90 pages • 3 hours read
Priscilla CummingsRed Kayak
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2004A 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 10–12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary
Brady's father catches him dumping the crabs overboard, but it's too late to save more than a couple of bushels. When the two return home, Brady returns to his room and listens to his parents talking worriedly about him. His mother eventually calls Carl and asks him to come over.
Brady's parents leave to give him and Carl some privacy. Carl returns Brady's coat, which Brady had wrapped around Ben to keep him warm. Carl begins to talk about his experiences as an emergency worker. Accepting a death can be difficult even for professionals, he says, but there's ultimately nothing to do but "talk it out and put it behind you so you can move forward" (64). Brady nearly opens up about what he's feeling, but before he can, Carl stands up to leave. Brady does manage, however, to ask one question before Carl leaves, wondering why Ben died after having been revived. Carl explains that Ben contracted pneumonia from inhaling water, and repeats that Brady wasn't to blame for his death.
Brady decides to try to move on by packing away his LEGOs and studying for anschool test. When he goes to school the next day, though, he feels isolated and awkward. He eventually tracks down J.T., planning to back out of the plans he'd made to sleep over at his friend's house the coming night. Before he can, though, J.T. says he has to call off the sleepover. Brady suggests doing something the following week instead, but J.T.—by this point visibly uncomfortable—says he and his family will be out of town.
Brady accepts the explanation, but later realizes that J.T. must have lied to him when J.T.'s sister Kate expresses confusion about the supposed family trip. Digger, meanwhile, has been avoiding Brady outright all day, leading Brady to worry about his friends' behavior.
Chapter 11 Summary
Instead of going to Ben's funeral, Brady and his mother go out for lunch in the larger town of Centreville.She reiterates that Brady needs to find a way to move on and the two split up to run errands.
While shopping, Brady's mind drifts to Ben's funeral. This in turn causes him to remember how his parents sent him to visit the Baltimore Aquarium when Amanda was buried: "I’m sure my parents thought they were protecting me, but I always felt cheated. Like it left yet another hole in my life. It irritates me even now when I think of how I rode all those escalators to see a bunch of fancy sea horses and polka-dotted fish when I could have been saying good-bye to Amanda one last time. This is the truth: After that, I never once wanted to go back to that aquarium" (71–72).
Brady had hoped to hear from Digger and J.T. over spring vacation, but neither gets in touch. Instead, Brady goes with Carl and his aunt to help settle Carl's grandfather—who has dementia—into a nursing home in Richmond. The experience makes Brady wonder whether there's anything he can do for the DiAngelos, and when he gets home, he tells his parents he's planning to offer to help out around the house. Brady's mother approves of the idea, noting that Mrs. DiAngelo could use the help, since her husband left town after Ben's death. Learning this distresses Brady, and he doubles down on his plan.
With his mother's help, Brady assembles an assortment of gifts to take over to Mrs. DiAngelo the next day. When he rings the doorbell, however, no one answers; Brady's father drives him home, and advises him to focus on "gettin' on" with his own life and chores (77). He also scolds Brady for taking a cordless drill from his woodshop, though Brady insists he and his friends had nothing to do with it.
Later, Brady's mother tells him that his father is stressed about turmoil at work—specifically, pressure to join in a strike against state regulations on crabbing. Feeling guilty, Brady decides to return to his own work the next morning, and sets his alarm to check his crab pots before going to school. Once he's outside on the dock, though, Brady can't bring himself to go out on the water and instead tells his father that the engine on his boat is broken.
Chapter 12 Summary
Mrs. DiAngelo sends Brady an email thanking him for the gifts and asking him to come over to discuss a summer job. As he waits for her to answer the door, Brady remembers the night he and his parents first visited the DiAngelos' house for dinner. Although his father had at first been suspicious of their new neighbors' wealth, the evening went well.
