92 pages • 3 hours read
Susan CooperThe Dark Is Rising
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1973A 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.
Part 2, Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “The Learning”
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary: “Christmas Eve”
On Christmas Eve day, Will and his father and brothers get a Christmas tree from the Dawsons’ farm. Will wants to warn Dawson that his dairy maid Maggie is a servant of the Dark. When James asks where Maggie is, Mr. Dawson says that she had an illness in the family and had to leave. Will deduces that Dawson knows what Maggie is.
The family brings the tree home and begins to decorate. At the bottom of their old box of tree ornaments, Will finds a collection of wooden initials carved by farmer Dawson—one for each member of the family except Will. His ornament was a cross quartered by a circle, but it is missing from the box. Will wonders if someone took it to try to get power over him, but the Dark can’t use Signs of the Light in their magic. Will finds an ornament shaped like the letter T, which doesn’t match any of his siblings’ initials. His mother tells them about Tom, the Stantons’ first baby, who died after only three days. The birth of Tom means that Will is actually the couple’s seventh son, not the sixth.
In the evening, Will goes caroling with his family. They finish at Huntercombe Manor, where they sing for Miss Greythorne. Miss Greythorne’s usual butler is gone and Merriman has taken his place. As Will is singing with his family, the rest of them are caught out of time, and Merriman joins the song. Accompanied by the silvery music of the Old Ones, Will follows Merriman through the giant doors the Old Ones use to move back and forth in time.
Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary: “The Book of Gramarye”
Merriman and Will step back in time 100 years to a Christmas party at the Manor where a younger version of Miss Greythorne greets them. Will also meets Hawkin, Merryman’s liege man and adopted son from the 13th century. He has been brought forward in time to assist in Will’s education as an Old One.
The Old Ones are gathered to renew the third Sign—wood. They circle the fireplace, and Miss Greythorne takes out a piece of burnt rowan. Breaking away the burned wood, she reveals a perfect cross-quartered circle of rowan wood, which she conceals in a compartment behind a carved panel in the wall.
After the ceremony, Will goes to the library with Hawkin and Merriman. Standing before a clock in the corner, Merriman calls Hawkin to him. Placing a hand on Hawkin’s shoulder, he opens the clock face and reaches past the pendulum, careful not to let it touch him. He pulls out a small book, and Hawkin collapses with a gasp of relief. Ignoring Hawkin, Merriman gives the book to Will. It’s the Book of Gramarye, the oldest book in the world. When Will has read it, it will be destroyed. Merriman finally turns to Hawkin, who is still crouched on the floor. He leaves Will to read the book and takes Hawkin out.
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary: “Betrayal”
The Book of Gramarye pours knowledge directly into Will’s mind. He learns the ways of earth, air, fire, and water, as well as of trees, birds, and beasts. He sees the various conquests of England, each new wave of men carrying the Dark with them and being gradually tamed the longer they live in the country. He sees how people rise to become lords of the Dark when greed and hunger for power seduce them. When Will has finished, Merriman returns to the library and destroys the book to keep it out of the hands of the Dark. Will is the last of the Old Ones, and the book will never be needed again.
Returning to the main hall and the Christmas celebration, Will spots Maggie Barnes across the room whispering in Hawkin’s ear. She is promising him that if he turns to the Dark, he can have the power of an Old One, which Merriman has withheld from him. Will wants to interfere, but Merriman tells him it is too late: Hawkin is making his own choice.
Merriman returns them to Will’s present. Will’s brothers are still singing the carol, and Will rejoins them, finishing the song he was singing when Merriman pulled him out of his own time. After the singing, Miss Greythorne wishes Will a happy 11th birthday as the seventh son of a seventh son. Will never realized that his father was a seventh son as well. Merriman remarks to James that he and Will sing well together. James replies that Will has a much better voice, and Merriman tells him that he will be an accomplished tenor when his voice changes, whereas Will’s voice will be baritone and nothing special.
When the group has chatted for a while, Miss Greythorne invites Paul and Will to see her collection of antique musical instruments. Merriman takes Paul to the hall where the Christmas party 100 years ago took place. While Paul plays “Greensleeves” on a flute, Will retrieves the Sign of wood. He turns to find Maggie Barnes and the Rider standing close to him. He throws up a wall of protection around himself, Paul, and Merriman, driving Maggie and the Rider away. Will returns home with the third Sign and goes to bed, anticipating Christmas morning.
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary: “Christmas Day”
Before church on Christmas morning, Will opens his first present. It is from his oldest brother, Stephen, and contains a papier-mâché carnival head—half animal and half man, with the antlers of a stag. The enclosed letter says Steven got the head from an old man in Jamaica, who told him to give it to Will.
The rest of the family is opening their presents when the Rider arrives. Will’s father introduces the Rider as Mr. Mitothin, a gemstone dealer who helped him with a Christmas gift for Will’s mother. Will freezes his family outside of time and confronts the Rider, but since Will’s father has already invited Mitothin into the house, Will cannot force him out. The Rider compliments Mary’s hair, which she is vain about. He plucks a hair from her sleeve and also takes her carved wooden ornament.
