100 pages • 3 hours read
Rick RiordanThe Red Pyramid
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2010A 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.
Chapters 19-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary: “A Picnic in the Sky”
With the fruit bats and Egyptian warriors in pursuit, Carter, Sadie, and Bast run to the Louvre, where Sadie uses an obelisk to open a portal to America with Isis’s aid. Carter goes through, but the guards catch up before Sadie and Bast can follow. They warn Sadie not to trust Bast because “she abandoned her post” (237). With Bast looking grief-stricken and Carter already through the portal, Sadie ignores the guards and follows her brother.
Sadie, Carter, and Bast arrive at the top of the Washington Monument—the largest obelisk in North America. Opening two portals in one day has left Sadie drained, and the group hunkers down for the night. Carter shows them the book he found in Desjardins’s library, but none of them can read it. Bast conjures a picnic dinner and explains what the guard meant by abandoning her post. When she was imprisoned, she was with a creature of chaos, and her “post” was battling that monster forever. Before Sadie can ask anything else, Bast leaves to scout the area for threats.
Sadie and Carter are sure Bast isn’t telling them something. They try to work out what their parents might have been really trying to do the night their mom died, but neither comes up with anything. Sadie goes to sleep, and Carter keeps watch, both knowing they are “in serious trouble with no clear plan” (246).
Chapter 20 Summary: “I Visit the Star-Spangled Goddess”
After she falls asleep, Sadie’s ba brings her to see Nut, the sky goddess. Nut appeals to Sadie about the gods. Now that they are set free, they will not be imprisoned again, and Sadie “must make the magicians understand this” (251). Sadie knows the magicians won’t listen because Set must be stopped, and Nut tells her that Set once fought on the same side as his fellow gods. Despite everything he’s done, he is still Nut’s son—part of her family—and “perhaps the way to defeat him is not the way you would imagine” (253).
Nut advises Sadie to seek out Thoth in Memphis, Tennessee, giving her three plain tickets and guaranteed safe passage that far. Nut also tells Sadie to consider where Nephthys, the fifth god and Set’s wife, is and asks Sadie to deliver an envelope to her husband, Geb—the earth god. Before Nut sends Sadie back to her body, she warns her one of Set’s minions is almost on top of them.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Aunt Kitty to the Rescue”
On the ground, the Set animal, an amalgamation of different creatures, prowls before climbing the Washington Monument. The kids turn into birds to fly to the airport, and Bast leaps out the window to keep the animal distracted. At the airport, Carter finds it more difficult to change back to human, and Sadie gets stuck again. Carter calms her down and carries her on his arm, promising “we’ll get you out of this” (261). He brings her into the airport, where a police officer stops him. Bast arrives wearing fancy clothes, pretending she’s Carter’s aunt and that they’re going to a falconry competition in Memphis, producing paperwork for bird-Sadie to get on the plane. Confused, the cop lets them go, and Bast drags Carter away.
The Set animal isn’t far behind, so they must board immediately. Bast instructs Carter to store his things in the Duat by envisioning a storage container of some kind. Carter pictures a high school locker, gives it a combination lock, and puts his stuff inside.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Leroy Meets the Locker of Doom”
Carter, Sadie, and Bast go through airport security but don’t make it onto their plane before the Set animal catches up. The animal rips through the line, throwing people aside. Bast urges Carter to run, but Carter refuses. He led the animal here, and now he “had to fix it” (268). He tells Bast to take Sadie and get to their gate before pulling his sword out of the Duat.
Carter stands his ground against the advancing Set animal, which he nicknames Leroy because “Set animal” is too long. Carter transforms into his falcon avatar, but the animal charges, knocking him down. Carter opens his Duat locker and uses the last of his avatar strength to hurl the animal inside before running for the plane. He makes it just in time, takes his seat, and passes out.
While he sleeps, his ba goes to Phoenix and shows him the inside of a hollowed-out mountain, where Set’s minions build a pyramid. Set tells one of his demons that construction must be complete by sunup on his birthday, two days from now. The demon suggests that Set capture his other siblings and create enough chaos energy to be the ruler of all the worlds. Set agrees, making it sound like he thought of the idea, and looks straight up at Carter with a wicked smile. Carter tries to fly away but can’t and sits there “as Set reached out to grab me” (276).
Chapters 19-22 Analysis
Throughout The Red Pyramid, pyramids and obelisks play a large role in Egyptian magic. Both are symbols of the ancient culture and can be used to open portals, among other rituals. Riordan brings Egyptian culture and the story into modern times by making the Washington Monument the most powerful obelisk in North America. Though the monument wasn’t built until the 1800s and has nothing to do with Egyptian mythology, its obelisk shape gives it power that magicians can harness to maintain order and banish chaos.
The appearance of the Washington Monument here foreshadows Sadie moving the final battle with Set to Washington D.C. It is likely that Sadie meets Nut while sleeping in the monument because she is close to the sky, which makes her more accessible to Nut’s power. Nut’s information about the gods is more foreshadowing. The letter she gives Sadie means the group will encounter Geb on their quest. Nut’s observations that Set is of chaos, not evil, foreshadows how Sadie will strike a bargain with the god at the end of the book. Nut’s encouragement for Sadie to consider Nephthys foreshadows that the fifth goddess is back in the world and being hosted by Zia.
The Duat locker Carter creates in Chapter 21 foreshadows the real locker the kids attach to the Duat at the end of the book. It also shows one of the myriad uses the Duat has for magicians. While there is no mention in Egyptian myth of the Duat being used in this way, Riordan likely used this as a way to bring the story into modern times, and he may have based the Duat locker on similar holding containers, such as the bag of holding from Dungeons and Dragons—a magical bag that can hold much more than it’s physical appearance suggests. Since Carter returns the Set animal to the Duat through the locker and the animal does not reemerge the next time Carter opens the Duat, it is also likely that the locker can be opened both from Earth and from deeper parts of the Duat.
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