67 pages • 2 hours read
Kate DiCamilloThe Tiger Rising
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2001A 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 21-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 21 Summary
When Rob and Sistine return to the Kentucky Star, Sistine is silent and subdued. Rob walks Sistine to the laundry room to call her mother. They meet Willie May in the parking lot. Rob introduces Sistine, who is antagonistic toward Willie May, and speaks to her with a “hard and mean” voice (82). Willie May tells Sistine that she is full of anger, like Willie May herself. Sistine hotly denies being angry and Willie May calls her an “angry liar” (82). Rob watches this exchange anxiously because he wants his only two friends to get along. When Sistine accepts a stick of gum from Willie May, Rob is relieved. Willie May thinks it is funny that God made the two of them friends: Rob who is “full of sorrow,” and Sistine, who is “full of anger” (83). Willie May advises Sistine that no one is going to come rescue her. Sistine says she believes Willie May is a prophetess, and Rob thinks that’s probably true.
Chapter 22 Summary
In their motel room, Rob’s father discovers the raw meat Rob was going to use to feed the tiger. Rob explains it came from Beauchamp. This angers Rob’s father, who thinks Beauchamp is disrespecting him by suggesting that he can’t afford to buy enough food for him and Rob. He stares angrily at his gun case. Rob doesn’t know how to calm his father down—that was something his mother used to do. Instead, Rob goes outside to whittle under the light of the Kentucky Star sign. He remembers a time he and his mother looked up at the underside of a big tree, observing the sun shining through the green leaves. Rob told his mother it looked like the “first-ever green” (87) and his mother agreed. Rob wonders if Cricket was the same color green and finds that he is whittling the little bird. In the motel room, Rob sees that the meat is gone. He looks at his sleeping father and thinks how he has changed.
Chapter 23 Summary
Rob gives Willie May the carving of Cricket, worrying and hoping that he made it right and that it looks like the real Cricket. Willie May closes her eyes and holds out her hand as Rob asks, but doesn’t open her eyes when he puts the carving into it. She can sense by its shape that it is Cricket. She tells Rob “this the right bird” (91). Rob says that now Willie May doesn’t have to dream about Cricket. Willie May is impressed with Rob’s skill and says the carving “soothes her heart” (92). Rob explains that his mother taught him how to whittle. He spends the rest of the morning helping Willie May clean rooms but is conscious of Beauchamp’s keys in his pocket and knows Sistine will want him to open the tiger’s cage.
Chapter 24 Summary
Sistine arrives after school wearing an orange dress. She is bloody and scraped up and Rob knows she has been fighting again. Rob advises Sistine that she doesn’t have to fight, but Sistine declares that she wants to fight and even starts fights. Sistine plans to ask Willie May, “the prophetess” (94), what they should do about the tiger. Rob doesn’t want to tell Willie May about the tiger, but Sistine ignores him and runs to find Willie May. They surprise Willie May while she is vacuuming, and she rounds on them with clenched fists. She still holds the bird Rob made her. Sistine thinks it looks alive and wonders if Rob made it. Sistine asks Willie May, hypothetically speaking, that if she knew something was unfairly locked up and she had the keys, would she set it free? Willie May asks what they have caged up, and Rob admits it is a tiger. Willie May tells them to show her.
Chapter 25 Summary
As Willie May watches the tiger pace, she is disgusted with Beauchamp, the “fool that caged this tiger up” (98). Sistine wants Willie May to tell Rob to open the cage. Willie May refuses, explaining that they need to think about what will happen if they release the tiger. Sistine argues that the tiger will live like the panthers. Willie May counters that there are no more panthers. Sistine is angry, but Willie May argues that the only thing Rob and Sistine can do is “let it be” (99), even if it doesn’t seem fair. Sistine again claims her father will help her free the tiger, but Rob realizes that her father isn’t coming for her and he tells Sistine so. Sistine calls Rob a liar and a “sissy” and that she and everybody at school hates him (100). Sistine stalks away. Rob is hurt, but Willy May tells him Sistine doesn’t mean what she said. Willy May is upset with for Beauchamp, for caging the tiger and for getting Rob involved. She says she would “love to see this tiger rise on up out of this cage” (101). Hearing those words, Rob understands what he must do.
Chapters 21-25 Analysis
Willie May recognizes a kindred spirit in Sistine: Both struggle with anger. Willie May understands that Sistine’s anger is a kind of cage. Sistine’s fighting is a way of releasing her emotion. While Rob suppresses his emotions so deeply that they emerge in a physical rash, Sistine does the opposite, expressing her anger and frustration in aggression. Willie May’s advice to Sistine is like the advice she gives Rob. As Rob needs to let his sadness “rise on up” (37), Sistine needs to rescue herself (84) and rise above the anger that she’s allowing to control her. Sistine needs to acknowledge the truth that her father, whom she loves, truly is lying and is not coming to get her.
Rob struggles to understand his own father. He tries to reconcile his father’s “anger and his quiet” with “the way he used to sing and smile” (88). Rob’s father is angry for having to work for Beauchamp, whom he says, “makes me work for less than nothing” (86). Rob’s father feels inadequate: He believes that Beauchamp’s “gift” of rotten meat is an insult to his ability as a parent to provide for his family. Rob’s father even considers taking violent action against Beauchamp, to “teach him a lesson” (86). Confronted with the temperamental reaction of his father, Rob retreats. Rob is unable to calm his father, despite being able to comfort Sistine earlier. His father’s anger sparks another memory of Caroline, and Rob recalls how she told him “we see the world the same” (87). Rob does not share his father’s or Sistine’s outward aggression.
When Sistine turns her anger on Rob, seemingly withdrawing her friendship, Rob pulls back into himself. He returns to shrugging rather than verbalizing. His rash flares up, and he scratches it deeply, “trying to get to the bottom of the itch that was always there” (101). Sistine’s rejection is painful because, against his cautious nature, Rob had allowed himself to be vulnerable by sharing his personal feelings with her.
The power of words is evident again in these chapters. Rob feels Sistine’s insulting words hurt him “like shards of broken glass” that he is afraid will penetrate “deep” inside him (100). Words have the power to both build and destroy. Although perhaps not a divining prophetess, Willie May does speak God’s truth: the reality that the best thing to do, for the tiger and them, is to leave it alone. This truth hurts Sistine, who wishes to believe that they can save the tiger. Rob also injures Sistine when he recognizes a different truth, that her father will not save her, or the tiger. Rob has an epiphany of his own when he connects his sadness to the tiger.
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