53 pages • 1 hour read
Blake CrouchPines
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A 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 4-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Theresa Burke, her son Ben, and their friends drive to a peak outside Seattle to remember Ethan. Theresa tells the story of how Ethan proposed to her there, 13 years ago. Because they don’t have ashes, having never found a body, she buries the plastic ring he proposed to her with. That night, she and her friends celebrate Ethan’s life. Later, she and a friend talk about whether Ethan’s life insurance will pay, since a body was never recovered. Although Ethan had his flaws, they reconciled before his death. Theresa can’t believe he has been gone for 15 months.
By the time Hassler, the man who was Ethan’s supervisor, arrives, Theresa is drunk, and her friends have passed out or left. Hassler offers to use his influence with the life insurance company. Theresa asks if he thinks Ethan is dead. Hassler believes he must be; otherwise, Ethan would’ve contacted someone. He reluctantly tells Theresa what he knows about Ethan’s disappearance.
Ethan and Stallings drove to Wayward Pines to investigate the disappearance of Agents Bill Evans and Kate Hewson; at Kate’s name, Theresa feels a pang. On their way, Ethan called Theresa from a gas station; that was the last time anyone heard from him. Their car was hit shortly after. Rescue teams found that Stallings had died on impact, but when they pried the car open to reach Ethan, he wasn’t there. Forensic examination of the car showed no traces of Ethan at all. Theresa comments that something is very wrong, and Hassler agrees.
After Hassler leaves, Theresa cleans up, thinking about the night before Ethan left. They argued about the fact that he would miss Ben’s sixth birthday. When Theresa learned that Ethan would be investigating Kate’s disappearance, they argued more. However, even as they argued, she began to forgive him, wondering at the power he has over her, and they hugged.
Chapter 5 Summary
Ethan recalls how, as he and Theresa hugged after their argument, he tried to recapture the way he used to feel about her. Ethan was ashamed of his affair with Kate, and he admits to himself that if their positions were reversed, he wouldn’t have given Theresa a second chance. That night, Ethan went to Ben’s room; asleep, his son looked like a combination of his parents. Ethan remembers his own father telling him to spend time with his son, and he feels the immense pressure of time passing too quickly.
As Ethan dreams, he hears someone calling. He opens his eyes to a bright light, a penlight held by a doctor. At first, Ethan can’t remember the name of the town, but when the doctor reminds him it is Wayward Pines, his memory comes rushing back. The doctor introduces himself as Dr. Jenkins, a psychiatrist. He asks Ethan about the corpse he claims to have found, shifting to the topic of possible post-traumatic stress disorder after Ethan’s service in the Gulf War. Ethan questions how the doctor knew, and Jenkins gestures at his chest. Ethan is surprised to find himself wearing his dog tags; he doesn’t remember having brought them to Wayward Pines.
Jenkins asks about Ethan’s time flying a Black Hawk helicopter, and Ethan is suddenly immersed in a flood of memories from his helicopter crash. The only survivor, he was taken captive. When Jenkins asks if he hears voices, Ethan insists that he’s not hallucinating, but the doctor argues that Ethan wouldn’t know if he was. The doctor believes Ethan has a traumatic brain injury and wants to evaluate him, but Ethan leaves the hospital over his protests.
Outside, Ethan decides he needs to leave Wayward Pines. He tries to call Theresa and Hassler from the sheriff’s office again, but can’t get through. Pope hangs up the phone, angry to find Ethan using it without his permission. He says he’s taken care of Evans’s body, but won’t give any details. When Ethan asks to borrow a vehicle, Pope refuses, citing the ongoing investigation into Evans’s death as a reason for Ethan to stay.
After Ethan leaves the sheriff, he follows the sounds and smells of a barbeque, finding a nearby neighborhood party. Hearing a familiar laugh, he turns to see Kate Newsom; she now has pure white hair and is leaving the party with a man. Ethan follows them to their house and knocks on the door.