Brady had intended to work for Mrs. DiAngelo free of charge, but is taken aback by her obvious grief when she answers the door.He ultimately agrees to a paid job doing yard work, simply because he "[doesn't] want to argue with her" (85).
After Ben finishes his work for the day, Mrs. DiAngelo asks him if he would be willing to adopt Ben's hamster, Tiny Tim. He agrees, realizing that the pet must be a painful reminder for her. In fact, Mrs. DiAngelo refuses to even enter Ben's bedroom, and Brady comments on the fact that the room looks exactly as it did the last time he was there: "It was just as I remembered it from when I baby-sat several weeks ago. There were LEGOs all over the place, including part of the castle we’d built. A wooden train was set up. The car bed was neatly made, with a stuffed dinosaur leaning against the pillow, which was in the shape of a tire. Pajamas were laid out on the bed. And a pair of fuzzy duck slippers sat waiting on the floor" (85–86).
Brady continues to work for Mrs. DiAngelo, who is consistently tired and depressed. One day, however, Brady suggests to Mrs. DiAngelo that she plant a butterfly garden, unthinkingly mentioning that doing so helpedhis mother after Amanda's death. He immediately regrets his words, thinking he might have upset Mrs. DiAngelo, but she seems interested by the idea.
Brady's friendship with J.T. and Digger continues to be strained, but his overall mood is improving. One evening, he suggests to his mom that she visit Mrs. DiAngelo to talk about the butterfly garden and Amanda; he says that Mr. DiAngelo blames his wife for the accident and still hasn't returned, and that Mrs. DiAngelo is often sick. Mrs. Parks is reluctant but eventually agrees. She also correctly guesses that Mrs. DiAngelo is pregnant.
After her conversation with Mrs. Parks, Mrs. DiAngelo has Brady plant a butterfly garden, and Brady thinks life is finally returning to normal. Over Memorial Day weekend, though, he says that things "came undone in a Big Way" (92).
Chapters 10–12 Analysis
As time passes, the question of how to move on from Ben's death becomes more pressing. Like his parents in the wake of Amanda's death, Brady attempts to put the past behind him by eliminating the physical objects that remind him of Ben—in this case, the LEGOs that he had planned to give Ben when he recovered. Meanwhile, J.T. and Digger try to deal with their own guilt over Ben's death by avoiding their own tangible reminder: Brady, who had wanted to warn the DiAngelos against sailing and then later participated in the rescue efforts.
However, The Red Kayak impliesthat there are downsides to trying to deal with grief and loss through avoidance. In fact, Brady's resentment over missing Amanda's funeral suggests that he needed that concrete experience to remember, and that missing the opportunity was itself a kind of loss—"another hole in [his] life," as he puts it (71). Brady's decision to offer his help to Mrs. DiAngelo likely stems not only from his feelings of guilt and responsibility, but also from a growing recognitionthat loss can't simply be ignored. Strikingly, he reaches out to Mrs. DiAngelo just after visiting Carl's grandfather, who is suffering from dementia; perhaps the visit drives home the point that memories—even painful ones—serve a purpose.
The idea that some good might come of tragedy is itself closely related to a symbol central to these three chapters: the butterfly garden. Because of their seasonal decay and regrowth, flowers and plants often symbolize new life after death; it's no coincidence that spring arrives in the novel just as things begin to look more hopeful, "Clusters of daffodils and pudgy little purple hyacinths…sprout[ing] up all over [the] yard" (73). The butterfly garden, though, carries special resonance as a metaphor for rebirth, since butterflies "die" as caterpillars only to emerge from their cocoons in a more beautiful form. Furthermore, as Brady explains to Mrs. DiAngelo, butterfly eyes "look forward and backward at the same time"—the implication being that it is possible to integrate difficult past experiences into a hopeful vision for the future (89). When Mrs. DiAngelo, now pregnant with a new child, plants a butterfly garden of her own, we (like Brady) expect that things will continue to improve.
