49 pages • 1 hour read
Nino RicciLives of the Saints
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 14-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary
Shortly after Cristina threatens the others to stay away from Vittorio, Vittorio comes upon his mother vomiting in the stable. He runs to get Di Lucci and his grandfather at the bar. When they return, Cristina is sitting on the floor, moaning. She had beheaded a chicken and was collecting its drained blood. Di Lucci and Vittorio’s grandfather take Cristina to the hospital.
Vittorio decides he is going to do the ritual sacrifice Giuseppina recommended to cleanse his mother of the evil eye. He cannot remember the exact details, but he hides the chicken in the woods. That night, he sneaks out, chants, and burns the chicken in a pyre. At daybreak, he takes the chicken’s burned corpse, throws it away, and puts the head under his bed. His grandfather returns from the hospital and assumes the chicken has been taken by a dog.
Chapter 15 Summary
Since Vittorio’s fight with Vincenzo Maiale, he has been getting to school early to avoid the other boys. His teacher also has him stay late to help her clean up. He thinks the boys have forgotten about him, but a few days after burning the chicken in the woods, he is walking home when he runs into Guido Mastroangelo. Guido tells Vittorio the other boys want him to join their gang and that Alfredo saw Cristina in the hospital the day before and she approved.
Guido takes Vittorio to the other boys. They ask Vittorio about the snake and tell him that “if a woman goes with another man and gets bitten by a snake, then the next baby she has will have the head of a snake” (126-27). They tell Vittorio that if he wants to join their gang, he has to show them his penis and put his penis into a hole in the ground fifty times. They take his pants off and look at his penis.
Suddenly, Fabrizio arrives. He fights with the other boys. When they turn on Fabrizio, Vittorio runs away instead of defending his friend. When Vittorio gets home, he throws away the chicken head and cries because he has “betrayed Fabrizio” (131).
Chapter 16 Summary
When Vittorio’s mother returns from the hospital, she is visibly pregnant. She hides in the house, where things are tense between her and Vittorio’s grandfather. Vittorio learns from Fabrizio’s brother Fulvio that Fabrizio got into trouble for defending Vittorio. His father threw him out of the house, and he is working for a farmer by Rocca Secca. The other boys, though, leave Vittorio alone.
The teacher is still very kind to Vittorio and begins reading to him stories from Lives of the Saints, such as that of San Francesco and San Leonardo. At Christmas break, the teacher allows him to take the book home with him. He realizes that there are many words in the book he doesn’t know, but he uses a dictionary to read the story of Santa Cristina, who was tortured by the Romans for her belief until she was taken up to the heavens by the archangel Michael.
Chapter 17 Summary
On Christmas morning, Vittorio’s grandfather announces that Cristina is going to church with them. They are about to leave when Cristina appears dressed for church in a way that does not hide her obvious pregnancy. They walk together to the church, and they are the last people to arrive for the service.
Chapter 18 Summary
The women in town have been particularly harsh toward Cristina. However, after the Christmas mass and the holiday meal with Zia Lucia and cousin Marta, Giuseppina and her family arrive at Vittorio’s house with Christmas cookies. Shortly afterward, Di Lucci and his family arrive as well. All afternoon, more townspeople arrive.
That evening, after the guests have left, Vittorio’s grandfather tells Cristina the people only came to laugh at them. He yells at Cristina that he wishes that she “hadn’t lived long enough to bring this disgrace on [his] name!” (149). He storms off to his bedroom where his bedroom table falls on him and breaks his leg. The table is wedged against the door, which cannot be opened, so Cristina begins breaking the hinges with an axe while Vittorio runs to Di Lucci’s bar.
Chapter 19 Summary
Vittorio returns with Father Nick and Di Lucci carrying a rack from the church. Cristina has taken the door off its hinges. Other townspeople have arrived as well. They put Vittorio’s grandfather on the rack and carry him outside, where it is snowing. They cannot fit the rack into Di Lucci’s Fiat, so Cristina says Vittorio’s grandfather will have to be taken by cart to the hospital. Di Lucci drives off first to alert the hospital they are coming. Vittorio’s grandfather is put in the bed of the horse-drawn cart. Cristina is going to drive him there herself, but Father Nick insists on coming along to protect her from thieves. He takes the reins, and they drive off to the hospital.
