64 pages • 2 hours read
Michael NorthropTrapped
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2011A 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 5-7
Chapter 5 Summary
Weems, Pete, and Jason work on the go-cart for a while. About an hour later, they hear a “clacking, banging sound” (28). Les Goddard, a thug and bully, is outside the shop and trying to get in. He’s looking for a ride home. Weems and the others are afraid of Les, and Weems suggests Les go to the gym and talk to Mr. Gossell.
The three are relieved when Les leaves. They check for cell service again and find none. They decide to head over to the gym in case Jason’s dad comes early, or “shows up at all” (33).
Chapter 6 Summary
There are four other students and one teacher at the gym, “the most there would ever be” (34). Weems looks outside and shockingly finds no cars on the freeway. He acknowledges that the odds of anyone coming to get them are slim. Aside from Les and Gossell, the others there are Krista O’Rea, Julie Anders/Enders (Weems isn’t sure what her last name is), and Elijah James. Weems has a major crush on Krista, doesn’t really notice Julie, and is weirded out by Elijah.
Chapter 7 Summary
The group tries and fails to call or text anyone for a bit. When they mostly give up and resolve to wait, there’s an odd sense of tension in the air about whether anyone will show up and who will get out. Weems is glad he’s waiting for the same person as Jason and Pete because it means he “wouldn’t be the last one here” (42).
Several hours later, a truck appears on the freeway, slowly working its way toward the school. Weems feels “like we were back in touch with the world” (46). The truck stops moving, and a red light flashes near it. Gossell goes out to investigate and doesn’t come back. A while later, Les says the flashing light they saw was a distress call. Julie asks why he didn’t say anything before Gossell left, and Les shrugs off the question. No one says it, but Weems thinks how Les may have indirectly murdered Gossell.
Eventually, the truck lights disappear behind the falling snow. Weems relays how the group thought this was “as bad as it could get” (52). They were wrong. The chapter ends with the power going out.
Chapters 5-7 Analysis
Chapter 5 introduces Les. Weems views Les as a scary bully, and for most of the book, Les upholds those characteristics. In Chapter 6, Weems places Krista, Julie, and Elijah into the categories they’ll fill for the rest of the story. Krista is attractive, something Weems rarely misses an opportunity to remind the reader of. Even at the very end of the book when Weems acknowledges this isn’t a story about how he gets the girl, Weems still hopes Krista likes him. Weems has little to say about Julie. Like Pete, she fades into the background, which foreshadows Julie and Pete becoming a couple while trapped. Elijah dresses funny and seems intense. Weems knows nothing else about him but lumps Elijah into the category of “creepy kid.”
Mr. Gossell braves the storm to try and get help from the truck on the freeway. He’s not seen again, and Weems does not reveal his fate by the end of the book. In later chapters, Weems wonders about his mother, Pete’s dad, and other characters periodically mentioned throughout the story. Like Gossell, no information comes up about how these absent characters fair the storm. In Chapter 1, Weems’s retrospective narrates that the storm still appears at times on T.V., which implies he’s looking back on events from long after the storm’s end. This implies Weems knows what happened to the absent characters but withholds the information for suspense. Weems offers other hints at the future, which means he is either an unreliable or selective narrator.
The truck represents the first casualty to the nor’easter (antagonist). It becomes stuck and eventually buried in the snow, along with the driver and anyone else inside. The truck’s fate foreshadows the school succumbing to the storm. The building takes its first hit at the end of Chapter 7 when the power goes out and doesn’t come back on.
