39 pages • 1 hour read
Kate FaganWhat Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaChapters 8-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary: “The Meeting”
Madison returns to campus determined to shift her mindset. She believes that quitting track will change everything, and she writes an inspirational note to herself, “SETBACKS ARE NEEDED TO GET STRONGER” (190). Alone in her dorm room, Madison writes a letter to Dolan explaining her unhappiness and her desire to quit. While she is convinced quitting is the right choice, she obsessively rewrites the letter to make sure she conveys how much consideration she has given this decision. She writes, “running over the past couple months has taken a huge toll on me mentally, emotionally, and physically” (191). She feels a renewed sense of hope while waiting for the meeting and continues to refine the letter.
On Monday morning, Stacy and Mackenzie drive into Philadelphia to provide moral support for Madison’s meeting that day. The three of them visit the grocery store and stock up on healthy snacks. Madison is full of energy and hopeful about the meeting. Stacy accompanies Madison into the meeting with Coach Dolan. Dolan reassures Madison that she has made a successful transition into being a student athlete. Madison reads her letter out loud. Dolan suggests that a compromise can be found. He suggests a new coach, moving dorm rooms, or taking a break from her training. Stacy recalls that he concluded by saying, “If you want to quit track, that’s your decision, but obviously I would love for you to stay” (206).
Madison seems relieved. She tells Ingrid that she hasn’t quit, and Dolan has solved many of her problems. Stacy and Mackenzie leave, and Madison and Ingrid go to another friend’s dorm room for drinks. Madison goes to practice that week and texts a friend, “But I went to practice yesterday and really just didn’t enjoy it. Like I don’t think things are gonna change. I just don’t know how to express that to him without feeling guilty or like a disappointment to him” (209).
“Dreamscapes”
Fagan recounts a dream she has about calling Madison on FaceTime.
Chapter 9 Summary: “The Picture”
On January 17, 2014, Emma’s mother, Lorraine Sullivan, is alarmed by a photograph posted by Madison to Instagram that she feels is “eerie.” The image was one in a series taken of Rittenhouse Square in downtown Philadelphia, capturing lights on sparse trees; Madison edited the final shot, brightening the colors and giving it a “spectacular” quality. Madison, Fagan says, tended towards cryptic posts with quotes. Overall, her images had a yearning or searching energy. Fagan describes social media as fueled by anticipation, an escape from the real—often mundane—world. She reflects on Madison’s heavy filtering of the image as a desire to control the perception of the world, to make it more beautiful, intense, happy.
“Anticipation”
Fagan recounts that she quit playing professional basketball in Ireland at the age of 22. Before returning to the United States, she goes backpacking through Europe. Fagan describes her anticipation before visiting the Colosseum in Rome and the disappointment she felt in once she arrived. Fagan recounts her disappointment to a friend, who reacts with displeasure at her candid assessment. Fagan realizes the shortcoming may not have been the Colosseum but inside herself. The next time she tells her story, she says the Colosseum was amazing, hiding how she really felt. She writes, “I tell this story to illustrate that all of us feel an obligation to optimism and happiness when we’re around others” (228). The desire to be superficial and upbeat prevents genuine honesty. Fagan recounts her one moment of crushing anxiety, reflecting on how much Madison must have struggled with her despair.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Spruce and 15th”
Madison is walking through downtown Philadelphia when she runs into
Eric Lambinus, the Lehigh women’s soccer coach. Eric finds Madison buying gifts for her family and friends. Madison spoke to her father earlier that day about finding a therapist in Philadelphia. Madison had plans to see Ingrid that night, but she stopped responding to text messages from her friends that afternoon. Eric and Madison speak briefly and then part ways. Eric goes to a local restaurant for dinner, and Madison enters a parking garage at the corner of Spruce and 15th. An hour and a half later, the coach and his friends leave the restaurant and find police cars blocking the street.
