76 pages • 2 hours read
Gabrielle ZevinElsewhere
Fiction | Novel | YA | 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. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Part 3, Chapter 1-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Antique Lands”
Part 3, Chapter 1 Summary: “Time Passes”
Now 14, Liz has realized (and tells Betty) that “Happiness is a choice” (240); she will have other lives, and while she might wish she could incorporate elements from those lives (marriage, college, etc.) into this one, she recognizes that that isn’t how life works. When Betty asks Liz what her choice is, Liz settles on happiness, and in this way, five years go by: “When one is happy, time passes quickly. Liz feels as if one evening she went to bed fourteen and the next morning she woke up nine” (240).
Part 3, Chapter 2 Summary: “Two Weddings”
One night, Owen returns from work and tells Liz that someone on Earth has tried to contact her: a message in a bottle just washed up on Elsewhere’s shores. When Liz opens it, she finds a wedding invitation from Zooey.
Owen suggests watching the event from the OD, or even diving to the Well, but Liz says that since Zooey didn’t attend her funeral, she doesn’t feel obliged to go to her wedding. Later, however, Liz reads the note that Zooey sent with the invitation; in it, she apologizes for not going to the funeral and admits that she’s missed Liz greatly. Liz changes her mind, and Owen agrees to come with her to the Well to help her make a toast at Zooey’s wedding.
Since Owen is now the head of his department at work, he manages to ensure that he and Liz will have half an hour to make contact. On the night of the wedding, they make the dive to the Well, but they struggle to find a water source close enough to the reception to make themselves heard. Disappointed, Liz is resigning herself to simply watching when Alvy approaches a fountain Liz had previously tried speaking through; he offers to go get Zooey, but Liz explains that there’s no time, and she asks him to simply offer her congratulations. She then asks Alvy about his life and reassures him that she’s content where she is.
As the net pulls them up to the surface, Liz admits that she sometimes wishes she could have married, but she says she’s “too young now” (254). Owen says he would have married her, and he intends to bring the subject up again, but never does. Curtis, however, asks Liz for her permission to propose to Betty; she gives it, and Betty accepts.
Liz and Thandi serve as Betty’s bridesmaids. At the ceremony, Liz is surprised to see that Thandi (who is now nine) is missing her two front teeth—a sign of her decreasing age. As Owen and Lizzie dance, she reflects on the life she’s made for herself.
Part 3, Chapter 3 Summary: “The Change”
As Liz approaches eight, Sadie turns back into a puppy: “Her eyes seal closed, and Liz has to feed her tiny drops of milk from her pinky. Sadie still seems to recognize her name when Liz says it” (259). After taking Sadie to her Release, Liz worries about the life she’ll have back on Earth, and Owen tries to reassure her that Sadie will end up with a loving family. Liz initially doesn’t want another dog, but she relents when her old dog Lucy (now thirteen) arrives in Elsewhere. Liz meets her at the docks, teasing her about her weight and telling her that she’s missed her.
Part 3, Chapter 4 Summary: “Amadou”
Liz retires from the DDA at age seven. On her last day at work, Amadou Bonamy stops by. He has recently died of lung cancer, and he wants to apologize for the hit-and-run, which has haunted him for years; he explains that his son was very sick, and he was worried about how he would pay the medical bills if he lost his job. Nevertheless, he worries that Liz can't forgive him for what he did. Liz assures him that she was to blame as well, and her life in Elsewhere has been happy: “All things considered, I’ve been luckier than most. Almost sixteen good years on Earth, and I’ve already had eight good ones here. I expect to have almost eight more before all’s said and done” (266). Before Amadou leaves, she gives him a balloon to take to his son; she knows he’s also in Elsewhere, having kept tabs on the family over the years.
