48 pages • 1 hour read
Cynthia KadohataCracker
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2005A 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 17-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 17 Summary
Rick returns to his base, expecting to be allowed to rest after the intense mission, but he is intercepted by men frantically running toward choppers. U-Haul tells him that all available men are needed, including Rick. Rick boards a helicopter with Cracker, and they land in a hot zone where men are crouching in trenches. Vietcong soldiers are firing on the Americans. Rick sees Twenty lying, badly injured, in a nearby trench. Another man is holding Tristie, Twenty’s dog, as she tries to get to Twenty. Twenty yells at Tristie to stay, but she leaps into the air and is shot dead. Rick tries to resuscitate her, but she dies.
The US Army drops mortars onto the Vietcong’s positions. Medics remove Twenty, who is badly injured but alive. Night falls, and Rick sleeps fitfully.
Twenty, who will likely lose an arm, is devastated by Tristie’s death; he blames himself for not training her to stay better. Rick assures Twenty that he will bury Tristie with a lock of Twenty’s hair.
Rick sits with a dying soldier, lying to him that he will be fine. When the man dies, Rick sits apart from the other soldiers and sobs. A pilot, collecting soldiers to bring them back to base, tells Rick that he can’t fit Cracker or Tristie in the helicopter. Rick suggests that he take all the men and come back for them last. As Rick is waiting alone with Cracker and Tristie’s body, Cracker signals that she hears people in the nearby bushes. Rick is terrified that he will die; he knows that Vietcong soldiers are in the area. Luckily, a chopper arrives to collect them.
Chapter 18 Summary
Rick sits in the chopper, registering his overwhelming fatigue. Cracker, worried about Rick’s despondency, nudges him with her nose. Rick hugs her.
Back at camp, Rick and Cody dig a hole for Tristie’s grave. Cracker gets into the hole and begins digging as well. Rick lowers Tristie’s body into the hole with Twenty’s hair. They mark the grave with Tristie’s name as well as the epitaph Twenty requested: “Sleep well” (212).
Rick showers and then reads another letter from Willie raving about Cracker’s intelligence and how much he misses her. Rick replies to Willie for the first time, assuring him that Cracker is doing an amazing job in Vietnam. Next, Rick writes to Twenty’s uncle, mentioning Twenty’s injury and asking whether he can take Cracker home to America with him. Rick finds Cracker lying on Tristie’s grave.
Rick and Cracker are given a job to clear a village. They ride in armored personnel carriers (APCs). The men are excited to hear that the Donut Dollies, American female Red Cross volunteers, will be coming to the village to serve them a Thanksgiving meal. Rick is irritated to see that there are chickens in the village because they always distract Cracker. Initially, Rick attributes Cracker’s restlessness to the chickens, but when Cracker sits resolutely and stares at him, Rick senses that she knows that there is a trap somewhere. He sees a girl stand up quickly and scratch her neck and wonders if it could be a signal. Cracker feels a strong wave of tension from the Vietnamese peasants as she sits.
Chapter 19 Summary
Rick tells the Lieutenant about the girl standing and scratching her neck, but he dismisses his concern as paranoia. Cracker continues to resolutely sit. Rick sees a rat in a paddy and attributes Cracker’s behavior to the rat, but then Cracker lies down and refuses to move, growling. Rick knows that something is wrong.
Suddenly, machine gun fire comes from everywhere. Rick drops to the ground. Mud is sprayed into his face, and he can’t see. A grenade explodes one of the APCs as mortar fire begins at the far end of the village. As the shooting dies down, Rick notices that he can’t see Cracker; he calls for her urgently. A medic urges him to lie down, explaining that he has to treat his leg wound. Rick is shocked to see that his leg is a mess of blood and shrapnel. The doctor gives him medication to dull the pain. As he drifts out of consciousness, Rick continues to call for Cracker, asking the doctor to find his dog.
Chapter 20 Summary
Cracker is pursued by gunfire and hides in a dike in a rice paddy. A man with a stick finds her, grabs her leash, and hits her on the head, concussing her. She comes to in a tunnel network surrounded by men, but she manages to run away from them. She runs through tunnels, passing shocked people, and eventually finds a slender tunnel that leads to daylight. Disoriented, she finds herself in the jungle and tries to find the last place she saw Rick. At one point, people run toward her, and she runs away.
She finds a safe space in the jungle to lie down and sleep. Though she is anxious to find Rick, her exhaustion is overwhelming.
Chapter 21 Summary
Rick is loaded into the chopper and taken to a military hospital. A doctor tells him that an artery and a tendon in his leg were severed, but he will heal. He is being sent home to rehab in America. Rick asks about Cracker, and the doctor asks a nurse to investigate whether Cracker was recovered. Rick learns that Rafael, his slack man (who is tasked with protecting him while he focuses on Cracker), was killed. Nobody comes to update him on Cracker, and he feels heartsick at the separation.
The nurses urge Rick to walk on his leg after the tendon surgery, first with crutches and then a cane. Rick agrees to do so if the nurses provide him with stationery. He writes to everyone he can think of about Cracker. A nurse tells him that the whole staff is invested in finding Cracker. Nurses help him format the letters, and a clerical aid types them for him.
