50 pages • 1 hour read
Will HobbsJason's Gold
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 14-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Down the Yukon”
Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary
A map of the Yukon River from Lake Bennett to Dawson City leads this part of the novel.
After three days, Jason clears wind-blown Lake Bennett and heads to Lake Tagish. Hundreds of caribou clog the waterway, and Indigenous people take several down by rifle. Jason shoots a caribou for meat, and a man, Higgins, helps him dress it. Higgins confirms that the Mounties at Fort Sifton just downriver will require that each stampeder have at least 700 pounds of food. Jason thinks that he has only 500. Consequently, he paddles silently at night past Fort Clifton, bypassing the checkpoint. Jason and King proceed along Marsh Lake and come to the start of the Yukon River on September 28. The weather is calm and warm, and Jason sees the Northern Lights. He is confident that he will be in Dawson City in two to three weeks.
Part 2, Chapter 15 Summary
Jason comes to two box canyons with dangerous whirlpools followed by two sets of whitewater passages in Miles Canyon, Squaw Rapids and White Horse Rapids. Observing fellow stampeders, Jason sees that he can leash the canoe through both sets of rapids, towing it by rope as he and King walk safely along the shore. The box canyons must be “portaged,” however: Stampeders pull their loaded skiffs along a rough path over logs placed across the path to help roll the skiffs along.
Jason cannot pull his loaded canoe himself, but King is happy to pull once Jason shows him how. Between the box canyons, Jason encounters Jack London coming up the trail. Jack laughs in wonderment that Jason got ahead of him and compliments the husky: “Now, here’s a dog team worthy of legend, a one-dog team—the mighty King!” (112). Jack, still traveling with Tarwater, Sloper, and Goodman, convinces his group that they can navigate the rapids. Sure enough, they manage to do so and are once again ahead of Jason.
Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary
Jason continues downriver in a rush; winter is setting in. Two days later he comes to Lake Laberge, notorious for freezing soonest. One morning the lake is frozen, but the harsh wind soon breaks up the thin ice and Jason can proceed. This repeats for six days until he finally clears the lake. Back in the current, Jason makes faster progress and determines to run the last rapids, the Five Fingers. The feat takes all his strength, but he succeeds.
Jason spies rose hips on the shore, and because they prevent scurvy, he pauses to collect some. Doing so, he notices a blood trail and follows it to a dead moose. Thinking how grateful Abe and Ethan would be for fresh meat, he sets down his rifle and approaches. The moose is not dead, though, and leaps up to attack him. When the moose head-butts him, it scoops him up on its antlers, then shakes him off and begins to trample him. Jason hears a rifle shot and loses consciousness.
Part 2, Chapter 17 Summary
In intense pain, Jason wakes up in a cabin with King. The thin prospector who saved him says that Dawson City is 250 miles away. The prospector says that Jason cannot paddle. Jason has a large, throbbing lump on the back of his head and bruises; he thinks that he has cracked ribs. The prospector tells him that his canoe is safe, and his food cache is up a tree. He brought back just the moose’s hindquarter because a black bear moved the rest. The prospector, Robert Henderson, calls Dawson City a “fool’s paradise” and recommends that Jason stay the winter in the cabin. He leaves in the morning.
Jason does not understand the man’s bitter attitude regarding the gold rush. He considers floating to Dawson City but realizes that he cannot perform the physical tasks needed to camp and build fires. Jason wants someone to blame for his setback but realizes that he can only blame himself. He fights his desire to take the canoe onward; finally, the ice forms on the river permanently, and he must weather the winter in the cabin.
Part 2, Chapter 18 Summary
The cold is unbelievable. A thermometer outside the cabin reads -25 degrees. Jason busies himself by keeping a hole open in the ice at a nearby stream and chopping firewood despite his sore ribs.
