner turmoil, in much the same way Greta’s affair covered over her own inner turmoil. The removal of the beehive symbolizes the necessary pain of growth for both women: They want the bees to stay, but the presence of the bees endangers the whole house.
Om, despite Greta’s opinions of him, links together the themes of Physical and Psychological Trauma and Greta’s use of Manipulation and Power Dynamics. He pinpoints Greta’s inability to connect with her emotions as the source of her unresolved trauma and her tendency to live vicariously through others using voyeurism. Greta’s unending guilt over her mother’s death is portrayed as the cause of her solitude. Om implies that Greta’s willingness to manipulate Big Swiss gave her a way to live vicariously in the world, illustrating that Greta’s manipulation stems from her inability to face her trauma and make difficult decisions.
The donkeys are an important symbolic return to the inner child Greta must resurrect and nurture. The donkeys bring her back to the horseback riding camp she attended, which gave her mother the space to die by suicide. The horse that broke her foot represents the mental destruction caused by her mother’s death. By nurturing the donkeys, Greta connects with them and vicariously repairs her relationship with the horse that broke her foot. By returning to her childhood and treating a horse-like animal with care, Greta returns to the traumatic event and nurtures the very thing that hurt her. Beagin’s novel ends on a hopeful note, with Greta beginning her journey to self-discovery and healing.
