Blackbird House

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2004

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Chapters 11-12

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 5 Summary: “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair”

The novel toggles again to a first-person perspective. The motherless Violet Cross reveals that she lives in Blackbird House with Huley, her younger sister, and Arthur, her father. Arthur is a fishman who works with George West, a boy who is a year younger than Violet. Violet belabors the fact that Huley is the beautiful sister, while Violet has a blotchy birthmark in the shape of a flower on her face. However, she emphasizes that she’s the greedy sister, always wanting more, as is evident in Violet’s voracious reading habits, which continue into adulthood.

Harry Wynn, a man in town, claims to have seen a serpent emerge from the ocean, leaving a four-foot-wide track and the smell of sulfur. When panic ensues, a zoologist from Harvard visits to investigate. One day at low tide, Violet is collecting quahogs (clams) when the professor, Ewan Perkins, arrives. When he notes that the creature is likely seeking freshwater, Violet volunteers to escort him to all the ponds in town; she keeps her head low so that her hat brim covers her birthmark because she feels an instant attraction to the man.

During the week that follows, Violet abandons her chores and reading to take Ewan to each pond, telling him about the plant and animal species that inhabit the area. She even tells him about the white blackbird that many think is a ghost but that she knows is real because she has seen its feathers. The professor is enraptured with her knowledge and intrigued by her appearance, as if she were “something to be studied, understood, learned” (80). Violet soaks up the attention, and they become romantically involved.

Soon, Ewan determines that no sea monster exists and begins packing. Desperate, Violet collects bluefish scales and singes them with fire. George West, who is fishing at the time, observes her doing this but promises to say nothing. Violet presents these scales along with other fabricated traces of the creature to Ewan; he immediately unpacks, excited by the evidence. Ewan camps on the pond’s edge, and during the ensuing days, Violet wears herself out creating additional “evidence.” She gathers milk from the cows at night and discards it. She replicates serpent tracks with a shovel. She plucks whiskers from her horse, singes them, and plants them for Ewan to find. All of this excites him, and he continues to watch for the creature. However, when he kisses Violet now, she notes that it’s “different and darker” (87).

Exhausted from her charades, Violet oversleeps one day and hears Huley and Ewan flirting. Realizing that the professor has no real interest in her, Violet remains in bed, refusing to get up for several days. Both her father and Huley visit, worried. One day, George West stops by to give her an apple cake and bluefish scales that he burned himself. He vows not to tell anyone. Violet hides the scales. That night she dreams of bluefish and swimming so far that she feels as if she’s on the edge of the world. She watches someone she doesn’t know drown, while she remains powerless to help.

The next day, she follows her sister and Ewan to the pond, noting her sister’s fear of the sea creature and her inability to swim. Violet hears and sees the white blackbird in the sky and acknowledges that she lied about its feathers. Without hesitation, Violet emerges and pushes Huley into the water. For a few seconds she stands there, and then she jumps in, grabbing her sister by the waist. While underwater, she wonders what it would be like for her sister to travel the world with Ewan. Then, her thoughts shift to an insect walking across the water, and she ponders telling George West about it. This final thought indicates that she now understands which man truly loves her.

Chapter 6 Summary: “Lionheart”

Written in the third-person omniscient perspective, “Lionheart” begins in 1908, nearly 100 years since the Hadleys inhabited Blackbird House. Violet has married George West, and they now have seven children: four boys and three girls. The eldest, whom Violet named Lion because she felt that he roared when he was born, is kind and intelligent. Lion is well-liked by all, and despite preferring fishing and the outdoors, he’s adept at his studies, particularly mathematics. This doesn’t surprise Violet: She has known since his birth that he’s special. She enjoys listening to him talk about mathematics. Surprisingly, his siblings feel no resentment toward Lion for the extra attention their mother showers on him, because it means that they’re free to do as they please.

When Lion is 20, he’s encouraged to apply for the Crosby Fellowship to Harvard, a scholarship begun by Jack Crosby, a wealthy former resident of the town. Despite completing an application, Lion folds it into his pocket, uncertain whether he wants the scholarship. Returning home, he listens to his siblings playing tag in the forest and feels disconnected from them, even though he desperately wants to belong. Violet finds the application and sets it on the dresser for George to see so that they can discuss it. George suggests that maybe Lion doesn’t want to go to Harvard, and Violet can’t fathom the idea. Then she asks if he ever contemplates the fact that Ewan Perkins, the Harvard zoologist, is Lion’s biological father. When Violet begins to cry, George agrees to talk with his son.

