56 pages • 1 hour read
Lynda Mullaly HuntShouting at the Rain
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2019A 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 41-49Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 41 Summary: “Feline Kinder”
Grammy promises not to sell the items that Delsie placed in the jar, so Delsie unearths the jar and starts wearing her mother’s whale ring. Tressa arrives at Delsie’s house and asks to speak with Delsie alone. Tressa asks why Delsie saved the dog. Delsie replies that she wanted to. Repeating that she does not want to owe Delsie anything, Tressa asks Delsie why she did not take the money. Delsie reiterates that she wanted to save the dog. As Tressa turns to leave, she tells Delsie to check her back porch. There, Delsie finds the kitten she picked out, Boots, and starts crying with happiness.
Chapter 42 Summary: “To Reveal a Secret”
Delsie finds Ronan standing in the water at the beach. The sight reminds her of the day she first saw him, when he was standing in the water during a lightning storm. Ronan appears happy but is secretive, saying that he has a surprise. He then shows Delsie a lobster trap with a live lobster. Delsie wants to sell the lobster to Henry, but Ronan refuses, calling the lobster “beautiful.” Ronan releases the lobster back into the ocean. Delsie points out that it is strange he refuses to eat seafood as the son of a fisherman. Ronan says that his father thinks he will probably be a scientist saving endangered species in the future.
Gusty finds the children on the beach, and Ronan talks to him alone. Ronan then returns to Delsie and tells her that he and Gusty will move into the abandoned house in Delsie’s neighborhood. Both the children are overjoyed.
Chapter 43 Summary: “A Lesson from Moby”
Delsie, Henry, and Ronan sail to Nantucket to swim and look for seals. Delsie jumps into the water but becomes paralyzed with fear when she sees a large gray fin coming toward her. Ronan jumps into the water and swims toward her with a buoy to hit what they think is a shark, but Henry tells them that it is only a harmless sunfish. Henry compliments Ronan’s bravery but says Ronan would never be able to fight a great white. Ronan argues that he has read all about them.
Henry then tells Delsie that her mother’s favorite animal was the sperm whale because it fought 19th-century whalers by crushing their boats. Henry tells Delsie that she is very similar to her mother but that the major difference is that Delsie is more proactive: “[Mellie] always waited for ships to come in, but [Delsie] swim[s] out to them” (236). He then says that Ronan is like Delsie and that he looks forward to seeing their futures.
Chapter 44 Summary: “The Sun Will Come Out”
Delsie, Grammy, Olive, the Laskos, and Ronan go to see Annie at the playhouse. Brandy, Tressa, and Mrs. Fiester are also at the theatre. Brandy waves at Delsie.
The musical begins with the song “It’s a Hard-Knock Life,” and Delsie reflects that her life is not as “hard-knock” as she used to think. Aimee and Michael perform well in the play. After the musical ends, Aimee and Michael invite Delsie and Ronan backstage. Tressa asks if she and Brandy can come too. Michael argues that after treating Delsie “like trash,” they do not deserve any favors. Brandy looks sadly at Delsie. Delsie tells Michael that she does not mind if they come with them, as everything that happened is in the past. Delsie reveals that Tressa gave her a kitten, and Brandy is shocked and hurt that Tressa did not tell her.
Delsie reflects that she wishes she could have prevented Brandy from abetting Tressa’s cruelty and that she wishes she could change her mother’s behavior as well. However, she recognizes that trying to control others is as difficult as controlling the weather. All of the children go backstage.
Chapter 45 Summary: “The Ones Who Stay”
Delsie is impressed by the backstage tour Aimee gives. Aimee tells them that the ghost of a deceased actress haunts the playhouse and must be appeased with fresh flowers every show night. Madam Schofield compliments both Aimee and Michael’s performances, shocking the children. As they watch Tressa ignoring Brandy and talking to Aimee, Ronan whispers to Delsie that he feels bad for Brandy, as she reminds him of a pilot fish, which lives inside the mouth of a shark, eating off the backs of the shark’s teeth. Unlike the fish, Ronan says, Brandy gets bitten.
