The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

The chapter opens with highlighting the monotony of Edward’s existence as a china rabbit: “And in this manner, Edward’s days passed, one into the other. Nothing remarkable happened. Oh, there was the occasional small, domestic drama” (13). Once, a dog comes into the house unannounced and chews and shakes Edward before Abilene’s mother rescues him. Another time, a new maid puts Edward on Abilene’s doll shelf and calls him a bunny. Edward “did not care at all for the word bunny. He found it derogatory to the extreme” (15). He also doesn’t like being placed next to the dolls because they are “twittering and giggling at him like a flock of demented and unfriendly birds” (17).

When Abilene comes home from school, she is upset because she doesn’t know where the maid put Edward. When she finally finds him, she says, “I love you. I never want you to be away from me” (17). Edward “was experiencing a great emotion. But it was not love. It was annoyance that he had been so mightily inconvenienced, that he had been handled by the maid as cavalierly as an inanimate object—a serving bowl, say, or a teapot” (18). 

Abilene’s father tells the family that they are going to sail to London on the Queen Mary. However, Pellegrina is staying behind. Abilene begs her father to let her take Edward, and he says of course she can, although her mom says she’s getting a little old for the toy rabbit.

Pellegrina looks at Edward “in the way a hawk hanging lazily in the air might study a mouse on the ground. Perhaps the rabbit fur on Edward’s ears and tail, and the whiskers on his nose had some dim memory of being hunted, for a shiver went through him” (23). That night, Pellegrina tells Abilene that she will tell her a story, and that Edward needs to hear the story, too.

They story is about a “princess who was very beautiful. She shone as bright as the stars on a moonless night […] she was a princess who loved no one and cared nothing for love, even though there were many who loved her” (27). Pellegrina stops telling the story to look deep into Edward’s eyes, and he again feels the familiar shiver.

A prince from a neighboring kingdom is smitten by the princess’s beauty and wants to marry her. He gives her a ring, but she swallows it in an act of defiance and says, “That is what I think of love” (29). She runs away into the woods and stumbles upon a witch in a house. She says that her father “is a powerful king” and implores the witch:“You must help me or there will be consequences” (31).

The witch says, “You dare to talk to me of consequences? Very well, then, we will speak of consequences: tell me the name of the one you love” (31). The princess proudly says that she doesn’t love anyone, and the witch says, “You disappoint me” (31), and turns the princess into a warthog.

The warthog princess runs into the woods and is shot by the kings’ men who were searching for the princess: “The men took the warthog back to the castle and the cook slit open its belly and inside it she found a ring of pure gold. There were many hungry people in the castle that night and all of them were waiting to be fed” (33).

Pellegrina says that is the end of the story, and Abilene is upset because no one lives happily ever after. Pellegrina says, “Ah, and so […] But answer me this: how can a story end happily if there is no love?” (33). Pellegrina tucks Edward in that night and whispers in his ear: “You disappoint me” (33).

Abilene tells Edward how much she loves him, but he just thinks about the description of the princess being “as bright as the stars on a moonless night” (34), and he finds comfort in these words. 

The Tulane’s are preparing for their voyage to England. Abilene meticulously packs Edward’s finest clothing. The family boards the ship, and Abilene cries as she waves goodbye to her grandmother, Pellegrina. Abilene clings to Edward, and he “wished that she would not hold him so tight. To be clutched so fiercely often resulted in wrinkled clothing” (38).

Two young boys on the ship interrogate Abilene concerning Edward. They grab him from the chair he’s sitting on and begin tossing him back and forth, teasing Abilene. She tackles one of the boys in an attempt to get Edward, but instead the rabbit is thrown off the deck and into the ocean. 

As Edward is flying through the sky and about to fall into the ocean, he ponders his own mortality: “How does a China rabbit die? Can a china rabbit drown? Is my hat still on my head?”(47). He hears Abilene yelling for him to come back: “Come back? Of all the ridiculous things to shout” (47).

He falls into the ocean: “His painted-on eyes witnessed the blue water turning to green and then to blue again. They watched as it finally became as black as night” (49). Lying face-down on the ocean floor, Edward is afraid. 

Edward is hopeful that Abilene will come find him, and he pretends that he’s back in the house on Egypt Street, waiting for her to come home from school: “Hours passed. And then days. And weeks. And months. Abilene did not come” (53).

Edward has nothing to do while lying face-down in the ocean, so he thinks “about the stars. He remembered what they looked like from his bedroom window” (54). He wonders if they’re still shining even though he can’t see them. He also thinks about the princess from Pellegrina’s story and wonders why she was turned into a warthog.

He blames Pellegrina for his current state, feeling, in some way, “that she was responsible for what had happened to him. It was almost as if it was she, and not the boys, who had thrown Edward overboard” (54). He believes Pellegrina is the witch from the princess story and that she is punishing him, but he doesn’t know why.

A ferocious storm blows in and lifts Edward from the bottom of the sea, flinging him into the air. For a moment, Edward glimpsed “the light of an angry and bruised sky; the wind rushed through his ears. It sounded to him like Pellegrina laughing” (55). He falls back into the water and is about to sink back into the depths when he is caught in a fisherman’s net.

The fisherman, an old man, says that he will give the rabbit to Nellie and let “her fix it up and set it to rights. Give it to some child” (57).