44 pages • 1 hour read
BromSlewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 13-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary
Samson wakes at Forest’s urging. Forest finally tells him the full truth: that he used to be the wildfolks’ Father, and the earth was their Mother, until the Indigenous people came and with them Mamunappeht. Though they initially lived in peace, Mamunappeht showed the Pequot the magic in the wildfolk, and the Pequot began to go after them. To protect themselves, the wildfolk used the fruit of Pawpaw to give Samson the strength to fight Mamunappeht; this backfired, though, when the wildfolk unintentionally imbued the spell with their own hatred, turning Samson into a murderous entity. Mamunappeht ended the rampage by putting Samson to sleep with his visions of spiders, and then cutting off Samson’s head and mounting it on his wall—one of the many trophies he would eventually collect after killing the rest of the wildfolk. Mother Earth stopped Mamunapphet from getting control of the Pawpaw tree by sending lightning and destroying it herself. When the Pawpaw finally produced another fruit, the remaining wildfolk were able to use it to revive the remains of Samson’s body that weren’t in Mamunappeht’s cave. Now that Samson is back in the cave, he has the opportunity to reunite with the parts of himself that Mamunappeht took and finally become whole again.
Mamunappeht returns to the cave with Sky and Creek in his net; he proceeds to subdue Forest. Samson, meanwhile, confronts his skull and reunites with the pieces of himself that were stolen; he accepts that he is both “the shepherd and the slayer” (257). Samson destroys all of the masks and, in doing so, destroys Mamunappeht. He frees the wildfolk, and he grows large antlers.
Abitha, close to death, is woken by Sky. Her captors deliberate killing her now so that they don’t have to be with her through her slow death. Samson arrives and kills one of them; the others flee. Samson gets Abitha down and gives her a choice: She can try to recover from her injuries on her own and most likely be left unable to walk, or she can drink Samson’s blood and become a creature of Mother Earth, a true witch, hellbent on destroying those who have slighted nature. Abitha drinks the blood and, revitalized, goes after the captors who escaped.
Chapter 14 Summary
Abitha’s captors run and tell Captain Moore, the officer who came up with the Magistrate, about what they’ve seen. Moore believes that it’s an attack by Indigenous people and prepares for a battle. Abitha, meanwhile, tracks down and kills a wounded Garret. Moore spies she and Samson at the edge of the woods and shoots Samson. Samson will recover, but Abitha needs to buy him time. She summons all of the insects of the forest to attack Moore and his men; this gives her cover, and she attacks and murders Moore. The insects drive off the rest of the men. As Abitha tends to Samson’s wounds, they are approached by a baffled Reverend Carter, who sees that Abitha’s legs have now turned to goat’s legs. Abitha informs Carter that Abitha is dead and she is now the witch; she confirms his suspicion that Samson is the devil. Abitha departs for Wallace’s house.
Chapter 15 Summary
Wallace, his wife, and Charity enjoy a meal sweetened with the honey they’ve stolen from Abitha. Charity hears the approach of countless insects; Wallace ignores it. Abitha bursts into their meal and allows Wallace’s wife to flee. She uses a knife to carve the letter “L” into Charity’s forehead, branding her as a liar about Abitha’s love charms burning her. Samson enters and begins to eat at the table while Abitha crushes Wallace’s hand and allows the insects to burrow into his flesh.
Meanwhile, Ansel, Watson, and the remaining captors bind Sarah, put her in a wagon, and try to flee the town. Abitha catches up with them; in the ensuing chaos, Ansel manages to escape. Abitha captures Watson and gives him a choice between a slow death or cutting off his own tongue; Watson hacks off his own tongue. Abitha releases Sarah, who sees her goat legs and believes that Abitha truly is associated with the devil. Abitha tries to convince her that what they did was right, but Sarah has been driven to a mental health crisis. Abitha, enraged, pursues Ansel back into town.
