46 pages • 1 hour read
Kate AllenThe Line Tender
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2019A 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 30-36Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 30 Summary: “Stronger”
That night, Fiona throws rocks at Lucy’s window just like Fred used to do. She tells Lucy that she’s like a sister to her and that if she wants to talk about Fred instead of writing postcards to him, Fiona is always ready to listen. She gives Lucy a new silver chain to replace the dental floss Lucy was using to wear the mermaid pendant.
Chapter 31 Summary: “Invitation”
The next morning, Sookie calls Lucy and Tom because another shark has washed up on the beach and the biologists are going to cut it open to do a necropsy. Sookie invites Lucy to come watch. At first, Tom doesn’t think he can go because of his cast, but Lucy ties a garbage bag around it to keep it dry and tells him to bring his camera. As they’re leaving for the beach, Lucy also invites Mr. Patterson to come along.
Chapter 32 Summary: “Sharks Can’t Digest Hair”
At the beach, Dr. Robin invites Lucy to get close to the shark so that she can sketch while Dr. Robin and the other biologists do the necropsy. Dr. Robin shows Lucy the shark’s different organs, including the shark’s uterus, which has two developing pups inside. The biologists are excited about the discovery, and Lucy is in awe of “the way a shark is made to do what it needs to do” (327). Soon after, Lucy is able to eat a granola bar without choking, and she, Tom, Mr. Patterson, and Sookie all stay at the beach until the end of the necropsy.
Chapter 33 Summary: “The Field Guide”
Lucy finishes the field guide and brings it to her science teacher’s house. Her teacher, Ms. Solomon, compliments Lucy’s artwork and comments that scientists and artists are more similar than different. Lucy tells Ms. Solomon that she started feeling invested in the field guide project the day she saw her mother’s footage on the news and that she felt motivated to keep learning about sharks until she could capture them well in her sketches. Lucy notes that she’s been amazed by how well animals adapt and survive. When Ms. Solomon’s toddler offers Lucy a raspberry, Lucy eats and swallows it without a problem.
Chapter 34 Summary: “Darkroom”
Lucy joins her father downstairs in his darkroom where he’s developing photographs from the summer, and they chat. She tells him that she was angry with him for withdrawing from her and going scuba diving after Sookie first caught the shark. He talks about how much he misses diving since the accident. Together, they look at a photo Tom took of Lucy while she was sketching the dead shark. He tells her that the picture reminds him of Fred and Helen, but at the same time, it also reminds him of Lucy. He admires how Lucy is “determined to figure out the shark. And [how she is] sensitive to the details” (347). Tom tells her she’s the line tender for Fred and Helen, carrying on their memory now that they’ve gone.
Chapter 35 Summary: “As Fluid as the Fish”
While cleaning up at the end of the summer, Lucy finds a videotape in her mother’s office that includes the original interview footage that aired on TV. She watches it and sees that in the full interview, Helen talks about Lucy and how she thinks about her all the time. Lucy rewatches the interview with her father, Sookie, and Fiona. That night, Lucy dreams that she’s swimming with a shark in the quarry and that the shark has been tagged, which her mother wanted to do, according to her proposal.
Chapter 36 Summary: “Ping”
Sometime later, Lucy is on Sookie’s boat with the team of biologists who are completing her mother’s proposed study. Lucy successfully tags one of the sharks they find and names it Fred. She’s able to hear its sonar pinging through the boat’s equipment. While she’s listening, she hears a second ping. This second shark was the first one tagged by the study and was named Helen in honor of Lucy’s mother. Fred and Helen swim away together while Lucy listens from the boat.
Chapters 30-36 Analysis
In the final section of The Line Tender, the narrative develops the theme of The Role of Community in Coping With Grief. While the mermaid pendant represents Fred’s love for Lucy, Fiona gives her a silver chain to string the pendant on, representing how Fred’s memory will stay with Lucy and she’ll be able to form new, strong friendships moving forward. When a second shark washes up on shore, Dr. Robin calls Lucy to invite her to come see it, and Lucy excitedly agrees, taking Mr. Patterson, Sookie, and her father with her. This moment contrasts with the opening scene of the novel when Lucy was hesitant to go see the shark but Fred wanted to go because she was afraid of the memories it would bring up; at that time, the shark sighting deepened the distance between Lucy and her father. As the shark represents the unknown, Lucy’s excitement about the shark at the end of the novel shows how she’s grown to accept the things that scare her. Lucy demonstrates that she’s overcome her anxiety about Fred’s death when she completes the field guide and successfully starts eating again. The final proof that Lucy has conquered her fear is in the final chapter, when she joins the research team on the boat to tag the sharks.
The arc of Adolescence and First Love concludes with Lucy accepting herself and joyfully embracing her unique identity. When Lucy’s father tells her that his favorite photo of her from the summer is of her examining the dead shark, Lucy uses the same word to describe herself that she used to describe the women on the comic book covers: “tough.” Lucy comes to accept and love her physical appearance as well as her internal personality. When Fiona and Lucy watch Helen’s interview, Fiona calls Helen “a real woman” (357), which brings up how she had earlier said that the drawings of women on comic book covers did not represent real women. Lucy agrees with Fiona and expresses that she’d like to grow up to be like her mother. Lucy has also made peace with her relationship with Fred: She doesn’t seek to name it or explain it in order to understand that they cared deeply about one another, and that is enough for her. However, the detail in the final chapter about how Lucy carelessly tags a shark with the expensive equipment shows that though Lucy has matured over the summer, she doesn’t immediately leave her childhood behind.
The final chapter also highlights The Interconnectedness of Humans and Nature. The sonar tags on the sharks represent that Fred and Helen will live on through the creatures they loved. Lucy describes how the shark named Fred is “making a pattern, slightly irregular, like a kid learning to play an instrument” (369). In its movements, the shark mimics the scene in which Lucy was watching Fred dance unselfconsciously to jazz music; like Fred, the shark behaves like a “kid learning to play an instrument.” Lucy “start[s] filling the [static] rests with thoughts, things [she] would’ve written to Fred in a postcard” (369). Though Lucy doesn’t write Fred physical notes anymore, she indicates that she will never stop thinking about him and talking to him. When the shark named Helen joins in the song, Lucy imagines for a moment that she’s communicating with Fred and Helen through the sonar tags. These tags combine Helen’s love for science with Fred’s love for music, embodying how the two live on through their interests and through Lucy’s combination of art and science.