Part 3, Chapter 5 Summary: “Childhood”
One day when Liz is four and Owen is six, she tries to read from Tuck Everlasting but finds she can’t. Owen agrees to read aloud to her instead, but Liz quickly interrupts, asking whether he remembers the “game” they used to play; describing their lives when they were older she wonders why it was “so hard” (268). She then begins crying, admitting that she thinks she was dead and saying she doesn’t want to play any longer; Owen comforts her and resumes reading aloud.
Part 3, Chapter 6 Summary: “Birth”
When Liz is seven days old, Betty takes her to the launch nurse—the same one Liz met when she tried to return to Earth before. Aldous, Shelly, Emily, and Curtis are also there, along with Thandi (in a bassinet) and Owen (now a toddler whom Emily is babysitting). Owen plays while Liz is being placed in the River, but when Curtis approaches him afterwards, he correctly identifies the person they were releasing as Liz. Realizing that Liz is gone, he begins to cry, but he quickly cheers up when Curtis remarks that he might see her again.
Back at Betty’s house, the group celebrates Liz’s “birthday.” Betty toasts Liz and makes a short speech in her honor: “She was just a girl when she got here, but she grew into a fine woman. […] On Elsewhere, we fool ourselves into thinking we know what will be just because we know the amount of time we have left. We know this, but we never really know what will be” (272).
Part 3, Chapter 7 Summary: “What Liz Thinks”
As she drifts in the River, Liz vaguely recalls having had a good life: “[S]he isn’t sad to be a baby. […] There was a time Liz was afraid that she would forget things, but by the time she truly began to forget, she forgot to be afraid to forget. Life is kind, the baby thinks” (275). Liz falls asleep and “dreams of a girl who was lost at sea but one day found the shore” (275).
Epilogue Summary: “At the Beginning”
A baby “who is Liz and not Liz at the same time” is born early one morning (277). Her mother cradles her, and Liz laughs.
Part 3, Chapter 1-Epilogue Analysis
In Elsewhere’s final chapters, the novel’s cyclic structure fully emerges: the bulk of the work’s plot occurs during Part 2, which is bookended on either side by a shorter segment and a Prologue or Epilogue. In this way, the novel’s form evokes its subject matter, which is not simply reincarnation (itself a cycle of death and rebirth), but the circular form of human existence Zevin depicts; it’s perhaps even worth noting that (counting the Epilogue and Prologue) Elsewhere contains a total of 32 chapters—the same as the number of years Liz spends as Liz Hall. The way Zevin titles the Prologue and Epilogue is also significant. By beginning with “In the End” and concluding with “At the Beginning,” Zevin blurs the lines between beginnings and endings, underscoring that what appears to be an end may simply be a transformation into something new.
Two motifs that have been present since the beginning of the novel, but which take on additional prominence in Part 3, reinforce this point. The first involves references and imagery related to ancient Egypt (e.g. the SS Nile, the pyramids, the Book of the Dead, etc.). Notably, Egyptian mythology conceived of the afterlife as a continuation of earthly existence, in much the same way that life on Elsewhere parallels life on Earth. The title of this section—“Antique Lands”—makes a similar point from a different angle. The allusion is to Percy Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias,” which describes a now decrepit monument to an Egyptian pharaoh as a way of suggesting the futility of human effort in the face of mortality. However, the “antique land” of Zevin’s novel—Elsewhere itself—is not a lifeless relic to a bygone era, but rather a place in which life continues and even flourishes, albeit in changed form.
The other motif that becomes particularly important in Part 3 concerns water imagery. Water has a long, symbolic history in literature and mythology; noteworthy in the context of Elsewhere is the fact that multiple cultures depict the spirits of the dead as having to cross a river or ocean to reach the afterlife. The frequency with which this idea recurs in stories perhaps stems in part from water’s fluidity, as well as from the fact that it can exist in multiple forms (ice, liquid, and vapor). This is certainly the case in Zevin’s novel, where the River’s current and the tides of the ocean suggest the flow of an individual’s life itself as it moves between Earth and Elsewhere, changing form but also remaining fundamentally the same.
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