45 pages • 1 hour read
Alan ArmstrongWhittington
Alan ArmstrongFiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2005A 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 38-45Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 38 Summary: “A Token for Mary”
Dick sets off aboard the Unicorn. Dick’s cat instructs him to send a token to Mary with this message: “If you don’t know me, you know nobody” (162). Dick has a small seashell engraved with Mary’s face and sends it to Fitzwarren with instructions to have it delivered to Mary without telling her who it is from.
Chapter 39 Summary: “Gent Arrives”
Gent, a male duck, comes to the barn, attracting the Lady’s attention; soon after, she lays eggs and hatches ducklings. Whittington also becomes a parent when the cat up the road whom he’s been seeing has kittens.
Ben begins Reading Recovery. Miss O’Brian helps him manage his frustration in addition to improving his reading skills, and Ben’s blow-ups stop.
Chapter 40 Summary: “A Rescue”
One of Whittington’s kittens tangles herself in a string dangling from a hay bale. The string wraps around her neck, choking her. The Old One gnaws her free, saving her life. “Tit for tat,” he responds to the Lady’s thanks, echoing the words of the rat in the fable.
Chapter 41 Summary: “Dick’s Cat Is Lost at Sea”
Dick’s cat falls overboard during a particularly powerful storm and is lost at sea, leaving behind two kittens. Dick nurses the kittens himself and raises them on goat’s milk. On land at Constantinople, Dick makes many advantageous trades for silks and jewels before returning to England. Meanwhile, Fitzwarren has passed Dick’s token to Mary as requested. Dick learns that Mary’s husband died a few months prior, as did Mary’s father, Sir Louis.
Chapter 42 Summary: “Mary”
Dick and Mary reunite, eventually marrying and having a daughter together. Dick lives to an advanced age and becomes lord mayor of London. With his wealth, he founds a public library, a hospital, an almshouse for the poor, and irrigation to transport clean water to all the people of the town. For the rest of his life, he is accompanied by a cat. Whittington explains that Dick is not remembered for his wealth, but his charity—and that he owes it all to his first cat.
Chapter 43 Summary: “Ben’s Triumph”
Thanks to Ben’s hard work at Reading Recovery, he is promoted with the rest of his class. Abby, Ben, and all the barn animals celebrate.
Chapter 44 Summary: “Life in the Barn Continues”
The Lady falls into a depression when Gent flies away with the rest of the ducks for the winter. Whittington, Abby, Ben, and the other barn animals rouse her by telling stories about the impact she’s had on their lives, and she concludes that although she is sad that she cannot join Gent, it means more to her to stay in the barn where she is needed.
Chapter 45 Summary: “The Last Warm Afternoon of Autumn”
Whittington takes his kittens to see his first boy, intending to leave his daughter with him. Ben compares learning to read to being born, saying it is like “coming out of the dark” (185). In the barn, the notes from his very first reading lesson remain as evidence of how far he’s come.
Chapters 38-45 Analysis
Armstrong uses the final chapters to resolve all plot threads. Whittington reaches the end of Dick’s story, which concludes with Dick finding happiness with a family and later giving back to his community. Meanwhile, Whittington and Ben also achieve their goals and resolve their conflicts. Ben overcomes both his reading and emotional challenges through Reading Recovery, while Whittington creates a family of his own in Chapter 39. Chapter 45 even offers a resolution to Whittington’s former loss as he takes one of his kittens back to his first boy, offering closure to the unhealed grief Whittington carried from losing his previous home. The resolution to Whittington’s story suggests the power of Finding Healing Through Community and Cooperation, as he achieved this through the support of his new home in the barn.
Dick faces a hard loss in Chapter 41 when he loses his cat at sea. The loss of Dick’s cat symbolizes his maturation: While his cat acted as a tool to help him achieve commercial success and supported him in his emotional growth (such as prompting him to write to Mary), she now vanishes at the point that Dick has made mature decisions for himself, symbolizing that he has reached his full development. Dick’s story concludes in Chapter 42, and Whittington’s final words on Dick’s story reinforce the values of community and helping others: “He is not remembered because he died rich. He is remembered because he gave away everything. And everything he had to give away he owed to his cat” (179). Whittington’s statement emphasizes that Dick’s importance arose from the fact that he took care of his community, reinforcing the novel’s theme on the values of supporting others and contributing to community.
The importance of community is also reflected in the transformation of the Old One and the rats. The foreshadowing from Chapter 13 via the use of the fable pays off in Chapter 40, when the Old One saves Whittington’s kitten from strangulation. His response to the Lady’s thanks, “Tit for tat” (169), echoes the words of the rat in the fable, reinforcing this connection. This also indirectly supports The Power of Storytelling—the incident presents storytelling not just as providing models for growth and opportunities for broadening one’s mind, but as a tool that facilitates cooperation and mutual trust.
Chapter 45 provides resolution for Ben, simultaneously concluding all of the major themes. Ben achieves his goals through his hard work, illustrating Triumph Through Perseverance: In Chapter 43, Ben announces that he’s passed Reading Recovery and can advance with the rest of his class, demonstrating the success that his perseverance has granted him. The role of Finding Healing Through Community and Cooperation in helping Ben achieve these goals is apparent when the Lady says that they’ve all had “a hand, a wing, and a paw” (181) in Ben’s success. Ben’s final comparisons of the act of reading to “coming out of the dark” and “being born” (185) reinforce the novel’s overall statement on The Power of Storytelling, depicting reading as an essential tool for helping an individual navigate their world.
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