Will attends church with his family. After the service, Will feels the Dark gathering; Paul and the rector are still in the church, and the presence of the Dark is so strong that even they feel it. The rector makes the sign of the cross, but that doesn’t dispel the “demonic” influence. He is about to attempt an exorcism when Will shields him and Paul in a circle of peace to protect their minds.
The Old Ones gather, forming a circle to drive back the Dark. Will takes the three Signs he has already found and holds them up against the Dark, forcing it back. With the Dark repelled, the Signs guide Will to the fourth Sign, the Sign of stone, which is hidden in the church’s wall.
Will releases Paul and the rector from their spell, and the rector notices the Signs. He interprets them to mean that they have been saved by the sign of the cross. Old George tells the rector that these Signs long predate Christianity, and the rector replies, “but not before God” (148-49). Will erases the memory of the event from Paul’s and the Rector’s minds because the war between the Dark and the Light is too great a matter for human minds to encompass.
As Will and his brothers return home, Will finds the Walker lying in the snow. Paul insists they take the tramp home and care for him, so they put him to bed in a spare room. The news on the radio warns of electrical failures and freak storms growing worse. Will fears the storm is a thing of the Dark and won’t be dispelled by anything less than the full circle of the Signs. That night, Merriman comes to Will between dreaming and waking and takes him to witness the ancient ritual of the hunting of the wren. On a bier carried by six boys, the wren turns into the Lady. She is returning.
Part 2, Chapters 5-8 Analysis
Folk tradition suggests that the seventh son of a seventh son will have a magical nature, but by this time, it is already clear that Will has a magical nature. The more significant purpose of Will’s discovery of the carved wooden ornaments is to set up the conditions for Will’s final test, as the Rider’s theft of Mary’s ornament gives him power over her.
Music has been an important motif since Will woke to it in Chapter 2, and it continues to feature at Miss Greythorne’s manor. Will returns to the party at the Manor while he is singing, and the transportation appears to be accomplished by the singing. The party itself is accompanied by the music of beautiful old instruments.
Will’s initiation into full power and knowledge—his reading of the Book of Gramarye—comes easily. The book teaches him without study or effort on his part. Likewise, Will retrieves the Sign of wood simply by walking up to the place where he saw it hidden and opening the concealed panel. These quick plot developments place the emphasis of Will’s quest on how he responds to the attacks of the Dark—specifically, whether he can muster the strength and wisdom to repel them.
The carnival head represents Herne the Hunter, whose animal features also suggest the god Cernunnos (who has the horns of a stag). The head links Stephen to Will’s quest in a way that becomes more pronounced in later books, where the Old Ones occasionally use Stephen to communicate with Will. As Will’s oldest brother, Stephen’s role in facilitating Will’s discovery of his true nature is significant. Will’s journey as an Old One parallels and, in some sense, allegorizes Coming-of-Age As a Leap Into the Adult World: Both journeys distance Will from his childhood family and place him in an unfamiliar environment of new responsibilities. Stephen, who was already in his mid-teens when Will was born and who now lives far away, symbolizes adulthood in Will’s mind.
This section finally gives the Rider a name, Mitothin—a false god in Norse mythology who briefly usurps the throne of Odin. Mitothin is sometimes thought to be a more malignant version of the Norse god Loki. The usurpation of rightful power and the overturning of order are fundamental aspects of the Dark. By drawing from the Norse pantheon, Cooper maintains the theme of The Reality and Timelessness of Myth.
Cooper allows Christianity to take a back seat to her older and more expansive mythology. She depicts Christianity as benign but relatively powerless in the face of true evil. Some of Will’s family are regular churchgoers, although their focus seems to be on music rather than worship or theology. The church is not only no protection from the Dark but actually draws its attention as a place where mortal people gather to consider ideas of good and evil. Nevertheless, the rector is both a good man and courageous, even if his beliefs are—in the context of the story—incorrect. The rector’s association of the Signs with the cross as well as his attempt to exorcise the Dark show the insignificance of Christianity in the novel’s scale of time and power.
The interaction with the rector also emphasizes Will’s separation from the ordinary world. He lives in the truth of the war of Light and Dark that lies behind the real world. To the extent that Christianity is true, Will suggests, it is true in this context: “[A]ll Gods are there, and all the things they have ever stood for. And […] the opposite, too” (149). The novel’s harnessing of various mythologies is therefore not simply a way of creating depth and color but rather a statement about the storyworld’s cosmology; the novel borrows from myth and legend because the archetypes that populate these stories constitute the novel’s ultimate reality.
Part 2 ends with the vision of the hunting of the wren, which traditionally takes place on Christmas night. The hunting of the wren is an ancient midwinter ritual, which over time has been transferred to Christmas. It still continues in many parts of England. The association of the wren with the Lady comes from old folklore linking the bird with a fairy queen or enchantress—probably originally an earth goddess supposedly worshiped by the Druids.
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