58 pages • 1 hour read
Stephen KingRevival
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A 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 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Two Guitars. Chrome Roses. Skytop Lightning.”
Jamie muses that unseen forces shape the direction of one’s life. He recalls the television variety show Hootenanny, which Conrad used to watch with his best friend, Ronnie Paquette. One night, Ronnie’s grandfather, called Hector the Barber, criticized the musicians on the show for being too young to properly play blues music. He brought down his own Silvertone guitar and played “My Mama Don’t Allow Me” by American Musician Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup. Everyone was rapt until Hector snapped a guitar string. Ronnie retrieved the guitar and learned to restring it. He and Conrad started a folk music duo called Con and Ron, though Conrad eventually lost interest in music in favor of athletics.
In 1969, 13-year-old Jamie develops a crush on the new girl in town, Astrid Soderberg. He picks up Conrad’s abandoned Gibson guitar one afternoon and is surprised by his natural talent for music. He supposes that he could get good enough at playing guitar to impress Astrid. When Jamie starts high school, he is approached by a senior student named Norm Irving, who invites him to audition for his band. Impressed, Norm introduces Jamie to Kenny Laughlin and Paul Bouchard, his bandmates in Chrome Roses. Laura expresses worries about letting Jamie join the band, but he fights for it when he realizes that Astrid may go to his debut performance at the Eureka Grange. Jamie is nervous before the performance, but he finds his confidence when he sees the attendees, including his parents, get up to dance. Astrid doesn’t show up that night, but Jamie gets paid and complimented for his performance. Laura shares her happiness and fear for Jamie, making him promise not to smoke.
At another dance, Astrid approaches Jamie to compliment him. She asks him to walk with her and then takes his hand. Jamie is too shy to kiss her at first, but he does so during their New Year’s Eve show at the Grange. He leads the band in playing the song “Wild Thing,” originally by American rock band the Wild Ones, at Astrid’s request. She becomes his girlfriend, but they hold off on having sex when Astrid expresses worry about using condoms.
Jamie learns to drive at age 16. He passes his driving test when Norm’s father, Cicero, teaches him how to earn the approval of the puritanical driving examiner. The following year, Dick and Terry give him a fixed-up 1966 Ford Galaxie. On their mother’s behalf, Claire makes Jamie promise not to get Astrid pregnant in his car. Jamie is confident about keeping his promise, withholding the fact that he and Astrid engage in mutual masturbation.
In the summer of 1974, Jamie drives Astrid up to Skytop. Astrid is first nervous and then surprised by the sight of the pole, never having heard of Skytop before. They are startled by several bolts of lightning that strike the iron pole. As hail starts to fall, they take shelter in a cabin adjacent to Skytop. Astrid tells Jamie that she has started taking birth control pills, hinting that she wants to have sex. They lose their virginity in the cabin and go on to have regular sex at Skytop.
Jamie and Astrid part ways when they go to college. Jamie stays in Maine while Astrid moves to Boston. Jamie believes that they will marry after graduation but belatedly realizes that their distance means that they have broken up. Jamie also parts ways with Chrome Roses when they hire a new guitarist to replace him. He sees an ad seeking a rhythm guitarist for a cover band. Jamie auditions and becomes a professional musician, but his career will eventually end when he fails to show up at performances.
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Fluid Passage of Time. Portraits in Lightning. My Drug Problem.”
Jamie spends the next 14 years playing for a band called Robin and the Jays before moving on to other groups. The novel jumps forward to 1992, when Jamie is 36. Jamie has an addiction to heroin, which causes him to wet his bed in a Tulsa motel room. Jamie remembers that he was supposed to play for a country crossover band at the state fair the night before. After cleaning up, he finds a note from his band leader, Kelly Van Dorn, informing him that he has been fired. Kelly warns him to give up his addiction or risk ending up in prison or in an early grave. Jamie decides to extend his stay in Tulsa so that he can find a new job, as well as more heroin. However, when he goes to the front desk, his credit card is declined. Jamie is forced to leave the motel.
While lumbering down the highway, Jamie recalls how his leg was injured in a motorcycle accident in 1984. This led to his first experience of morphine, which resulted in his drug addiction. He buys a bus ticket to Chicago, where he hopes to connect with other musicians. While waiting for his ride, he goes to the state fair to buy drugs but gets distracted by a sound that reminds him of the lightning at Skytop.
