42 pages • 1 hour read
Betsy ByarsThe Midnight Fox
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1968A 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 16-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary: “Captured”
That evening, Tom does not eat, which Millie worries is a sign of heat stroke. Hazeline, wearing a lovely blue dress and pearls that Mikey gave her at graduation, sits outside on the porch after supper. Tom reassures her that Mikey will come, and Hazeline replies, “I don’t care if I never see him again” (109). Tom tells Hazeline that he is worried about the black fox and her cub. Hazeline listens and then explains that “all wild animals die in some violent way. It’s their life” (110). This does nothing to ease Tom’s fear and sadness. Tom looks at the fox cub, who is biting the wire of the cage. Fred warns Tom not to put his fingers in the cage and then invites the boy to sit with him and keep watch for the black fox. As they wait, Mikey pulls up in his car and calls to Hazeline, telling her that she looks “real good and cool” (112). He invites her to ride up to the lake with him, and after a brief standoff, Hazeline agrees to go.
Tom hears the baby fox crying and is unable to sit still, so he goes inside. From behind the screen door, Tom watches Fred and the tiny fox, then he hears the black fox bark. Suddenly, a loud thunderclap breaks above them, and Millie tells Fred to get inside, saying, “No fox is worth getting struck by lightning for” (114). However, Fred stays on the porch. Millie sends Tom to close the windows upstairs, and as he does, he hears a gunshot. Tom runs to the porch and is relieved to learn that Fred missed the fox. Tom suddenly feels very weak. He manages to walk up the stairs to his bedroom, where he sinks, fully clothed onto his bed. He does not intend to fall asleep.
Chapter 17 Summary: “The Stormy Rescue”
Tom wakes at one o’clock in the morning and hears the storm raging outside. The house is quiet, so he tiptoes downstairs. Suddenly, the hall light goes on, and Millie is standing there in her nightgown. She tells Tom to go back to bed. Before he goes, Tom asks whether Fred got the fox. Millie says that he didn’t, and that Fred is asleep like Tom should be. Tom lies on his bed for a while, then looks out the window at the tree. He takes off his socks and kneels on the windowsill just as a flash of lightning lights up the tree.
Tom gathers all his courage and slowly slides down the tree, never looking down. He runs to the rabbit hutch, and in the flashes of lightning, he sees the baby fox huddled in the corner. At his feet, he sees a dead frog and knows that the black fox is watching him. Tom picks up a brick and breaks the lock. He opens the hutch door and stands back. The cub cries, and there is an answer from the nearby bushes. The tiny cub jumps from the hutch and runs toward his mother. Tom hears the black fox bark once more as she runs with her cub through the orchard. He leans against a tree and imagines that one day he’ll be in a museum and will see a painting titled “Fox with Baby at Midnight” (121) and he’ll recognize, with joy, his fox running “beneath the wet ghostly apple trees toward a patch of light in the distance” (122). Breaking out of his trance, Tom walks to the front door and rings the doorbell, seeing no point in climbing back up the tree since everyone will know about his actions soon enough. Millie opens the door, and Fred stands behind her in his pajamas. Tom clears his throat and admits to saving the fox cub. After a brief silence, Millie says “Why, that’s perfectly all right, isn’t it Fred?” (123) before hurrying to get some towels. Tom apologizes again, feeling terrible but sensing that somehow Fred understands. Fred simply says, “I never like to see a wild things in a pen myself” (124). Millie rubs Tom’s head with a towel and sends him back to bed, commenting that she knew he’d be out the window and not to worry about her chickens. Millie reassures Tom that the black fox will be miles away by now; because foxes are smart, she will know not to come back.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Good-by”
Tom has one more week on the farm. He spends most of it looking for the fox and reassuring himself that she has really gone. Petie is with Tom’s parents when they arrive to pick Tom up. Tom is surprised that Petie looks different, but when Tom’s parents tell him how tall he looks, Tom realizes that he has grown a lot over the summer too. Millie tells Tom’s parents how wonderful Tom has been, saying, “That boy of yours has not given me one minute of trouble the whole summer” (127). Tom shows Petie around the farm, and Petie says that he would have preferred being there with Tom rather than “watching reruns on TV all summer” (128). Soon Petie is catching Tom up on all the minutiae of their neighborhood and the cool new commercials on TV. Before long, they are back to their comfortable best-friend banter. Tom doesn’t tell Petie about the black fox, but he is not sure why.
