59 pages • 1 hour read
Elvira WoodruffGeorge Washington's Socks
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1991A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 8-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary
Hard realization hits the boys and tears threaten. General Washington mentions how the British have used “babes as runners” (38). The General gestures for a soldier to bring them all aboard, which is challenging because Hooter is holding onto Tony for comfort. Matt gathers up Katie once on board the soldier’s boat. She sleeps as he holds her, still covered in General Washington’s cape.
Matt realizes some of the soldiers are men of Marblehead, a harbor town in Massachusetts. In history class Matt and Q studied John Glover and his Marbleheaders, sailors who brought their sea skills to help the cause. Matt touches Washington’s boot, fascinated. He reflects on the soldiers’ strong devotion to a cause, despite facing many unknowns. A young shoeless soldier sits next to Matt dressed in loose, thin clothes and rags. Matt also sees other boats, more soldiers, and skittish horses on a raft-like vessel crossing the river. He recognizes that the clean, strong look of imminent battle he imagined in class is not the reality.
The young soldier near Matt receives orders via an officer from General Washington. He is to take the children back across the river, stay at McConkey’s Inn until morning, then take them to his own family for safekeeping. The officer calls the young corporal by name—Adam Hibbs.
Chapter 9 Summary
While Matt is excited to think that Adam might be able to help them, Q bluntly wonders why Adam is still in the distant past, making a grim fate clear to Matt.
The soldiers disembark on the shore silently. Matt recalls history: Washington’s troops will make the challenging nine-mile march to Trenton, intending to surprise Hessian mercenaries. Matt realizes that General Washington is still missing his cape. As Matt runs it to him, he sees the soldiers’ determination and even excitement. Matt’s imagination works up a picture of himself as a rebel.
A captain who smells of rum suddenly collars Matt. He demands to know Matt’s regiment and isn’t hearing any excuse about a boat. He shoves a musket and ammunition into Matt’s hands and sends him along to march to Trenton. Matt is unaware of the misfortune Adam Hibbs experiences: he falls accidentally onto his own bayonet, and probably will not survive. Another man, Corporal Neeley, starts off with the boys, Katie, and Adam to McConkey’s Inn.
Chapter 10 Summary
Matt considers fleeing but does not; he might look like a spy or a deserter. The captain, McCowly, prevents the soldiers from using fence pieces to start fires. They use them as seats in the snow instead. Matt and a young man pull a fence board loose and sit together on it. This young man, Israel Gates, touches Matt’s shoe, curious. Israel cannot understand Reeboks or sneakers, calling them “snakers” (54). He initiates a trade for one of Matt’s sneakers, because one of his shoeless feet has a bad infection. Matt gives the left shoe but doesn’t take the shirt Israel offers.
Matt refers to himself as a kid, and Israel can only think he means goat. Israel wraps Matt’s left stockinged foot in cloth strips. Israel gives Matt a piece of cooked pigeon and speaks of his regiment’s struggles in Montreal: smallpox and Indians, damp muskets that probably won’t work, and sick men without “much cheer” (58). He has no interest in reenlisting, wanting to get home to Massachusetts and deliver a gift of glass beads to little sister, Abby. Israel only enlisted in the stead of a Boston silversmith who could afford to buy his way out of serving in the army; Israel needed the money and the cow paid by the smith to provide for his siblings. Now, however, he feels done with army life. Israel boosts Matt’s spirits, reassuring him that they “two goats” will tend to one another.
Chapters 8-10 Analysis
The viewpoint of the story is mostly third person limited (to Matt’s point of view), with occasional breaks into a wider viewpoint. The reader is privy to Matt’s thoughts and feelings, and sometimes, the author “head hops” into the point of view of another character or the other boys as a group. For example, when Hooter is holding onto Tony as the soldier brings them aboard Washington’s boat, readers get a detail that is unknown to Matt: “Actually, Hooter still slept with a teddy bear but it was a secret he had kept from friends” (39).
In Chapter 9, Matt separates from the group to deliver the cape, and readers follow the story now more narrowly limited to Matt’s point of view. In one key place, however, the narrative makes a sudden turn to omniscient viewpoint; a distant narrator’s voice relays to readers how Adam Hibbs fell on his bayonet, and consequently the other boys and Katie would be under the supervision of Corporal Neeley. The omniscient narrator states “Matthew Carlton knew none of this” (51).
Once he separates from his sister and friends, Matt must deal with stronger fear, and he chastises himself for once imagining the glory of battle. The conditions, unfamiliarity, and discomfort are not glorious as he’d imagined. He sees this now with firsthand experience.
Israel has much more depth than any of the other secondary characters such as Neely, McCowly, Hibbs, or Thomas. His confusion over Matt’s clothing and vocabulary is endearing on a characterization level; on a plot level, Matt must work to explain that Reeboks are not Redcoats and not all kids are goats, which in turn calms his raw emotions and fear. The communication barrier between them brings some misunderstanding on Matt’s part when he thinks that Abby must be Israel’s girlfriend. He is surprised to learn that Abby is a sister to Israel.
Matt also does not initially understand how Israel came to serve in the army as a paid proxy. When Israel explains that his father loses wages to drinking and that his younger brothers and sister needed money and food until spring, Matt starts to understand that not all soldiers make the choice to fight out of patriotism. Some, like Israel, might not have much choice at all. Israel makes it clear, however, that he is determined to go home in six days when his time is up without reenlisting. Israel’s compassion shows after this conversation, as he tells Matt that he’s “got a friend in Israel Gates” (62).