He follows the sound to a stage where his old minister, now going by the name Dan Jacobs, advertises a service for “Portraits in Lightning.” Jacobs asks the crowd for volunteers to demonstrate his service. He picks a girl who hesitantly comes up. Jacobs assures her that the service will not only be safe but also free. The girl introduces herself as Cathy Morse. Jacobs activates his lightning camera, dazzling the crowd with the resulting image. Jamie thinks he sees Astrid in the lightning. Cathy is shocked to see herself represented in elegant period clothing but is even more surprised when the giant portrait moves to wink at the audience. Jacobs gives her a picture version of the portrait. Cathy looks as though she is about to faint, but Jamie faints instead.
Jamie reawakens in Jacobs’s Bounder. Jacobs has been taking care of him under the presumption that Jamie is sick. Jamie is actually experiencing the effects of heroin withdrawal, and Jacobs lets Jamie snort small doses of heroin. When Jacobs tells Jamie he recognized him due to his resemblance to his mother, Jamie informs him that both Laura and Claire are dead.
Jacobs explains how his lightning camera works: It utilizes a mix of electrical generators, special lighting equipment, and motion picture projection technology. He also clarifies that the picture version of the portrait is temporary, meant to last Cathy only two years. When Jamie is feeling better, Jacobs expresses his concern over Jamie’s addiction. Jamie insists the drugs help him to manage his pain, but Jacobs suggests that the real pain is in Jamie’s mind. He offers to help Jamie by administering an electrical treatment that will minimize his withdrawal symptoms and hinder his reliance on heroin. Unlike what he did for Conrad, which he now describes as a placebo, this treatment is guaranteed to work.
Jacobs waits until Jamie is well enough to receive his treatment. Jamie gets angry when he learns that Jacobs has taken away his personal heroin kit and wonders if Jacobs means to conduct electroshock therapy on him. Jacobs clarifies that it isn’t quite the same: He plans to use a special kind of electricity to treat him. Jamie considers leaving early, but he wakes up one morning to find that Jacobs is already driving the Bounder to another location.
Chapter 6 Summary: “The Electrical Treatment. A Nighttime Excursion. One Pissed-Off Okie. A Ticket on the Mountain Express.”
Jacobs brings Jamie to his electrical workshop, located in an abandoned auto shop in West Tulsa. Jacobs indicates that his portrait work is a sideline meant to support his experiments. The workshop relies solely on electricity to sustain operations; Jacobs shuns the idea of using nuclear energy to power his machines. He alludes to an “ultimate goal” but doesn’t explain what it is.
Jamie finds an old picture of Patsy and Morrie, which evokes his memories of them and Claire. Jacobs explains that he never remarried and that he continues to think about his lost family every day. He asks Jamie if he ever thinks about what might have happened to Claire and Laura after they died, but Jamie says he doesn’t.
Jamie takes one last dose of heroin before putting on a pair of special headphones designed by Jacobs, as well as a mouthguard. When Jacobs activates the machine, Jamie hears a loud clicking sound. He repeats the words “something” and “happened” over and over. When he calms down, Jacobs offers him another dose of heroin, but Jamie declines, saying that he just took some. However, Jacobs reveals that several hours have passed since Jamie’s last dose. He adds that during his treatment, Jamie revealed what happened to Claire: She was married to a man named Paul Overton, who physically abused her. She was initially ashamed to share this with anyone but finally told Andy, who threatened to kill Overton if he ever hurt Claire again. Claire divorced Overton and was teaching in a different town when Overton came to her classroom, killed her, and then died by suicide.
Jacobs asks Jamie to walk around, demonstrating that the long-term pain from his leg injury has disappeared. He explains that he succeeded in restructuring Jamie’s brain patterns, having derived the method from several books he obtained during his studies. When Jamie’s hand shoots up involuntarily, Jacobs reassures him it is a passing aftereffect. He alludes to having seen it happen before. Jacobs tempts Jamie with heroin once again, but Jamie no longer feels compelled to take it.
While preparing for his next stage show, Jacobs finds it difficult to put on his necktie by himself. Jamie steps in to help him. Jamie asks him why he prefers to take portraits of women, and Jacobs explains that women are more affected when they see themselves in beautiful period clothing. This allows him to sell more portraits, which he has been doing for nearly 15 years. Jamie quips that Jacobs transitioned from being a preacher to being a huckster. He immediately regrets his remark, but Jacobs points out there isn’t much of a difference.
Jacobs gives Jamie a temporary job as his assistant, allowing him to play his guitar for dramatic effect onstage. They occasionally revisit Jacobs’s workshop to move his equipment to his trailer, and Jamie finds a secret photo album filled with pictures of the Jacobs family.
