46 pages • 1 hour read
Susan CrandallWhistling Past the Graveyard
Susan CrandallFiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2013A 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 1-6 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: This section discusses racism, racist language and violence, murder, child abuse, spousal abuse, animal abuse, sexual assault, and fatphobia.
Jane Starla Claudelle, who goes by her middle name, is nine years old. She lives in Cayuga Springs, Mississippi, with her grandmother Mamie, who doesn’t understand her. Mamie wants Starla to turn into a “lady,” and she regularly hits and punishes Starla for her “sassy” behavior. Mamie idolizes Jackie Kennedy and insists on calling Starla by her first name, Jane, not her middle name, which, to her, sounds vulgar. Starla’s dad, Porter, likes her middle name, but Porter works on an oil rig on the Gulf Coast.
Starla’s mother, Lucinda, wants people to call her Lulu, and Lulu left Starla and Porter when Starla was a baby. Lulu is in Nashville, trying to become a famous singer. Inside a magnolia tree fort, Starla reads Lulu’s birthday letters and recalls pleasant memories.
Near the end of June 1963, Starla sneaks off to explore an allegedly haunted house, where a wobbly board ensnares her until police free her the next day. Mamie grounds Starla for a week as a result, but she says that if Starla behaves, she can attend the July 4 parade. When 12-year-old Jimmy Sellers acts like he’ll hit five-year-old roller skater Priscilla Panichelli (Starla calls her “Prissy Pants”) with his bike, Starla breaks Jimmy’s nose. Consequently, Starla can’t attend the parade.
Chapter 2 Summary
Mamie forces Starla to walk Jimmy’s bike back to his house. She then orders Starla to apologize to Jimmy and his mother, Mrs. Sellers. Back at home, Mamie creates a long list of chores for Starla to complete. Mamie heads to the July 4 festival, and Starla watches her neighbors, the LeCounts, leave for the festival. There are four LeCount children. Ernestine, the LeCounts’ Black domestic worker, holds the baby, Teddy, on the porch. Jimmy rides by on his bike and gives Starla “the finger.”
Disobeying Mamie, Starla leaves for the parade. She blends in with the other children so that no one notices her. Afterward, she meets her best friend, Patti Lynn Todd. Patti has a sister, three brothers, and a dog. Patti and Starla play at the park until Mrs. Sellers drives up and tries to force Starla into her car so that she can take Starla to Mamie.
Starla evades Mrs. Sellers and runs away. She decides to hitch a ride to Nashville, where she believes she can live with her mother. In Cayuga Springs, people treat Lulu like a harmful secret, but Starla is proud of her mom.
Eula Littleton, a skinny Black woman, picks up Starla in a truck. Starla tells a lie about why she’s hitchhiking, and Eula gives Starla a Mason jar of water and asks Starla to hold a crying baby, James. In Starla’s arms, the baby stops crying.
Chapter 3 Summary
Eula is a domestic worker, but she switches families frequently. Her dad is abusive, and her mom died when she was young. Eula’s education stopped when she was 11 because Black education ended after eighth grade. Eula likes caring for babies, but Starla wonders if Eula should bring James back to his home. Eula keeps him for the night.
Eula drives Starla to her house, where she lives with her husband, Wallace, who accuses Eula of stealing James. Starla lies and claims that Eula is looking after him while his family attends the July 4 festival. Wallace doesn’t believe Starla. He tries to hit Eula, but she ducks and escorts Starla and James into their house and locks them in a room.
Chapter 4 Summary
With a bruise on her wrist, Eula reappears to give James baby formula. Starla tries to leave, but Wallace makes her stay. Starla surveys the home and notices a Bible but not a TV, radio, or refrigerator. Eula and Wallace don’t have electricity, so they store butter in a springhouse.
Eula has been pregnant, but the babies died, so Eula wants to keep James. She saw a Black girl leave a white baby at a white church. She didn’t notice his skin color, but now she can’t take him back. Eula thinks that James is a part of God’s plan. Wallace drinks moonshine and claims that the baby will “kill” them.
At night, Starla hears Wallace tell Eula not to argue with him—they have no other choice. Eula begs him to change his mind, and Starla wishes she were home in Cayuga Springs.
Chapter 5 Summary
Starla narrates a memory from second grade. She saw Mamie “stuffing something” into the trash. Creating a reason to investigate, Starla realized that Mamie had thrown away a box from Lulu. Feigning illness, Starla took a bath and opened the package––a tiny record from her mom. At Patti Lynn’s house, they listened to the record, and Starla committed the song to memory.
