87 pages • 2 hours read
David ArnoldMosquitoland
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2015A 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.
Part 2
Part 2: “Yalobusha County, Mississippi (818 Miles to Go)”
Chapter 6 Summary: “Sometimes You Need a Thing”
Mim writes to Isabel and identifies herself as a “collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons” (41). In the letter, she tells Isabel about her “misplaced epiglottis,” which makes her vomit randomly and sometimes allows her to vomit at will. She is also blind in her right eye after looking directly at a solar eclipse a few years ago. She considers her pain something admirable because it separates her from the “Generics,” or the people in life who revel in their mediocrity.
The Greyhound is parked on the side of the road while Carl, the driver, tries to fix the overflowing toilet that has flooded the bus with sewage. Arlene and Mim talk on the side of the road. Arlene is on her way to see her nephew Ahab. Ahab lives with his boyfriend, and they own a gas station in Independence, Kentucky. Arlene is carrying a wooden box that’s intended for Ahab, but she doesn’t tell Mim what’s inside.
Chapter 7 Summary: “A Metamorphosis Begun”
Back on the bus, the creepy Poncho Man sits beside Mim even though she doesn’t want him to. He talks, but she doesn’t listen. Instead, she thinks back to the first time that her dad was worried about her mental health. She was playing make-believe and talking to herself, and he started likening her to Isabel, his sister who had psychopathic behavior.
Mim locks herself in the bathroom. She pulls her mom’s favorite lipstick out of her pocket. She considers this her “war paint” and draws arrows on her face.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Recall”
The Greyhound wrecks and flips to its side while Mim is in the bathroom. She emerges from the bathroom disoriented, and everything is a blur of ambulance lights and bloodshed. Mim watches Arlene’s dead body being carried away, and she takes the old woman’s precious box because it doesn’t feel right leaving it there.
Chapter 9 Summary: “A Metamorphosis Completed”
Mim writes to Isabel to tell her about the bus accident. She’s traumatized by the loss of Arlene; she considered her a friend, despite only knowing her briefly. She also explains the war paint. She once received a make-over from her mom, and despite not liking make-up, she appreciated the intimate gesture. She now carries her mom’s favorite lipstick in her pocket and sometimes uses “it to paint my face like some war-crazed chieftess preparing for battle” (68). Mim thinks back to how cool her mom used to be. Eve is British, and she used to hitchhike around Europe, so full of the “Young Fun Now” (68).
After the Greyhound crash, the company pays for everyone’s hotel stay until they can get another bus. Mim stops at the pharmacy across the street before checking into her room. She buys hair shearers, and once she’s in her room, she cuts her hair the way she’s always wanted. Afterwards, she feels “more Mim than ever before” (71).
Chapter 10 Summary: “Inventory”
Mim listens to a voicemail from her dad. She posts a Facebook update to let everyone know she’s okay instead of calling him back. She takes only half of her daily Aripapilazone as an act of defiance against her dad, who told her that the medicine would balance her brain chemicals so that she could “live a normal life” (75).
Chapter 11 Summary: “Hyena vs. Gazelle”
Everyone boards a nicer Greyhound bus. They eventually stop for a break at “Ed’s Place: Chicken-N-Gas” (79). Ed, the presumed owner of the establishment, is rude, and Mim’s burger is rubbery. She goes into the small bathroom, and to her horror she realizes it’s a two-stall bathroom and Poncho Man is in one. He calls her beautiful and grabs her arm. She is frozen in terror, and she thinks about footage of a hyena and a gazelle she saw in school, likening her situation to one of predator and prey. He forcefully leans in and kisses her. Just as he’s sliding his tongue in her mouth, she “launches a vomit for the ages directly into Poncho Man’s mouth” and runs out of the bathroom (84).
Part 2 Analysis
These chapters explore Mim’s identity and how she perceives herself. In Chapter 6 she calls herself a “collection of oddities” and says she believes that she’s strange and unlike others (41). She thinks that her pain is what makes her strange, but that it’s good because it separates her from ordinary people. She considers ordinary people as having an emptiness inside them, and that emptiness can only be filled and have meaning through pain. Mim therefore appreciates her pain because she thinks that it gives her life meaning. Rather than working through the pain of her parents’ divorce, she wears the pain like a mask that hides her true and vulnerable self from the world.
These chapters also introduce the interconnectedness between Mim’s inner and outer pain. She suffers from strange physical ailments, such as a “misplaced epiglottis” that makes her vomit unexpectedly, and that she sometimes uses to vomit intentionally, and a right eye that was blinded by looking at the sun. She explains these physical ailments as contributing to her strangeness as an individual, but they are a way for her to express in the physical the way that she feels broken inside. Her war paint, first introduced in Chapter 7, serves the same purpose. By physically drawing arrows on her face in her mom’s lipstick, she’s physically representing her longing for her mother.
In Chapter 11, Mim is sexually assaulted by Poncho Man. This is a catalytic moment that tests her strength and resolve. Instead of facing the reality of the attack, her imagination takes over, and she sees herself as a gazelle and Poncho Man as a hyena. She views herself as helpless prey and is frozen in terror. She ultimately escapes because she vomits in his mouth, but this attack makes Mim’s anxieties and fears worse afterwards. Similar to how she doesn’t like to talk to anyone about her emotional pain or her blinded right eye, she doesn’t want to talk about her trauma with Poncho Man because that would make it real.
