96 pages • 3 hours read
Monica HesseGirl in the Blue Coat
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016A 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 29-32Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 29 Summary
Hanneke, Ollie, and Willem want to do something “normal,” so they take a bike ride, even though it’s freezing cold. Hanneke’s bike slips on ice, and she crashes. Her injuries make her think of the scars Judith said Mirjam had on her knee from tripping on a piece of rusty fence, and suddenly, Hanneke realizes that the body she changed and saw buried had no scars: “[W]homever I dressed—whoever that person was, it wasn’t Mirjam Roodveldt” (262).
Chapter 30 Summary
Hanneke goes to see Mina and looks again at the image of the girl in the blue coat being brought into the theater. This time, they are able to use a projector to view the slide. Mina is unsure of whether or not it is Mirjam. This time, Hanneke notices that the girl is looking in a different direction than everyone else in the photograph. Hanneke wonders what else she was afraid of.
Chapter 31 Summary
Hanneke goes to Mrs. Janssen’s house, but she finds it empty. Someone else arrives—Tessa Koster, who formerly worked in Mr. Janssen’s furniture shop. She comes with the family photographs from the Roodveldts. In the stack, Hanneke finds a photo of Mirjam and Amalia. She realizes that the girl she buried was Amalia. As she wonders what led to the two girls switching places, she contemplates the death of her own friendship with Elsbeth.
Chapter 32 Summary
Christoffel arrives at Mrs. Janssen’s apartment and inadvertently reveals that he knew about the hidden room. As Hanneke interrogates him about his knowledge, he finally tells her all that he knows. He is the “T” from the girl’s notes—”Tof” is his nickname. He went to school with Mirjam and Amalia and recognized Amalia when she revealed herself to him. She told him that she and Mirjam switched coats and identification papers so that Mirjam could escape; Amalia thought she would be able to get new papers. He helped sneak Amalia out of Mrs. Janssen’s in the opklabed and then she stayed with him for several days—until he kicked her out after she told him a secret. He will not tell the secret to Hanneke, however.
Chapters 29-32 Analysis
These chapters introduce a major twist in the plot of the novel. Hanneke has presented herself as an unreliable narrator from the beginning, sometimes telling the reader “That’s a lie” or confessing that she is not ready to discuss something. Here, it is revealed that she has been unreliable because the information she has is incomplete. Having never met Mirjam or seen a photograph of her, she believes that Mirjam is the girl she finds in the transport and the girl she buries. However, the lack of scars on the corpse’s knees reveals to her that she was pursuing the wrong girl all along.
Chapter 29 provides a moment of reprieve for the characters when Hanneke, Ollie, and Willem want to do something “normal,” like go on a bike ride. This emphasizes that though the characters have all undergone Personal Transformations During Wartime, they are still kids who want and need to have fun and relax. This might seem like a luxury, or at worst, irresponsibility given the high-stakes circumstances, but one of the main messages of Girl in the Blue Coat is the importance of friendship and trust. Sharing these kinds of innocent activities helps the characters work through their personal and collective grief and strengthens the bonds between them. Hanneke’s fall on the ice also moves the plot forward, providing her epiphany about the girl’s identity.
Through a series of chance encounters with Tessa and Christoffel (Tof), Hanneke is shocked to learn that the truth was in front of her all along, had she only known where to look. Her misunderstanding of the facts in the case of Mirjam thus parallels her lack of full knowledge of the circumstances of Bas’s departure for the Navy, highlighting The Necessity and Danger of Keeping Secrets. Having learned the truth about Bas’s letter and last words to her, Hanneke is determined to discover the full truth about Amalia and Mirjam. Because she herself felt guilty for a death before, she is too kind to press Christoffel for details about why he turned out Amalia. This shows personal growth for Hanneke; now that she has let go of her narrative of guilt, she can show compassion for others.
