43 pages • 1 hour read
Thomas KingMedicine River
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1990A 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 14-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary
A man named David Plume comes into the studio to have an old photograph repaired. David was present at the Wounded Knee occupation and still wears the jacket he got that day. The photograph is of him and some friends holding rifles. David sits down and asks Will if he has “ever been shot at” (158). Will finds David irritating. He has a feeling that David looks down on anyone who wasn’t present at Wounded Knee and is happy when he finally leaves. A few days later, David shows up at the studio in a van and invites Will to a protest in Ottawa in response to government plans to cut funding for Indigenous education. Will declines, and David warns Will that people should do something significant in life, implying that Will has yet to find that purpose.
Will recalls a neighbor in his childhood named Maydean, who had a mental disability and was shunned by most of the kids in the area. Will and James, on the other hand, played pranks on her. One time, they tried to convince her to get inside the dryer in the basement, but Maydean refused, so James put on a helmet and got in. The idea was to surprise Will’s mother when she came down to do laundry, but Maydean turned the dryer on with James inside. When they pulled him out, James had a bloody nose. Laughing, Maydean climbed into the dryer and refused to get out until Will’s mother was able to coax her out.
Chapter 15 Summary
Harlen suggests that Will have a sale to bring in new customers to his photography studio. Will decides to have a family portrait special, and his first customer is a woman named Joyce Blue Horn, who has 11 children, several siblings, and many in-laws. Over 50 people show up for the picture, and everyone decides to go down to the river for a picnic and to take the photograph. Harlen, Louise, and South Wing join in, as does almost everyone Will knows. Joyce’s family photograph becomes one of the town family.
Taking the photograph reminds Will of the family portrait his mother arranged after his father died, when he and James were little. He finds that picture and decides to repair it and put it up at home next to the photograph from the picnic. The picnic reminds him of the Friendship Centre gatherings he and his family attended in Calgary when he was a child. He has fond memories of playing with his friends and brother on the stage and watching the others dance.
Chapter 16 Summary
Louise decides to buy a house for herself and South Wing and asks for Will’s help taking photos of houses that she’s considering. Harlen jumps to conclusions and assumes that Louise wants Will to live with her, and when Louise chooses a house with a dark room, Harlen becomes totally convinced. Will is fairly certain that Louise doesn’t want that at all, but she does ask for his help moving and has him over every night for the first week she lives there. On the first night, she asks Will about living together, but he fails to respond in any meaningful way, and the moment is lost. Will also bonds with South Wing during this time. Harlen tells Will that he needs to be the first to propose, believing that Louise is just waiting for Will to do so. When Louise starts renovating the house and turns the darkroom into a bathroom, Will realizes the notion of their marrying or living together was a fantasy.
Chapter 17 Summary
Will spends his Sundays watching sports and cartoons, and Louise likes to go to various yard sales. One Sunday, she invites Will to go to an estate sale with her, and Harlen joins them. He convinces Will to buy an old canoe, and he and Will fix it up and paint it. Harlen buys a canoeing guide for the Medicine River, which indicates a supposedly easy passage they can take for their first attempt. Louise goes with them, bringing South Wing along to watch. After spending hours trying to find the location and then setting up the canoe, Will and Harlen take off down the rapids. It seems to be going well at first, but before long they hit a massive wave and tip over, sending both men down the rapids. Harlen yells in delight, and both he and Will make their way to land as the canoe continues on. Harlen is thrilled by the adventure, and he and Will laugh at the guide’s horrible description and their general bad luck.
Will’s mother went to yard sales for her entire life and was very skilled at finding good deals and valuable items. Will’s clothes came mainly from garage sales, but always looked new. When Will’s mother got sick, she didn’t tell anyone, and James found her sick in bed. She was in the hospital after that, and James would call Will to relate to him all of the amazing memories that Rose was sharing. Will failed to return home to see his mother before she died, but one memory sticks out above the rest. Taking the canoe down the river with Harlen reminds Will of a time his mother saved up to take him and James camping. They rented a rowboat and crashed rather quickly, and just when they thought they would all perish, Rose’s feet hit the bottom. They walked to shore, laughing at their misfortune and happy to be together.
Chapter 18 Summary
Word gets around that David Plume was attacked by a man named Ray Little Buffalo and some of his friends outside the bar. David was wearing his precious Wounded Knee jacket, which Ray then took and put on, ripping it. David became enraged and after a fist fight, was taken down. He grabbed his rifle and went to find Ray, shooting at him several times but missing. In an effort to dodge the bullets, Ray fell on a broken bottle and was hospitalized. David was arrested and taken to jail. Harlen comments incredulously on the amount of drama and pain that was caused by a jacket. Will recalls that when he and his brother were young, they shared a ball that they took down to the river one day. Will accidentally threw it in the river, and James got angry, throwing a rock at him. Will never apologized for the incident—until now. When Christmas comes and James calls, Will apologizes for the ball. James laughs, finding it strange after all the years that have passed. Louise goes up to Edmonton with South Wing to visit her father for Christmas, which hurts Will, who has been with South Wing much more. She calls the next day and tells Will that South Wing’s father proposed, but she declined. Will feels relieved and is happy to hear that Louise and South Wing are coming home. After spending Christmas alone, Will goes out for a walk to enjoy the snow and the solitude.
Chapters 14-18 Analysis
In the final chapters of the novel, Will faces difficult and life-defining questions that challenge the Intersections of Past and Present. The first of these is his connection to the Blackfoot people, which occurs when he is lectured by David Plume, a man who was present at Wounded Knee and who still wears his Wounded Knee jacket. David comes to Will with a significant photograph: It is him along with his friends, holding rifles as they stand in defiance. When Will seems not to show much interest in the history of the day, probably in part due to David’s abrasive nature, David decides to lecture him on the importance of being politically active as an Indigenous person: “I meet a lot of Indians, you know, who are sorry they didn’t go to Wounded Knee. That’s what they tell me. They feel like they got left out. It feels good to be part of something important” (160). David’s lecturing not only relates to Will’s relationship to his community, but also to the direction of his own life. When David tells Will that it’s essential for people to “do something important with their life” (160), he seems to be hinting at Will’s inability to commit to anything but his photography. David is stuck in the past, where Wounded Knee happened, while conversely Will is unable to bridge the gap between past and present to connect to a culturally significant event that has shaped modern Indigenous history. Where Will has been shown as incapable of letting go of the past, an inability to connect to the past brings just as much trouble as he cannot connect to political activism surrounding his heritage.
Will starts to come to terms with his past as he thinks back on a conflict with his brother and on his mother’s death. He feels ashamed and guilty for not being in Medicine River while she was sick but balances this negative feeling with memories of being with his family. When a woman named Joyce orders a family portrait, most of the town shows up for the photograph, and Will joins in, too. In doing so, he becomes part of the community. Afterward, his decision to repair an old family portrait of himself with his mother and brother and to hang it next to the picture of the townspeople symbolizes Will’s acceptance of the Intersections of Past and Present that define his life. He also attempts to resolve past guilt by apologizing to his brother about an incident that occurred when they were children. Doing so seems to bring him a sense of peace, as he is then content to go for a peaceful walk in the winter air. The novel ends inconclusively, with Will’s relationship up in the air and his feelings about his past still somewhat tense. It is up to the reader to imagine how Will’s life carries on, and whether he ever manages to move forward with his life. Whatever Will decides, the town-family photograph symbolizes his permanence in the Alberta Blackfoot community; while Will’s personal conflicts within his community remain unresolved, his search for belonging is resolved as he accepts Medicine River as his home.
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