One night, Jamie wakes up outside his rooming house, naked except for a rubber tube tied around his arm. He is also bleeding, having stabbed at his arm several times with a fork. He repeats, “Something happened,” over and over as he stabs himself. He bites his tongue and regains control of himself, hearing another click inside his head. He believes that something took control of him but withholds the experience from Jacobs.
On the last day of the state fair, an angry farmer shows up at Jacobs’s Bounder. He attempts to beat Jacobs down, claiming that Jacobs is responsible for putting his daughter, Cathy Morse, in prison. Pretending to be Jacobs’s agent, Jamie tries to pacify the farmer. The farmer explains that Cathy was so mesmerized by the portrait she received from Jacobs that she took it with her everywhere she went. She was convinced that the portrait was an accurate representation of her and ultimately broke into a jewelry shop and attempted to steal diamond earrings, claiming that they would match her dress.
Jamie pretends that the aftereffects of Jacobs’s electrical work are unprecedented, but when he returns to Jacobs, he asks him to help Cathy. Jacobs dismisses the request, saying that Cathy will get better on her own. Jamie realizes that this has happened before and that Jacobs is merely using people for his experiments. Jacobs notes that his treatment worked on Jamie, ending the conversation.
Jacobs abruptly departs from Tulsa, leaving Jamie a train ticket and an address in Nederland, Colorado. Jacobs’s note indicates that the man at that address will give Jamie more permanent employment. Jamie considers going to Denver to continue his career as a musician. He returns to Jacobs’s workshop and finds it completely empty. Thinking about how Jacobs helped him with his treatment, Jamie takes up his offer, travels to Nederland, and works for a man named Hugh Yates.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
In these chapters, Jamie reinvents himself for the first time, beginning his second life as a musician. This development plays on the meaning of the word “revival” while also driving The Emotional Costs of Starting Life Anew as one of the novel’s major themes. Jamie discovers music in the aftermath of Jacobs’s departure from Harlow. His skill distracts him from his grief of losing a mentor and friend, allowing him to move forward with his life. However, his relationship to music is marred by his addiction to drugs, which prevents him from showing up to performances and ultimately casts doubt on how successful his efforts to start anew were.
Jamie’s transformation into a musician mirrors Jacobs’s decision to reinvent himself as a showman. Though Jamie points out that Jacob has essentially turned himself into a “huckster,” scamming people into thinking his portraits are the stuff of magic, Jacobs embraces the comparison to preaching. Jacobs’s “revival” allows him to live out his criticism of organized religion, exposing how it functions as a form of spiritual entertainment. In another sense, however, Jacobs has taken Laura’s parting advice to heart. He has rediscovered his faith by believing in the power of science, which points to another major theme: The Dynamics of Science and Faith. Jacobs speaks of electricity with the reverence one might use when talking about God. Jamie’s experience of his treatment’s aftereffects underscores the idea that the special electricity is connecting Jacobs to some unearthly entity. Jamie describes his sleepwalking incident as though “[s]omething had moved [him] out of [him]self and taken over, driving [his] body like a car” (198). This resonates with Jamie’s hints in Chapters 1 and 4 that greater forces direct the shape of people’s lives, but the tone is ominous, implying that those forces are not as benevolent as Jacobs might believe.
The novel suggests that Jacobs’s new devotion is the way he copes with the loss of his family, implying that his reinvention, like Jamie’s, is not complete. Jamie finds reminders of Jacobs’s grief even though Jacobs does not seem open or expressive about it. This mirrors Jamie’s drug addiction, which helps him to manage not only his physical pain but also the pain he feels over losing Claire, as Jacobs points out. Notably, Jamie has not yet revealed the details of Claire’s death to the reader, drawing a stronger connection between his addiction and his inability to face his grief head-on. Similarly, he only reveals the truth to Jacobs during the treatment that cures him of his addiction, emphasizing the divine ability of electricity to elicit the truth.
Finally, the novel introduces Astrid Soderberg as a significant character in Jamie’s life. She functions as a formative romantic interest whose relationship with Jamie fades over time. Just as Jacobs’s influence on Jamie persists after his departure, so will Astrid’s impact continue to affect Jamie in the years to come. King hints at the parallel significance of these two relationships by drawing a faint link between them via the setting of Skytop. Bringing Astrid to Skytop underlines Jacobs’s lingering influence on Jamie. When Jamie loses his virginity to Astrid there, Skytop gains a different significance for him. Through Astrid and Skytop, King thus begins to lay out the pieces that will become significant in resolving the conflict between Jamie and Jacobs.
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