When Kate answers, she steps onto the porch and whispers that they are being watched. She doesn’t know how long she’s been here—it’s hard to keep track of time—but she estimates years. She won’t tell Ethan what she and Evans came to investigate, but Ethan realizes, from her voice, that Kate was the woman who helped him the previous night.
Kate insists that Ethan is endangering them all by resisting, urging him to settle and have a good life in Wayward Pines. However, Kate also makes clear that Ethan is not imagining things. Frightened, Ethan walks away. On the next block over, he hotwires a car and starts driving, planning to find the next closest town. As he enters the pine forest at the edge of town, he feels relieved. The fog thickens, obscuring the road, but Ethan pushes through until he sees a billboard. It’s a sign welcoming him to Wayward Pines. The road widens, and houses begin to appear on either side. Soon, he is again driving through downtown.
Unable to find a turnoff he might have missed, he gets out of the car and starts walking. Soon, he can tell he’s headed into town again. Terrible screams come from the forest, and he runs back to the car. He gets in before noticing the sheriff’s car behind him. Pope appears at his window, a shotgun pointed at him. Ethan was told not to leave town, Pope says, before knocking him out.
Ethan wakes at an interrogation room table opposite Pope. His head is pounding, not just from the sheriff’s blow—the same headache he’s had, off and on, since he woke after the accident is now worse. Pope accuses Ethan of killing Evans and impersonating a federal agent. When Ethan tries to leave, the two men scuffle. Pope hits Ethan, who falls to the ground. With Pope standing over him, yelling, Ethan slips into his memories of being interrogated during the war, hung from the ceiling. His mind slips between his current reality and his past capture and torture. He stops protecting himself, looking forward to oblivion as Pope knocks him out.
Chapter 6 Summary
Theresa cleans the house after the party, reflecting that tomorrow will be a new beginning, without Ethan. The knock on the door is unexpected—it is nearly five o’clock in the morning. Through the peephole, she sees a short man wearing a suit. Through the door, he shows her a Polaroid picture of Ethan, naked, on an examining table. Theresa opens the door, and the man introduces himself as David Pilcher. Ethan is alive, and Pilcher offers her the chance to reunite with him. Pilcher puts two glass vials on the table. If she and Ben drink them, when they wake up, they’ll be with Ethan, starting a new life. She must decide before sunrise.
Theresa wants to believe him and goes upstairs to get Ben, but she stops short of giving her son the vial. When Pilcher sees she is changing her mind, he fits a mask over his mouth and sprays an aerosol into the air. Theresa hugs Ben and slumps to the ground. Pilcher tells her she’ll serve an important purpose, and as she faints, she hears him speak into a radio, calling Arnold and Pam.
Chapter 7 Summary
Ethan wakes handcuffed to a hospital bed, and Jenkins tells him he is having a “severe dissociative episode” (132). His brain may be bleeding, and they’re ready to take him into surgery. When Ethan resists, Pam jabs him with a needle. As they wheel him to surgery, he thinks about Theresa and Ben, feeling like he failed them. Just as he has given up, Beverly the bartender appears, her rain poncho dripping, and she wheels his bed into an elevator. Ethan tells her he has been sedated, and it will take effect in about 10 minutes.
Ethan follows her through a maze of hallways until she ducks into a room. He hides in a room across the hall and breaks the mirror in the bathroom; using the largest shard, with his door cracked, he peeks down the hallway. Pam appears, holding a syringe; she’s following the trail of water from Beverly’s raincoat. With the last of his strength, Ethan propels himself into Pam’s back. She attacks Ethan, but Beverly hits Pam with a chair. She grabs Ethan’s hand and drags him out of the hospital, through the cemetery, and into a mausoleum. Inside, she has stashed a bag with a blanket and a change of clothes for him.
Beverly explains that Sheriff Pope, Dr. Jenkins, and Pam are gaslighting Ethan—like Ethan, Beverly was also in a car accident as she drove into town. She woke alongside a river. Now, she also wants to leave. Just before Ethan loses consciousness, he asks how long she’s been there. She tells him she arrived on October 3, 1985, and has been in Wayward Pines for a year now.
