59 pages • 1 hour read
Jeff ZentnerIn the Wild Light
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2021A 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 30-43Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 30 Summary
The nightly chats with Papaw concern Cash, for he knows that his grandfather’s health is worsening and struggles to pay attention even in the poetry class he loves. Dr. Atkins asks Cash to stay after class one day and shares with him her own background in Appalachia. She assures him that storytelling is in their blood and suggests that he use poetry to help him through moments of doubt and sadness, saying, “Life won’t freely give you moments of joy” (196). She assigns him to read one poem a night from the books she lends him, with the challenge to then write an original poem of his own. That night, Cash reads a poem and then tries to write one. In the couplet he writes, he admits only that “words are stuck” (198) in his mind.
Chapter 31 Summary
When Cash sees Delaney in the cafeteria, he chides her for being too busy for their friendship. Delaney takes exception to his attitude and tells him to “fuck off” (201) before she stalks away.
Chapter 32 Summary
The next day, Dr. Atkins upbraids Cash for his poem, saying that pretending that words are hard to get to is a cop-out. Although she understands his emotional chaos, she tells him, “You have a truth. Speak it” (203).
Chapter 33 Summary
Cash misses Delaney. He spars with his racist roommate over the South and the legacy of America’s history of enslavement. Upset by Tripp’s rant about “rednecks” and protesting that his ancestors never enslaved people, Cash heads to the campus lake and writes the first lines of a poem about how much his home means to him. He struggles to articulate his thoughts properly and decides that he is no poet.
Chapter 34 Summary
On Friday night, Cash eats alone in the cafeteria. Vi invites him to the Academy’s football game with great excitement, for she equates it with the soccer matches she used to watch back in Brazil. Vi says that Delaney is studying, and Cash panics over whether her invitation to the game should be interpreted as a date. The two nearly hold hands on the way to the game, and to Cash, “that small contact feels like the thrill of crossing an empty highway at night and pausing in the middle” (213).
At the end of the game, Vi invites Cash to go with her on the college-sponsored field trip the next day: apple picking. Vi hugs Cash when they part, and Cash relishes the lingering scent of her fruity, floral perfume.
Chapter 35 Summary
With Alex in tow, Vi and Cash go apple picking. As they pick the fruit, Vi confides to Cash that she is feuding with her parents over her career choice, for they disapprove of her ambitions to design video games. Cash appreciates Vi’s trust but says nothing about his own backstory. He feels calm, even elated, as the three munch ripe apples under the startling blue of Connecticut’s autumn sky. Cash fantasizes about stroking Vi’s long silky hair.
Chapter 36 Summary
In poetry class, Cash admits to Dr. Atkins that he is no poet, but she disagrees. Through her gentle question-and-answer process, Cash constructs a poem about how much he misses Tennessee. To keep the energy flowing, Dr. Atkins takes Cash to lunch and encourages him to keep jotting down his thoughts. When he finishes, he is proud of his work. Dr. Atkins assures him that poetry gives him that chance to share what is most important to him with others.
Chapter 37 Summary
After crew practice that afternoon, Cash chats with Papaw. In between heaves for breath, Papaw admonishes Cash to make things right with Delaney before he “starts chasing” after Vi (230). Curious, Cash asks Papaw about his woodworking hobby and what sparked his interest in it. Papaw cannot put it into words exactly, but he says that when he finishes a piece, he feels “pretty darn satisfied” (231). Before Cash hangs up, his grandmother tells him that Papaw has spent time in the hospital and that money is tight. She tells him that he will have to wait until Christmas break to come home, because the expense of a Thanksgiving trip is out of the question. When they hang up, a distraught Cash reaches for his poetry notebook.
Chapter 38 Summary
While they do laundry, Alex and Cash discuss Cash’s obvious feelings for Vi. His friend tells him that sometimes you have to “take the plunge” (238) and encourages Cash to tell her how he feels.
Chapter 39 Summary
Determined to make things right with Delaney, Cash waits for her outside the lab. He apologizes and tells her that Vi and Alex are both staying at the academy for the Thanksgiving break. Delaney tells Cash that his interest in Vi is obvious. The two friends stroll by the lake, and Cash realizes that he fears the possibility that one of their little spats might ruin their friendship forever, musing that he has “more experience grieving the dead than the living” (244).
Chapter 40 Summary
When Dr. Atkins and Cash finish working on one of his poems, Dr. Atkins invites Cash, Alex, Vi, and Delaney to her place in the faculty dorms to have Thanksgiving dinner with her and her life partner, Desiree, whom she claims is an award-winning chef. The students arrive and are made to feel welcome. Vi asks Dr. Atkins how she became interested in poetry, and Dr. Atkins says that she always did what poets do: look at how the world is “sewn together” and then unstitch it and piece it back together in a different way (249).
While they await dinner, Cash chats with his grandparents on his phone. As they sign off, Cash thinks that this may be his Papaw’s last Thanksgiving. Dinner is rich and plentiful. The conversation veers to New York City and how close the city is to the campus. Dr. Atkins offers to drive them up for a visit the next day as she has a book signing in the city, and the students all accept. As they head back to their rooms, Cash tells a dubious Alex that he is going to declare his love for Vi in New York. Cash feels like a sailor heading out into the open sea.
Chapter 41 Summary
Cash is amazed by the energy of the city. At the book signing, Cash realizes that he has never actually read any of Dr. Atkins’s poetry. As he listens to her read to the appreciative gathering, Cash feels the words “wild and beautiful” (263). After a lunch of pizza, the gang breaks up for the afternoon. As the others head to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vi and Cash go to Central Park.