Chapter 16 Summary
Abitha catches up with Ansel, but she doesn’t realize that Sheriff Pitkin and the remaining men of the town have barricaded themselves in the church with weapons. They repeatedly shoot her. Abitha is pulled into the forest by the Reverend and Samson, both of whom invoke their own divinities to try to heal her. Samson calls on an army of ghostly animals to attack the barricaded men in the church; while they are distracted, he sets the church on fire. Everyone inside is killed; Samson kills Sheriff Pitkin and captures Ansel, dragging him into the forest. Samson slaughters Ansel at the base of the Pawpaw tree and uses his blood to rejuvenate the tree. Samson calls on Mother Earth, who rises from the ground in the form of a spectral serpent and reconnects with Samson. The tree fruits, and Samson squeezes the fruit’s juice into Abitha’s mouth. Abitha wakes.
Epilogue Summary
In 1970s West Virginia, two drunken hunters encounter Abitha in the forest, preparing a meal. She invites them to dine with her and they begin to feel woozy. She tells them that Samson will join them soon, and when they ask who that is, she tells them that it’s the devil.
Chapter 13-Epilogue Analysis
This closing section of the novel brings together many disparate plot threads: Samson has his final encounter with Mamunappeht and the wildfolk; Abitha contends with her captors and makes her choice to drink Samson’s blood; Sheriff Pitkin and the townsfolk fortify the church and prepare for battle; and Watson and his men attempt to flee the town. Brom maintains narrative coherence through these chapters in part through the way in which he transitions between scenes. Even across these many characters’ perspectives, images carry from one scene to the next. In Chapter 14, for instance, Abitha creates a diversion by calling on insects; the very next scene begins: “Another insect, some kind of beetle, hit Captain Moore in the eye, then something flew into his mouth” (272). This imagistic crossover creates a consistent thread between different characters’ points of view while also creating dramatic irony. The narrative has already shown what is coming for Captain Moore even while he and his men are convinced that they have the upper hand. These transitions create a momentum that propels the novel to its climax.
Some of Slewfoot’s central thematic concerns resolve here, particularly regarding Self-Knowledge and the Possibility of Self-Definition. Samson rejects the false dichotomy of slayer versus protector and embraces the notion that he is both. This realization proves literally transformative. When Abitha sees him for the first time after he’s killed Mamunappeht, Samson “stood there, somehow bigger, his horns no longer those of a goat, but now magnificent black antlers, his eyes no longer silver, but gold, and they gleamed in the torchlight” (259). The disappearance of Samson’s horns suggests that the embrace of his dual identity acts as a rejection of the identities imposed on him by the colonists and the Pequot. He is not “the devil” as they’ve conceived it; he is, instead, his own creation—a protector of the forest who is capable of perpetrating unflinching violence.
Violence is a core element of these final chapters of the novel. Much of the violence comes in the service of Abitha’s quest for revenge. Abitha’s arc through the climax of the narrative probes the role of vengeance in seeking justice. Abitha becomes possessed by the need for vengeance after her captors brutalize her. After Abitha drinks Samson’s blood, “[t]he serpent closed in, closer and closer, its lethal promise igniting something deep within Abitha’s breast: the primordial need of every creature that has ever been hurt by another—the need to bite back” (262). Here, “primordial” suggests that the impulse to vengeance is ancient and innate, something that cannot be avoided. However, the phrase “lethal promise” suggests that the totality with which Abitha is consumed by this impulse will ultimately be destructive. Slewfoot offers no clear answers about whether Abitha’s thirst for violent retribution is justified. The need for revenge is, indeed, “lethal”—Abitha dies and is remade into the witch, a being half-animal, half-human. At the same time, though, her final encounter with Wallace and Charity mirrors the very trial through which they put her: Charity clutches her throat when she sees Abitha, “the very same act she’d put on during the trial” (279). This suggests that Abitha puts Wallace and Charity on a “trial” of their own, enacting a vigilante justice in a society with unfair laws. On the other hand, though, this is a perverse reenactment of Abitha’s trial. Whether or not revenge is a form of justice, though, the violent ending of the novel provides an emotional catharsis for Abitha, particularly regarding the stifling structures of Gender and Institutional Power.