Chapters 4-7 Analysis
In Chapter 4, Crouch shifts perspectives—the third-person limited omniscient point of view now focuses on Theresa. The memorial for Ethan, in an off-hand manner, reveals that it has been 15 months since Ethan disappeared. The issue of time, which will become crucial to the story’s final plot twist, arises here for the first time. At this point in the narrative, it is unclear whether the story has jumped ahead, or if it’s still operating on the same timeline as Ethan’s story. Either way, the implication is that Ethan has never come home. The chapter as a whole, with the perspective shift and apparent shift in time, increases the uncomfortable sense of reality not being what it seems.
This chapter also introduces Ethan’s family, Theresa and Ben, from a perspective outside Ethan’s own, thereby adding nuance to the theme of The Malleability of Identity. This chapter lets the reader see how Ethan’s disappearance has affected his family. In addition, though, it offers a perspective other than Ethan’s own with regard to who he is, specifically in the context of the state of his marriage. The chapter’s conclusion, which overlaps Theresa’s memory of the night before Ethan left with Ethan’s memory of the same final moments, has two effects. First, it sheds light on the fractures in their relationship. Second, it reveals something further about Ethan’s identity; even outside Wayward Pines, there is something magnetic and powerful about who he is. Theresa’s enduring love for him, which causes her to forgive him each time he transgresses the boundaries of their marriage, suggests the strength of Ethan’s personality. Theresa even refers to Ethan’s hold on her as “[s]ome kind of magic” (82). The depth of her commitment to him becomes important context for her decisions later in the novel.
In turn, Chapter 5 leans into the theme of The Destabilizing Power of Trauma, using the many apparent realities to add to the suspense as Ethan’s confidence in his senses starts to crumble. Jenkins, who has not yet been revealed to be David Pilcher, continues to use details about Ethan’s war experience to cause him to question himself. Ethan experiences a sense of slipping between the two worlds—Wayward Pines and the scene of his torture—as Pope interrogates and beats him. By Chapter 7, Ethan actively doubts himself, “wondering, fearing that maybe he had suffered some injury that had impacted him neurologically” (136). However, once again, Ethan’s determination and perseverance come through; The Need to Know, coupled with his memory of his family, stabilizes him enough to push past Jenkins’s gaslighting. Ethan insists to himself firmly that the fault rests not with his mind, but with the people in the town: “There was nothing wrong with him beyond the fact that people in this town meant him harm” (137).
Ethan’s need to know is tested as he faces pushback from another, and unexpected, source—Kate Newsom. His interaction with Kate confirms his suspicions that someone is controlling the town and its residents, albeit without revealing anything of who, or why, that might be. In addition, though, the interaction leaves Ethan shaken given its source. Kate is not just another townsperson; she comes from the reality of his old life, before he came to Wayward Pines. Part of what also makes Kate different is Ethan’s unique intimacy with her. At one point, he considered leaving his marriage for Kate. Yet she too urges Ethan to stop asking questions and settle into life in the town. That Ethan resists even her urging, as he shortly after makes his first escape attempt, marks his resolve to reestablish his grip on reality and the truth.
In Chapter 6, Crouch begins to merge the two storylines, Ethan’s and Theresa’s. Theresa gets a visit from David Pilcher, the man who Agents Evans and Newsom were investigating when they came to Wayward Pines. Pilcher’s abduction of Theresa and Ben, therefore, is somehow connected to Ethan’s imprisonment in Wayward Pines. The timeline issue is still not resolved—Theresa and David Pilcher are meeting 15 months after Ethan’s disappearance, yet Ethan hasn’t been in Wayward Pines for more than four days in his timeline. However, that the timeline issue is paranormal in nature does become clear in Chapter 7, when Beverly returns to rescue David from the hospital. Her assertion that she came to Wayward Pines in 1985, which she believes was only a year ago, means that time really is an unknown variable, somehow, in the mystery of Wayward Pines.
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