Chapter 20 Summary
Vittorio’s grandfather has a fractured hip and a broken leg. He has to spend a month in the hospital. Vittorio and Cristina visit him once or twice a week. The doctor has him on a lot of pain medication because there are bone fragments in his leg causing pain. During that time, angry letters from Vittorio’s father Mario arrive almost every day.
Eventually, Vittorio’s grandfather comes home. Cristina cares for him and their relationship seems less tense, although they still argue. Vittorio’s father reveals that he knows that Cristina’s “communist boyfriend, a foreigner no less” (159) is the father of her unborn baby. Vittorio’s grandfather and Mario think Cristina should leave the baby at an orphanage.
At the end of March will be the election for a new town mayor. Vittorio’s grandfather’s compatriot Alfredo Mastroantonio is presumed to win, but the communists have also decided to field a candidate, Pio Dagnello, and he is generating a lot of interest in the town. Vittorio’s grandfather is angry about Dagnello, but he also thinks Mastroantonio is a fool.
At the end of February, Cristina receives a letter not written in Mario’s handwriting. That day, she tells Vittorio that she will be going to Rome for a few days. Later, Vittorio overhears his grandfather calling Cristina foolish. That night, Vittorio asks her why she is going to Rome, and she tells him that they are going to go to America, but he has to keep it a secret.
Chapters 14-20 Analysis
In this section of Lives of the Saints, Vittorio’s acceptance of The Influence of Superstition and Myth grows as a result of the influence of the villagers on him. His actions show how superstitions are used to make sense of the inexplicable and to attempt to change things in a chaotic, confusing world. In Chapter 14, Vittorio comes upon his mother vomiting in the stable and she is taken away to the hospital. In his shock, fear, and horror, he decides to take Guiseppina’s advice and complete the ritual that Cristina may have started to cleanse herself of the evil eye. When he is unable to remember the specific instructions Guiseppina gave him, he concocts his own idiosyncratic midnight sacrificial ritual that he pairs with his lucky lira (See: Symbols & Motifs).
The night of his ritual he has highly symbolic dreams of:
my mother squatting in a field as if taking a pee, but getting up to reveal a large blue egg; Father Nick standing solemnly before a coffin in the church, reciting a mass for Mr. Mario Gallino; some great black jaw stretching open in front of me, ready to swallow me like the whale that swallowed Jonah (120).
The image of his mother having an egg is symbolic of her pregnancy and foreshadows the child to which she will give birth toward the end of the novel. The image of Father Nick saying a funeral mass could suggest either the death of Vittorio’s father (who is also named Mario) or that of the child. The reference to the Biblical tale of Jonah and the whale is evocative of the ocean journey Vittorio will soon be taking and the accompanying loss of faith he will experience after his mother dies after childbirth. Vittorio experiences a similar loss of faith after he is sexually humiliated by the other boys in Chapter 15. He realizes as a result that the ceremony was unsuccessful in ridding him of the evil eye, and so he throws the chicken head away with the thought, “I had sunk so low in shame that no magic or miracle could ever reclaim me” (131).
Despite this outburst, Vittorio’s faith in miracles is reinforced by la maestra’s presentation of the Lives of the Saints to him (See: Symbols & Motifs). Stories about the saints are known as hagiographies. Each saint is assigned a particular day in the Gregorian calendar, so la maestra also ensures she shares with Vittorio his “name saints”—those that share parts of his name—and his “birthday saint,” the saint who is celebrated on the day of Vittorio’s birthday. In his own time, Vittorio reads the hagiography of his mother’s name saint, Santa Cristina. This story presages his own mother’s death at sea after facing a series of trials. However, unlike the real-life Cristina, the saint is carried to heaven by the archangel Michael while her enemies, the Romans, “were swallowed into the sea” (140).
In Chapter 20, Cristina acknowledges Vittorio’s innocence and contributes positively to his maturation and ultimate Loss of Childhood Innocence when she tells him that they are leaving for America. She expresses sympathy with his frustration over not understanding what is going on, stating, “Poor Vittorio. No one ever tells him anything” (164). By recognizing and respecting his desire to know more, she treats him “like an adult” and reinforces their bond. The promise of an upcoming journey to America also foreshadows that Vittorio’s life is about to undergo some drastic changes.