Before leaving her dorm that morning, Madison made her bed and cleaned her room. She left a note saying: “I don’t know who I am anymore. Trying. Trying. Trying. I’m sorry. I love you… sorry again… sorry again… sorry again… How did this happen?” (246). Madison wrote a second note and left it inside her bag, alongside gifts for her friends and family. The note says:
I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out, and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in. For you mom… the necklaces… for you, Nana & Papa… Gingersnaps (always reminds me of you)… For you Ingrid… The Happiness Project. And Dad… the Godiva chocolate truffles. I love you all… I’m sorry. I love you (246).
The first two lines quote Virginia Woolf, who also committed suicide.
Madison walks up nine flights of stairs to the top of a parking garage. She drops her bag of gifts in the parking garage and jumps off the building, committing suicide. Madison leaves a photograph of herself as a child inside a copy of Reconstructing Amelia, a book with a Gone Girl-esque plot twist in which a woman is pushed off the roof of her prep school. Steve Dolan calls Stacy and tells her something has happened to Madison. The news slowly travels to Madison’s family and friends.
“The Rules of Suicide”
Fagan meets with Dese’Rae Stage, a suicide survivor and suicide awareness activist. They discuss the ethics of writing about suicide, and Dese’Rae says that it’s important not to reduce suicide victims to their deaths.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Shattered”
Madison’s friends and family try to make sense of her suicide. Jim identifies Madison’s body and is given the bag of gifts she left for her family. Jim is told that Madison was sober when she died. They discover that Madison deleted her internet history, reflecting a desire to control her own narrative. The choice to give gifts to her family reveals her careful planning. Fagan writes that even in death, “Maddy apparently still cared about projecting a collected, determined image” (276).
There is an outpouring of grief among her friends and family. Fagan concludes that we will never understand why Madison committed suicide, but that Madison’s story can help other people. She writes, “we can do this, learn everything we can, how to talk to others about their pain or our own, in the hope that fewer people get caught in this same, fierce swirl” (276).
Chapters 7-11 Analysis
In the final section, Madison is pushed to a crisis point. Madison has done well academically, and her coach is pleased with her progress. Stacy reflects that Madison’s “panic about first semester was a monster of her creation; she had given this monster life, and she could kill it, too” (202). However, Madison is not comforted by her coach’s reassurances, highlighting the persistence of depression. Fagan takes great care to articulate that track was not the reason Madison killed herself. Her coach responds thoughtfully and tries to find a solution that allows her to process her feelings while remaining a student athlete. Still, Fagan writes, “But Maddy may not have felt empowered; she may only have felt the walls of the cage taking a new shape around her” (206). Had Madison quit track, the clues suggest, the core problem of depression would still be there.
The tension between how we want to be seen and who we are runs throughout the book. Filtering becomes an important theme in this section. In Chapter 9, Fagan uses a heavily edited photograph of Rittenhouse Square to analyze Madison’s inner turmoil. Fagan writes:
The benches go from dull brown to a fiery red; the lights morph from small pops to glowing, gorgeous lanterns. And the night behind the foreground went from looking just like any other to appearing as something spectacular—a city park placed underwater, submerged, radiating. This was not a picture of the real world, but a picture of what Maddy wished the real world looked like (221).
Fagan links the desire to make things more beautiful or intense on Instagram to how we filter the world through our own perception. Throughout the book, Madison’s depression becomes a filter she cannot escape. When her coach praises her success, she filters his praise through her perception of struggle and failure, and she does not internalize her achievement.
Another symbol is a mural outside of the parking garage at Spruce and 15th. Titled “Passing Through,” the mural is made up of fragments of phrases. Madison collected quotes throughout her life, and Fagan finds a symbolic resonance between the broken and fragmented words in the mural and Madison’s mental state.
Kimberly McCreight’s Reconstructing Amelia (2013) is a more ambiguous reference. In the young adult novel, Amelia, a hardworking 15-year-old, is found dead, presumably having committed suicide by jumping off the roof of her prep school. Her mother, Kate, investigates her death and discovers Amelia was murdered. It is unclear why Madison left a photograph of herself as a child within the book. Fagan reflects, “Maybe all Madison was trying to say was that she saw a version of herself in Amelia, in the perfectly crafted veneer that could never feel like an honest reflection of her interior life” (248).