Back in the present at Eula’s house, Starla hums Lulu’s song. After breakfast, Starla tries to leave again. Due to her white skin, Starla thinks “she’s the boss,” and she suggests that her mother will summon the police if she doesn’t get to Nashville. Wallace isn’t intimated, and he drags her back to the house.
Chapter 6 Summary
Wallace locks Starla, James, and Eula in the bedroom. Starla hears dogs, and Eula says that the dogs belong to Shorty, who lost an arm after a racist attack. Eula assures Starla that they’ll be fine and that Wallace is a good person. Eula met Wallace when she was 16 in a movie theater. He grew up gardening and had a decent job at the charcoal factory, but his “pride” hurts him.
Eula thinks that Starla needs a mother and wants the four of them to form a “secret family.” Starla falls asleep and doesn’t hear Wallace unlock the door, but she smells Eula baking pies.
Chapters 1-6 Analysis
Whistling Past the Graveyard addresses numerous perspectives during the civil rights movement, across both racial and geographical divides. Wishful Thinking Versus Confronting Adversity thus plays a central role in the novel, and in this section, characterization of the players is established as a starting point, leaving room for an exploration of this theme as the novel progresses. Starla, the Cayuga Springs townspeople, and Eula all embody this theme in different ways.
Starla is pugnacious and neither afraid nor nervous when facing volatile situations, an established character trait that will be tested and explored as she is exposed to the complexity of discrimination and injustice during this time period. After Jimmy almost hits Priscilla with his bike, Starla goes after him and breaks his nose. She doesn’t let his boorish behavior slide—she punishes him. In many ways, Starla confronts adversity head-on in a fearless manner without time and space for passive optimism.
Concerning the townspeople, Starla says, “Everybody in Cayuga Springs treated my momma like a secret” (32). Her grandmother, father, teachers, and neighbors act like Lulu doesn’t exist—an iteration of wishful thinking, as their suppression of Lulu doesn’t minimize her impact on Starla. This detail establishes the people of Cayuga Springs, including Mamie, to be nonconfrontational, passive personalities, which will conflict with later representations of those directly involved in affecting change.
The character of Eula alternates between confrontation and wishful thinking in this section. On the one hand, she doesn’t ignore James. She sees the abandoned baby and takes action. However, Eula also doesn’t heed the precarious reality of her situation. She’s a Black woman, and James is white; the racial dynamics of the South make the pairing unsustainable. Wallace has no illusions about the trouble that James could bring. With violence and lethal threats, Wallace addresses the situation with James. Eula isn’t ready to face the truth about Wallace or James. After Wallace abuses her, Starla observes, “She acted like the whole ugliness with Wallace hadn’t even happened. But that bruise said everything she wasn’t” (54). Eula, in many ways, is a wishful thinker and optimistic to a fault.
The Impact of Racism on Individuals and Communities interacts most directly with the characters of Wallace and Starla in this section. Wallace wants the baby gone because a Black woman taking a white baby could lead to stark consequences for him and Eula. As Wallace tells Eula, “That baby gonna kill us. If’n you wasn’t so gawwwddamn stupid, we wouldn’t be in this mess” (65). Arguably, the community’s brutal racism spurs Wallace’s abusive behavior. The racist norms also influence Starla, leading her to think, “I am white. I am the boss of what happens here” (83). Still, Starla’s skin color doesn’t give her power over Wallace. He tyrannizes Starla, Eula, and James. The racist norms provide context for his behavior, but they don’t excuse it. Starla’s thoughts don’t reflect her individual beliefs as much as her community’s prejudice. Starla regurgitates a norm.
Eula and Starla also speak to The Complexity of Familial Relationships. Starla lives with her grandmother while her father works on an oil rig, and her mother pursues a singing career in Nashville. Starla wants a family that adheres to the conventional image of family. She believes, “Lulu was gonna be famous all right, and then she’d come back and get me and Daddy. We were gonna live in a big house in Nashville” (13). Starla isn’t open to the intricacies of family dynamics, but Eula embraces them. She thinks that she, Starla, James, and Wallace can be family, telling Starla, “We be a family now, us four—a secret family” (94). Starla isn’t convinced. Sticking to her normative notion of a family, she tells Eula, “The good Lord already gave me a momma” (95).
Crandall uses diction to reinforce the identity traits of the characters throughout the novel, a method introduced in this section. Starla comes from the South, so she often speaks in Southern American English, using words like “momma” and pronouncing a word like “sending” as “sendin’.” Eula is Black and Southern, so she mixes Southern American English with African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Eula pronounces a word like “gift” as “gif.” As Starla and Eula are expressive, considerate characters, their respective dialects demonstrate that Standard American English doesn’t have a monopoly on thoughtful discourse.
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