Chapter 22 Summary
Cracker wakes up and immediately feels anxious to find Rick. She travels through the jungle and eventually comes across the village where she last saw him. She watches quietly in the shadows; he is not there. She sneaks in and grabs a chicken, which brings the attention of a group of people. She runs from the village to eat it.
For days, Cracker follows the road that she and Rick drove on to reach the base where they used to live, but it is abandoned when she finally reaches it.
Chapter 23 Summary
Cracker smells Rick’s bed, missing him. People are going through the abandoned base, taking equipment. Men approach with sticks, and she runs away.
Back in the jungle, Cracker considers her next course of action. She doesn’t know what to do. The next day, she returns to where Rick’s bed was and curls up there, despondent. Her tongue gets big and dry in her mouth, but she does not search for water.
Eventually, it rains, and she drinks water from a puddle. A boy with one leg approaches with a bucket of food. She eats it. He says something that she doesn’t understand. She hears shouting behind the boy and runs away.
Chapter 24 Summary
Cracker remains determined to find Rick. She decides to head to Bien Hoa, knowing that Rick and his friends were once there.
Chapters 17-24 Analysis
Kadohata structures this portion of her novel by placing consecutive moments of rising tension and climax close together. This unconventional structure mirrors the constant stress of wartime work for handlers and soldiers more generally. Rick returns from his special mission, exhausted and expecting a reprieve. Similarly, the reader might expect a reprieve in the novel’s pace with a period of relative calm after the tension of the Cambodia jailbreak, but instead, Rick is rushed right back to the front lines. Rick reflects on the sustained action and stress required of him: “Rick couldn’t believe that ‘all available men’ meant someone who’d just returned from rescuing four Special Forces soldiers and had barely slept for days” (203). Rick returns straight to a high-stress environment, where he sees Twenty badly injured, Tristie killed, and other men die under sustained fire. Through this sustained action, Kadohata continues to explore the theme of War and Conflict. Rick experiences the excitement of positively contributing to the war effort and saving lives, but he also experiences the devastation of seeing fellow soldiers and dogs killed or injured. Without time to process his conflicting emotions and experiences, Rick feels his mind plunge into the disorienting confusion of war: “[S]omething about the triumph of the Special Forces mission mixed with the horror of seeing blood spurting from Tristie made Rick think he might be losing his mind” (206). As in earlier chapters, Kadohata juxtaposes Rick’s developing confidence with the realities of armed conflict.
Likewise, the constant tension of a war waged through guerilla tactics makes it impossible to predict where the enemy may lie. Rick emphasizes this when he reflects on the Vietcong lookout tactics, which make even the most benign situation sinister: “[H]e’d heard that sometimes the lookout could be a twelve-year-old girl and she might signal Charlie by doing something as simple as putting her hair behind her ear” (235). Illustrating this point, villagers work calmly in rice paddies until suddenly, in a moment, “villagers dropped to the ground all at once, as if on signal, and a barrage of fire rang out” (241-42). To remind readers of the high stakes of warfare, Rafael, the “slack man” assigned to protect Rick and Cracker, is killed in this gunfire, and Rick’s leg becomes “a mess of blood and shrapnel” (244). Cracker also disappears, adding to the heartbreak and chaos of war.
Kadohata changes the established patterns of narrative point of view in this portion of the novel to further establish both the intensity of the war experience and the intensity of Rick and Cracker’s connection. In the first part of the novel, whole chapters are dedicated to the different perspectives of Rick and Cracker. During these chapters, however, the narrative perspective shifts rapidly from Rick’s point of view to Cracker’s within the same temporal moments: “He cried out to nobody in particular, ‘What the HELL is going on?’ The force of his cry startled Cracker. She’d never heard anything like it from him” (206). This intertwined narration illustrates the inseparable bond between the man and dog team, who experience the shocking events together and with constant awareness of the other. This connects to the recurring theme of Companionship and Loyalty; Rick and Cracker epitomize the trope of the loyal dog and owner.
This is further exemplified when they are separated from one another and are desperate to be reunited. Even with his significant shrapnel injury, Rick struggles to find Cracker: “‘I gotta find my dog! Cracker!’ The noises in the background seemed to fade. ‘Cracker!’ He tried to call out, but his voice was weak, and he fell to the ground” (246). Rick’s desperation to find Cracker and ensure her safety is clear, even as he is overtaken with pain and medication. Similarly, Cracker’s desperation to find Rick is evident in the huge distances she covers in search of him. She is motivated to find him because she understands the important role she plays in ensuring his safety: “She had to get to him. He needed her. She helped him” (251). The strength of their bond is shown when she reaches the abandoned military base and foregoes eating and drinking while waiting for Rick.
Rick continues to fulfill his Ambition for Greatness through his partnership with Cracker. Still preoccupied with being labeled a generalist, Rick now understands his relationship with Cracker as his unique “specialty,” which he continues to pursue through his work in the hospital to locate and rescue her: “[A]ccording to one nurse, he’s mobilized the whole staff about it. If that wasn’t a specialist, there wasn’t any such thing” (258). At last, Rick has thrown off the yoke of the assumptions that were made about him as a child: that he was a polite but average boy destined for only small things. The loyalty and companionship that he forged with Cracker have brought him the recognition he has craved since childhood.
Related Titles
By Cynthia Kadohata