Chapter 42 Summary
Cash takes in all the sounds and sights of Central Park. The two chat amiably about family and their plans after college. Cash deeply desires to run his hands gently through Vi’s windblown hair. Over a meal of Brazilian take-out, Vi shares with Cash her idea for a video game: the player strolls through New York City, and there are no points to win, no competitions with other players: just the purity of interaction.
Before returning to meet the others and head back to the academy, Vi and Cash share a quiet moment at the High Line, gazing down at the city’s skyline. Impulsively, Cash reaches out to hold Vi’s hand and begins to kiss her, but she pulls back. She assures him that he is in fact in love with Delaney, not her, saying, “It’s obvious.” Cash feels “tiny and crude and ridiculous” (274), but that does not stop him from wanting to be with Vi.
Chapter 43 Summary
The drive back is quiet. Everyone is exhausted. Still upset over Vi’s reaction, Cash cannot sleep. He reads the inscription that Dr. Atkins wrote on his copy of her poetry collection: “To my fellow poet Cash. There is beauty in every word. Find it” (281). Inspired, Cash reaches for his notebook and writes about how heartbreak feels. Writing about Vi’s rejection eases the sharpness of it, and as Cash states, “As cures for pain go, poetry is better than most” (281).
Chapters 30-43 Analysis
At the beginning of this section, Cash sees himself as a failed poet, a hapless and talentless wannabe, but he ultimately responds to The Redemptive Power of Poetry. By the end of the section, he has developed the habit of carrying a poetry notebook with him all the time, and he feels a rich satisfaction whenever he writes down his emotions and gives voice to his truths. When he finds words for his experiences, he feels a “deep calm” (197). He is not sure why poetry has such an impact, and because his grandfather’s passion for woodworking makes him an artist of a different type, he asks Papaw how he feels when he creates a new carving. Even Papaw’s answer holds its own honest poetry, for he replies, “Kinda like I’m releasing the energy of the sun that the wood soaked up and shaping it into a black bear sculpture or a table for someone. I ain’t got words for it. But when it was done, I’d feel pretty darn satisfied” (231).
Under the patient mentoring of Dr. Atkins, whose question-and-answer approach to brainstorming is a master class in the Socratic method, Cash begins to experience the inherent spiritual rewards of artistic creation, tapping into the redemptive power of poetry and beginning to truly see himself as a poet. According to Dr. Atkins, his very conviction that he is not a poet is what makes him a good one, for his writing does not display the amateurish and showy phrasing that fledgling writers often feel pressured to create. Nor does he read other poets and then try to imitate their accomplished style. As Dr. Atkins tells him, “You’re someone who pays attention to the world around him” (195).
Despite his initial failures, Cash eventually learns to tap into the intensity of his own life experiences for inspiration, and the subject of his first poem arises after a confrontational conversation with his bigoted roommate, who mocks Cash’s home, his heritage, and the entire South. With Dr. Atkins’s prodding, Cash completes his first poem, “Where I’m From,” which shares vivid details of the sights and sounds of Sawyer that Cash misses:
aching backs
and aching hearts
and cracked hands
and rusted bodies
in rusted pickup with
cracked windshields (226).
And during the time he and Dr. Atkins spend working out the details of the poem, Cash admits that for once, he does not feel the pain of homesickness. Ultimately, however, Cash finally embraces his self-styled status as a poet when his disappointment, sadness, and loneliness at the idea of missing Thanksgiving dinner with his grandparents is immediately channeled into a new writing session, proving that the impulse to create art from emotion has become an intrinsic part of who he is.
Complementing Cash’s many internal realizations, the trip to New York serves as a striking narrative centerpiece of these chapters. The day in New York provides for Cash an important counterbalance to his perception of The Impact of Nature, for the city offers him a chance to expand his horizons and to test an entirely new level of awareness. For Cash, New York is a startling experience and becomes a symbolic element in his journey to self-discovery. If Middleford Academy, with its snooty students, its centuries-old rituals, and its demanding classrooms seems far from the world of Sawyer, Cash experiences in the teeming vitality of New York a burgeoning awareness of life’s richer dimensions. Inspired by the poetry readings that they attend, Cash responds to the city’s delights with energy. Suddenly he grasps the power of language, a far cry from his initial writer’s block. As he says himself, “Words are growing wild and beautiful, flowering vines consuming cities, erasing pavement and lines. Breaking through any fence that would try to contain it” (263). For Cash, the day in the city opens him up to a kind of horizon that Sawyer never provided, and rather than cower from it or shy away from its immediacy, Cash understands that words will empower him to record his scattered and chaotic feelings.
At that very moment of empowerment when he most feels the redemptive power of poetry, Cash tries awkwardly to declare his love for Vi, using poetic words to convey his emotions, and although he fails at accomplishing his short-term goals, this risk ultimately leads to his discovery of his true emotions, for it is Vi who gives Cash the very thing he needs to hear: “You’re in love with Delaney. I know you’re not together. But it’s obvious” (274). While the moment leaves Cash feeling stupid, emotionally immature, and “ridiculous” (274), he later remembers Dr. Atkins’s statement that a poet cannot be content to capture only the beautiful and the joyful, for poetry can help to transform even the difficult, painful experiences of life into new wisdom. To borrow her metaphor, poetry turns pain into a fire that provides both illumination and comfort.
Related Titles
By Jeff Zentner