Delsie talks to Brandy, who informs Delsie she is returning home the next day. She says that it was a “weird” summer and that she cannot believe Delsie spent so much time around “that kid,” referring to Ronan. Tressa invites Aimee to come to her house in Boston and fawns over her. Aimee and Delsie separate from the group, and Delsie reflects that Tressa is thoughtless in her interactions with others. Delsie and Brandy then exchange goodbyes.
Ronan finds a lucky penny and gives it to Delsie. Delsie reflects that she is already lucky, having found Ronan, although their friendship is also due to having given each other a chance. Delsie also thinks of how lucky she is to have Grammy and recalls when she was hospitalized with a fever a few years back. When the nurse told Grammy to leave Delsie’s bedside, Grammy refused. While Delsie will always wonder what it would have been like to have a mother, she is grateful to have Grammy in her life.
Chapter 46 Summary: “What You See”
As fall approaches and the summer guests leave, Delsie, Grammy, Gusty, and Ronan clean the summer cottages. Delsie asks Ronan why he hit the boys who were going to hurt the crab. Ronan replies that he was angry. Delsie tells him that she has been thinking about strong weather and its relation to people. She tells him about smashing her mother’s picture frame out of anger. Delsie muses that people are rarely just angry but experience a blend of emotions, like sadness and confusion. She likens anger to the wind, as only its effects on its surroundings are visible. She explains how quickly hurricane winds expand and likens this to the overwhelming anger she felt when she broke the frame.
Ronan tells Delsie that he has a temper. He used to say that he could not stop himself from fighting or losing his temper, but now he realizes he can control himself. Delsie tells Ronan that his mother probably did not intend to hurt him and is likely experiencing complicated feelings or a difficult situation.
Delsie thinks about how surfaces can be deceiving. For instance, Olive’s anger is a mask for her sadness, and Michael is annoyed not because he lives in the campground but because he has no power over where he lives during the summer. She realizes that her recent sadness and anger resulted from a negative perspective and decides that “it's not what you look at that counts, but what you see” (252).
Chapter 47 Summary: “The Big One With the Ladder”
Ronan tells Delsie that he will also run the 5K. They run to Saucepan Lynn’s for practice. Saucepan Lynn tells Ronan that Henry talks about him often and wants Ronan to fish for him. Ronan says that he has been reading about horseshoe crabs and that he found a large one the other day while with his father; he dropped it into deep water to keep it safe. Delsie tells Lynn that they’ve come to request a favor and asks to borrow a fire truck.
Chapter 48 Summary: “A Gift From Papa”
Grammy looks at Delsie’s wall, which Delsie has renamed “Memory Shaker Wall” and now features photos of loved ones. Delsie explains that she realized she prefers to take pictures of people she loves instead of abandoned items. Grammy tells Delsie that she is wise and then begins to cry, telling her that she cannot stop thinking about Delsie’s complaint about not having a real family. Grammy says that she understands “the hole” left by not having a mother and gives Delsie one of her prized possessions, a gold necklace that Papa Joseph gave Grammy. Delsie reflects that, from now on, she will not focus on everything she wishes were different about Grammy but on how much Grammy cares for her.
After Grammy leaves, Delsie takes a picture of Grammy off her picture wall. She tucks the picture into the seal frame and sets it next to her bed.
Chapter 49 Summary: “The Sheltering Tree”
Delsie and the rest of the neighborhood eagerly prepare a surprise for Olive, who is out with Esme and Ruby. Saucepan Lynn arrives with her fire truck to hang up Christmas lights on Olive’s tree. Ronan and Gusty have officially moved into the neighborhood. As Ronan and Delsie enter Ronan’s new house, they overhear Gusty telling a mover that he loves fishing and misses being a fisherman. However, he says that Ronan is worth leaving the job: Ronan is “the best thing that ever happened” to him (264). Ronan is overjoyed.
Ronan and Delsie leave the house and find that Lynn has successfully put the lights on the tree. The neighbors turn off all their lights and wait in the dark. Olive, Esme, and Ruby return. Delsie turns on the lights, and Delsie and Esme explain that they wanted the tree to remind Olive of her family. They tell her that she will “always have family in each of [them]” (264). Olive begins to cry and grows embarrassed, but Ronan assures her that he cried a lot that summer and is still strong.
The neighbors stand together under the tree admiring the lights, and Delsie reflects on her good fortune to have Grammy and her neighbors as family. She realizes that she has never been abandoned and has always been loved.