Chapter 19 Summary: “A Memory”
After breakfast, as Tom, his parents, and Petie are getting in the car to leave, Hazeline reminds them to come back for her wedding to Mikey. Tom feels sad to say goodbye to Millie, Fred, and Hazeline. They never mentioned the fox again or punished him for letting her go. As they drive away, Tom stares back, trying to memorize the farm as Millie, Fred and Hazeline stand outside. Tom’s parents tell him about their trip and ask how the farm “really” was for him. Tom replies honestly, saying, “I loved it” (132). When Tom sees all his models in his bedroom, he realizes that he didn’t think about them once. The rest of summer flies by, as does the whole year. Tom’s memories of the farm fade. He doesn’t remember how Millie and Fred look, and in the picture that Hazeline sends him of her wedding day, they all look too “stiff and formal,” as though they are different people. As time goes on, Tom feels as though that summer “happened to another boy instead of me” (133). It reminds him of the time when he and Petie buried a time capsule and dug up a year later, surprised at what they found. However, sometimes at night, when it is raining, Tom thinks about the first time he saw the black fox leaping over the hill crest, and he remembers the stormy rescue and the “high clear bark of the midnight fox” (134).
Chapters 16-19 Analysis
In this section, Tom’s simplistic view of the world is illustrated when he likens Hazeline and Mikey’s situation to an argument and a brief standoff he had once with Petie that resolved in a matter of days. The argument that Tom refers to was triggered by Tom’s claim that Petie looked like “Porky Pig” and Petie telling Tom that he looked like “Daffy Duck.” These hurtful insults are based on physical appearance, thereby mirroring Mikey’s hurtful comments to Hazeline. Although at this point in his life, Tom has very little experience with the more complex aspects of human relationships, he knows enough to realize that Mikey’s behavior toward Hazeline is wrong. Tom also knows that Hazeline is waiting for Mikey despite her denial, and he is savvy enough to realize that Mikey will come for her. Tom has this understanding because his strong friendship with Petie has allowed him to experience his own version of conflict and conflict resolution, and he believes that Hazeline and Mikey’s relationship is strong enough to survive this spat.
In addition to the side-plot of her romance, Hazeline also serves an important purpose in the primary conflict, for she matter-of-factly educates Tom about the difficult lives of wild animals, and this perspective emphasizes the different perceptions of wildlife that people in rural areas have. City dwellers like Tom would rather not think about the deaths of cute animals and other wildlife, but those who live in the country have lives that are intimately entwined with nature, and they therefore experience the harsh realities of life and death and accept it as a matter of course. Hazeline explains that wild animals face daily threats, and she includes that being hunted is simply one of those threats, reasoning that if wild animals are not shot by a human, they will be eaten by a predator or die by disease. Tom understands, but because of his intensely positive experiences of Connecting With Nature, he does not want to be part of that cycle, and he deeply opposes the idea of being involved in the black fox’s death. Instead, he is determined to prevent Fred from killing the fox so that she and her cub will have a chance at the life they deserve; however, it may end in for them in the future.
In the novel’s most extreme example of Embracing Growth Through New Experiences, Tom finds the courage to overcome his anxieties when he hears the sound of the crying fox cub. To stand up for his principles, Tom not only has to overcome his fear of heights, but also he must also run the risk of disappointing Millie, Fred, and Hazeline when he sets the cub free, and Tom dreads disappointing people. However, Tom is unable to meekly accept the death of the black fox who introduced him to the wonders and beauty of nature, who trusted him and “spoke” to him in a way that opened a part of his soul that he didn’t know existed. The cumulation of all the physical and personal growth that Tom achieves over the summer is highlighted in his decision to climb down the tree and free the cub in the middle of a storm: something that he would never have dreamed possible before the experiences of the summer. Tom knows that he has made the right decision when he hears the “midnight fox” and her cub run through the woods. He merges the beauty of that moment with the beauty that he has appreciated in art galleries, and he mentally commemorates this moment of triumph by imagining a painting titled “Fox with Baby at Midnight,” thereby melding the urban life he is about to return to with his transformative rural experience.
Tom’s incorrect presumption that Fred and Millie will be disappointed with him is Tom’s final lesson, and the respect and understanding that Fred affords Tom following the cub’s release changes Tom’s perception of the man. As Tom muses, “I knew that if there was one person in the world who understood me it was this man who had seemed such a stranger” (124). Tom now realizes that Fred does not enjoy hunting for the sake of it, but that he deeply loves, respects, and understands wildlife and has to balance those emotions with the reality of living on a farm. Millie’s kind words and dismissal of Tom’s apologies show Tom that Millie is also a truly good person. The emotional impact of Tom’s experience with the black fox is so deep that he is unable to share it with anyone for fear of having it diminished. Instead, he treasures the private memory of the black fox, a memory that he is able to relive, hearing the fox “just as plainly as [he] heard it that August night, above the rain, beyond the years” (134), even while other memories of the farm fade entirely.
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By Betsy Byars