To get Lion alone, George invites him to hunt muskrats. When George broaches the subject, Lion acknowledges that if he applies, he’ll be awarded the fellowship. The young man also suggests that only his father truly understands him, not his mother. George goes silent. He considers telling Lion the truth but quickly realizes that though Ewan is Lion’s biological parent, George has been his father for the past 20 years. Instead, he reminds the boy that his mother would like him to apply. Ultimately, Lion honors his mother’s wishes and receives the fellowship. On the day he leaves, the family and town gather to see him off. Violet returns home to the field of sweet peas, knowing that she’ll never see her beloved son again. When George joins her, she sees the white blackbird fly across the sky and wonders if she made a mistake.

Lion visits occasionally during his four years at Harvard, and then he continues his studies at Oxford before accepting a position teaching mathematics in London. Not until he’s 42 does he meet Helen, an American girl. When he sees her, he envisions the sweet peas back home and immediately falls in love. They marry and have a child, Lion Jr. Three months later, Lion and Helen die in an automobile accident while on vacation. The baby, quiet and content, stays with a sitter at their home for four more weeks until Violet can cross the ocean to gather him: She won’t let anyone else make the journey home with the boy.

Chapters 5-6 Analysis

In earlier chapters, love inspires the characters to move forward through difficult times; however, in Violet’s case, her love for both Ewan and Lion are so consuming that she commits impulsive and regrettable acts, fueling the theme of Love as Motivation in a different way. Violet’s obsession with Ewan and her belief that they’re in love compels her to fabricate evidence of a sea monster to keep him in town. Looking back, she even states, “What happened was my fault, of course” (83). She’s so driven by blind love for him that she impulsively pushes her own sister, who can’t swim and fears the sea monster, into the pond. Ironically, while she’s in the water saving Huley, Violet realizes that George, not Ewan, is her true love. Later in life, Violet’s love for her son motivates her. Lion is smart but enjoys the outdoors more than academics. When George confronts the boy about his mother’s wish for him to apply for the fellowship, Lion states, “‘She doesn’t know me the way you do, Dad […] The way we feel about this place’” (103). Lion connects to nature and the landscape as if it were a part of him. Even though he doesn’t state it explicitly, he uses his feelings about the Blackbird House property as an argument against applying for the fellowship, meaning that he doesn’t want to leave. His mother sees only the academic prowess, not how the geography of the Cape has shaped him and tugged at his heart. Therefore, Violet’s motivation for him to succeed, although coming from a place of love, may not be the right choice. She recognizes this once her son leaves, asking George if she was wrong: “She realized that this one August day divided the before from the after. All at once she knew that Lion wouldn’t be coming back” (104). Despite only wanting the best, she understands that her unwavering determination to see Lion succeed has pushed him away. Throughout her life, Violet’s actions are driven by love, whether real or not, and don’t end in a positive way. Unlike her predecessors, she demonstrates that love as a motivator can be harmful.

The motif of the blackbird, signifying sorrow, and the corresponding theme of Resilience Resulting From Adversity continue to factor prominently in the novel. As a girl, Violet can imitate the blackbird’s call and has seen the elusive white creature. Because of the history of the ghostly bird that initially returned to Coral Hadley as a harbinger of death and sorrow, its reappearance nearly 100 years later foreshadows something similar for Violet. Furthermore, if she can mimic the blackbird, then she herself might embody sorrow and the strength necessary to overcome it. The same white blackbird reappears after her son, Lion, leaves for Harvard: “Something white moved across the sky, a cloud, a puff of milkweed, the snow-colored blackbird that lived up by the pond” (104), which prompts Violet to consider that her love for her son has driven him away. While these repeated sightings of the blackbird indicate sorrow, they also underscore how Violet needs resilience to endure the permanent departure of her son. The magical quality of the bird emphasizes this resilience: Blackbirds typically live only three years (the longest on record was just shy of 16 years old), so the fact that this bird has dwelled on the property for nearly 100 years symbolizes its magical staying power. The bird has remained despite repeated tragedy and sorrow, a motif of resilience still visible to the area’s occupants.

In addition, Lion’s character highlights a trait of many inhabitants of Blackbird House: loneliness. He’s well-loved and successful at all he does, yet he often feels out of place even when participating in family and town events: “His involvement in such day-to-day activities could not change who Lion was. No one understood him. Not really. Not even close” (96). Even though he’s present with others, he feels alone, and different. This feeling is apparent on the day he returns home with the fellowship application, watching as his siblings play tag in the woods: “Here he was, at the age of twenty, a man with extraordinary talents, and yet he felt like crying. He wanted to be just like the rest of them. He wished for it desperately” (100). His inner tears indicate a sorrow stemming not from failure but from lack of belonging. No matter how much he accomplishes, Lion will always feel like an outsider, disconnected and lonely.