One day, a group of men, rough-looking and frenzied, barge into the cabin. Without explanation, they bring in a scared young boy on a makeshift stretcher. The boy’s right foot and lower leg are gangrenous—the aftereffect of bad frostbite. One of the men, the boy’s uncle, proceeds with the necessary task of amputating the boy’s foot and lower leg. Jason and King leave the miserable scene, but they still hear the boy’s screams. Afterward, the men abandon the boy and depart. When Jason protests, pointing out that he may not have enough to feed the boy, the uncle threatens to shoot Jason, saying, “Put him out in the cold if you must” (141).
Part 2, Chapters 14-18 Analysis
The conflict shifts in this section of rising action; though Jason is still trying to catch up to his brothers and keep ahead of other stampeders, he now faces an additional foe: the deadly Canadian winter. Jason’s only chance of contending with this enemy is beating the freeze-up on the Yukon River and making it to Dawson City before temperatures prevent travel. As Jason learns, though, the northern winter proves stronger than any man. Jason sees this as the ice forms on the river near the cabin: “Very suddenly, at the last, just as Henderson had predicted, the jagged, grinding shapes pitched up and locked into place with a crash of finality” (134). Hobbs describes the ice-like weapons to reinforce its antagonistic role in the text. Despite Jason’s skill in navigating the Yukon in his race against the season, winter traps him until spring.
Unlike previous sections in which discoveries and complications move the plot forward, in Part 2, it is Jason’s own choices and mistakes that propel the story. For example, his successes in bypassing the box canyons and Mile Canyon’s rapids result from his own observations, caution, and cleverness; he confidently trains King to pull the canoe over the portage path, a plan that pays off as he and King pass by other stampeders. His choice to make the run at Five Fingers—and successfully canoeing the rapids there—instills within Jason additional confidence in his judgment.
When his luck turns sour this time, it is also due to his decision-making: He wants moose meat to take to his brothers, and he naively assumes that the animal is dead when it is not. These actions demonstrate greed and foolishness which thwart his plans and threaten his life. Jason and King end up in the isolated cabin, lucky to be alive. The temptation to float, injured and weak, to Dawson City is intense, but Jason wisely chooses to stay put and heal. Deciding on the slow, safe path instead of the risky, hasty one shows greater development in Jason’s character than any previous complications revealed.
The events of this section develop the novel’s main themes. The wastefulness of the region’s resources is apparent in these chapters, contributing to the theme of The Exploitative Nature of Greed. For example, Jason shoots a caribou, then realizes that he cannot take more than its hindquarters. Though he experienced guilt shooting the creature, he thinks little of wasting the remaining meat and leaving the carcass behind. Hobbs contrasts the gold rushers who extract and waste resources with the Indigenous people whom they come across who are stewards of the land. Jason also sought adventure when he left Seattle for the goldfields, but racing against winter and surviving independently in the cabin present challenges that he did not foresee, which contributes to the theme of The Transformational Power of Adventure. Finally, the theme of The Dangerous Allure of Wealth connects with the arrival and condition of the young boy (later identified as Charlie). His uncle and the other men rush to stake their claims; however, the terrible consequences of their actions include Charlie’s accident, amputation, and abandonment.
A notable historical allusion in Chapter 17 occurs with the character of Robert Henderson. Jason cannot understand the man’s bitter attitude regarding gold rushers or his desire to go in the direction opposite Dawson City. Based on history and legend, however, these attributes make sense. The real Henderson, from Nova Scotia, left mining operations in Colorado for the Yukon at age 29, passionate about finding gold there. He is often credited as the first man to discover gold in the tributaries of the Indian River—but he found only a modest amount before leaving the area for supplies. Apparently, he told fellow prospector George Washington Carmack about his find, and Carmack moved into an adjacent waterway where he and his friend Keish (referenced by “Skookum Jim” in the novel) found much larger nuggets of gold. They staked their claim there without sharing the news directly with Henderson. Those who witnessed their good luck excitedly headed for the Klondike River, triggering the gold rush. Henderson returned to his original location unaware and consequently missed out on striking it big.
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