Chapters 41-49 Analysis
As the novel approaches its conclusion, Hunt ties up various loose ends in Delsie’s relationships. Tressa’s gift of the kitten could be an apology to Delsie or an instance of Tressa truly not wanting to owe Delsie anything. Regardless, Delsie’s tolerance of Tressa and Brandy backstage signifies that Delsie has risen above Tressa’s bullying and even wants to give Tressa another chance, just like Papa Joseph gave to Henry. However, Tressa’s behavior—flattering Aimee and ignoring Brandy—suggests that Tressa is essentially a flighty person who acts thoughtlessly toward others. Brandy now becomes Tressa’s victim, though Brandy’s disdainful remark that she cannot believe Delsie spent so much time with “that kid”—i.e., Ronan—implies she has not fully learned her lesson in kindness.
That neither Brandy nor Tressa emerges as unambiguously villainous reflects the novel’s emphasis on The Complexity of Human Emotions and Character. This is something Delsie herself now embraces, likening emotions and feelings to strong weather. She says that anger is like the wind because one “can only see how it moves everything around it” rather than its cause (250), and she realizes that it can be difficult to understand how or why someone feels the way they do. She also realizes that there may be multiple factors leading someone to act a certain way, even telling Ronan that he probably was not the primary reason that her mother needed to leave him; rather, Delsie says his mother is probably “caught in a storm herself” (250). These realizations mark serious character growth in Delsie and an advancement in her emotional maturity.
Delsie’s choice to begin wearing her mother’s whale ring testifies to her acceptance of her mother for who she is (and isn’t), as well as her newfound ability to embrace complex emotions. Despite the pain of her mother’s absence, she takes comfort in hearing from Henry that she resembles her mother. However, Henry also stresses her differences, saying that Mellie “always waited for ships to come in, but [Delsie] swim[s] out to them” (236). This suggests that Delsie will achieve more than her mother and avoid her mother’s fate.
Though Delsie learns to accept the messiness and ambiguity of people and relationships, she ends the novel with increased certainty regarding two people in particular: Ronan and Grammy. Ronan’s revelation that he will move into Delsie’s neighborhood marks the culmination of their friendship and signifies that Ronan will now become a part of the neighborhood family, finally finding his own place in a loving community. Ronan’s warm reception at Saucepan Lynn’s suggests that he is also finding a place in the broader Cape Cod community. After receiving a great deal of scorn from others, Ronan finally experiences love and affection. For instance, Henry cares intensely for Ronan, and even Aimee and Michael, who do not know Ronan well, are kind to him.
In addition to forging a friendship with Ronan, Delsie strengthens her relationship with Grammy, coming to appreciate the parental care and guidance her grandmother has always provided. Her memory of Grammy’s refusal to leave her at the hospital is especially strong; Grammy’s remark that the nurse would have to call “the National Guard and a helicopter and a tank” to make her leave Delsie’s side emphasizes the strength of Grammy’s love for Delsie (246). Delsie’s placement of Grammy’s photo into her seal frame signifies that Grammy occupies a maternal role in Delsie’s life and suggests that Delsie does not need her mother to feel complete.
Delsie’s new ability to appreciate what she has rather than focusing on what she does not is perhaps the most important aspect of her character arc. Her realization that “it is not what you look at that counts, but what you see” becomes the overarching moral of the novel (271), as The Importance of Changing Perspective applies to both situations and people. Both Delsie and Ronan increasingly understand their good fortune in the love and friendship they share with each other, their family members, and their friends and neighbors. Delsie’s rebranding of the “Wall of the Left Behind” as the “Memory Shaker Wall” is a significant milestone, as Delsie finally comes to think of herself as being loved by many rather than as an abandoned orphan.
The novel ends with the neighborhood surprising Olive with Christmas lights on her tree. This scene draws together the work’s major themes: Delsie and the rest of the neighborhood have a new and more nuanced understanding of Olive, who continues to grapple with the sadness of lost loved ones even as she recognizes her neighbors as family. This final scene allows three major characters to find peace with the people in their lives: Olive with her neighbors, Ronan with his father, and Delsie with her many friends and parental figures.
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By Lynda Mullaly Hunt
