50 pages • 1 hour read
Justina IrelandDread Nation
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPart 2, Chapters 21-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 21 Summary
That night, Jane goes to the town meeting hall for dinner. She doesn’t see Jackson or Lily anywhere, and as she gets her meager food portion, she is approached by the preacher, Pastor Snyder. He informs her that he knows how to handle her and that there is a “divine order” (241) that everyone must follow. Jane decides to sit at the tables full of other Black townspeople, and she meets Ida, who is from the Lost States in the Deep South “where shamblers outnumber people” (242).
Ida explains that even though slavery is now technically illegal, there are “loopholes” and “different ways to pretty up the same old evils” (243) in the Southern states. Jane learns that the “good white folks” (244) live in a different part of town in big houses with more protection, and they don’t affiliate with the other citizens. The preacher interrupts dinner to discuss how “the Sinner’s Plague” is a result of Black “hubris” (246). He stresses how important it is for the Black members of town to “toil and labor for the good of those God has made in His image” (246), meaning white people. Jane is horrified to see most of the white people and some of the Black people nodding along, and she believes that The preacher “just be the most dangerous man in town” (247).
Part 2, Chapter 22 Summary
The next morning, Jane begins her patrol work on Summerland’s barrier wall. The sheriff herds the Black workers to the wall, and they start up a song about killing shamblers and eventually turning into them, which reminds Jane of home when field hands back home would sing. Jane feels like she is losing her humanity as she and the other workers are treated like livestock on the trip, then given food without utensils so they have to eat with their hands. When Jane doesn’t get to the food in time and goes empty-handed, one of the workers, Cora, taunts Jane for her “fancy manners” (255). Ida warns Jane that Cora is one of the sheriff’s favorites, so Jane better watch out for her.
When it’s time to get weapons for the patrol, Jane discovers that they are rusted and dull. She tells the sheriff that she needs a proper weapon if she wants to stand a chance against the shamblers, and he kicks her for speaking out of turn. Ida quickly rushes to her side and warns her that it’s “suicide” to talk back to the sheriff. Jane, overwhelmed with rage, vows to escape from Summerland, but not before “a little payback” (259).
Part 2, Chapter 23 Summary
The Summerland wall more impressive than the wall around Baltimore. During the patrol, Jane is told that they “ain’t supposed to kill [shamblers], just make sure they don’t try to climb the wall” (262). Suddenly, a girl slips and falls to the shambler side of the wall, and another girl goes after her as the shamblers close in on them. Jane jumps the wall and tries to fight off the shamblers with her weapon but “the blade gets stuck halfway” (264) in the neck of a shambler, and Jane barely manages to kill it. As the two girls and Jane try to fight off the shamblers, Jane suddenly recognizes one of the shamblers as Maisie Carpenter, a girl who attended Miss Preston’s. She recognizes another shambler, “the girl that ran off, leaving Mayor Carr’s wife” (265) on the night of the lecture. Jane steals an old cavalry sword off one of the older shamblers. Once the shamblers are defeated, Jane and the two girls climb the wall, but one of the sheriff’s men holds a gun on them and refuses to let them come back over to the town, saying they have been bitten. Jane tries to convince him that no one got bit, but he shoots one of the girls, and the other turns into a shambler that Jane must kill with the sword. Jane is enraged, realizing that Bill has probably shot innocent people before. She also thinks not a coincidence that Maisie and the other Attendant ended up here as shamblers.
Part 2, Chapter 24 Summary
Days pass, and Jane falls into the routine of wall patrol duty. She is allowed to continue using the sword she got from the shambler, and she isolates herself from the other workers. She hasn’t seen Jackson, Lily, or Katherine since she arrived in Summerland. Jane reads the letters from her mother and remembers the night the major tried to kill her.
Jane tries to climb out the window to leave, but Cora tries to stop her. Jane kicks Cora in the face, then slips out the window. She ends up in Mr. Gideon’s sleeping chamber, and he warns her that she can’t be caught sneaking around like this at night. She asks Gideon why they aren’t allowed to kill shamblers, and although he admits that there’s a reason, he can’t say more, and states that he’s told her too much.
Jane mentions that she saw Maisie Carpenter among the dead, and Gideon tells her that Maisie “asked questions, too” (286). Jane brings herself to ask Gideon about Jackson, and although he hasn’t seen anyone matching that description, Gideon warns her that the sheriff has “a short temper and a penchant for watching folks turn” (289). Jane realizes that Jackson is likely dead already, and as she says goodbye to Mr. Gideon, she is overwhelmed with grief at the thought of losing the boy she loved.
Part 2, Chapter 25 Summary
As Jane grieves for Jackson the next day, she thinks about how hungry she is, and how she is being given less food. Ida tells her that more trains of wealthy white people are arriving, so there’s less to go around. A few nights later, Jane decides to go to the wealthy side of Summerland in search of food. With the electric lights, “the rich side of town glitters like a jewel in dung” (295).
Jane runs into Lily Spencer, who wants to know where Jackson is. Jane lies and says that he’s working, and Lily wants to know why “they got us living with shamblers over here” (297). Lily agrees that Summerland isn’t safe, and she shows Jane an unmarked building with a sign that simply says “DANGER: ELECTRIC—Keep Out!” (301). Lily explains that she went inside on a dare and heard “strange noises coming from it at night” (301). She won’t talk about it anymore and swears that she will never go back in but says the answers Jane is looking for are in there.
Part 2, Chapters 21-25 Analysis
Ireland uses descriptions such as “herded” and “stampeded to the trough like hogs” to emphasize the dehumanizing treatment of the Black workers in Summerland. She even thinks back to the lecture in Baltimore, when Professor Ghering referred to Black and Indigenous people as little more than livestock. In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, which popularized the belief that humans were descended from primates. Professor Ghering’s lecture, which takes place some a few decades later, creates a white supremacist interpretation of these scientific findings, claiming that white people are descended from God while people of color are closer to animals. The Survivalists have picked up on this because they know they can weaponize religion to exert power of non-white people.
On her first payday, Jane befriends one of the working girls, Nessie, who does Jane’s hair. Jane is reminded again of her ache to return to Rose Hill, of her mother’s presumed silence over the past year, and her fears for the future. Jane’s life has never been easy, but she has always had some sense of stability. Now, for the first time as a young adult, she is wrestling with the instability and fear of the unknown that comes from being in a strange place and cut off from the people she loves. Not only has she lost her mother and Jackson, but even Katherine must stay away from her to keep up her charade. Jane feels completely alone, and she struggles to find some sense of direction.
