57 pages • 1 hour read
James McBrideMiracle at St. Anna
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2001A 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 14-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary: “The German”
The following day, Stamps sees a German approaching Bornacchi, led at gunpoint by four partisans. Stamps and Peppi assess one another cautiously as Train emerges with the boy, excited that the boy has begun to speak. The villagers emerge, arguing heatedly. With Renata’s aid in negotiating, the Americans and the partisans agree to speak in Ludovico’s house, the villagers cramming in to listen.
Bishop urges radioing Nokes or returning over the mountain with the prisoner, but Stamps argues they must wait for Nokes to radio them, as ordered. Stamps, angry that Bishop continues to argue, threatens to court martial him until Peppi interjects in English that the prisoner belongs to the partisans. They argue, which upsets the boy and, in turn, Train. They leave the house where the boy tells Train, via taps, that he saw the German and Rodolfo up by the church doing “a bad thing” (201).
Chapter 15 Summary: “Run”
The partisans explain that the German was part of the 16th Panzer SS Division, responsible for the massacre at the church. The German denies being part of the killings (though Stamps is unsure if this assertion is due the villagers’ obvious hunger for vengeance) and claims an old man in this area knows the identity of the person who posted the sign that led to the massacre. The boy seems to recognize the German; the two speak to one another too quietly for anyone else (besides Peppi) to hear. Peppi begins questioning Rodolfo.
Hector comes outside to report that Nokes himself will arrive the next day. This reassures Stamps, who knows Nokes too selfish to enter a dangerous situation. Birdsong further transmitted that the Americans would attack the Bornacchi area on Christmas, given the intelligence of the arriving German soldiers. Hector translates Stokes’s order to the villagers to evacuate as artillery begins to fire in the distance. Hector and Bishop secure the German prisoner. Peppi plans to return to the mountains, which he claims are safer, leaving Rodolfo to watch over the prisoner. Peppi privately cautions that someone may try to kill the German prisoner before Birdsong can arrive and translate. The partisans, less Rodolfo, depart.
The soldiers each guard a different part of Ludovico’s house, Train worrying about the boy after Nokes arrives and they return to base. Though he has never worried about racist power dynamics between white and Black people, accepting this as merely a way of life, he views this dynamic differently now that he has someone he cares about. He thinks about the boy in contradictory terms: both as someone who will grow into a white man and thus have an unencumbered future and as an angel who “had no color” (207).
The boy, who identifies himself as Angelo, tells Hector that the German prisoner told him to “run as fast as [he could]” (209), the same message the German gave “at the church[,] at the fire” (208).
Chapter 16 Summary: “Sending Nokes”
Driscoll regards reports that confirm the arrival of more than 11,000 Germans and allies on the Lama di Sotto ridge. Driscoll summons Nokes, wishing he could promote Birdsong without causing the unrest that would come from putting a Black captain in charge of white soldiers. He orders Nokes to take Birdsong and retrieve the four soldiers and the German prisoner, whose intelligence is badly needed. Nokes balks, but Driscoll insists. Driscoll worries over telling Allman that the man’s son has been killed in France, as Driscoll loves and admires Allman, whom Driscoll considers fair to Black soldiers despite Allman’s personal racist views.
Driscoll delivers the telegram to Allman, sorry that he can only allow Allman a brief period to mourn if they intend to mount their counterattack against the approaching Germans. When he leaves Allman’s quarters, he encounters Nokes, carrying a typewriter; he orders Nokes to cease stalling and leave immediately to retrieve the four soldiers and the prisoner.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Hector”
Stamps, considering their ever-narrowing avenues for escaping the artillery fire, elects to ask the partisans to help them through the mountains’ unknown terrain. Using hand signals, he sends Rodolfo to scout for nearby Germans despite his misgivings about the partisan. Rodolfo, climbing the ridge, thinks of how the Black soldiers “nearly ruined everything” (291); in Chapters 18 and 19 this will be revealed to refer to Rodolfo’s attempted betrayal of Peppi, which led to the massacre at St. Anna, which Angelo witnessed). He climbs to the top of a cliff that allows him to look across the valley, astonished when he sees thousands of approaching German troops. He tells Stamps, however, that he saw nothing. Renata opines that Rodolfo fears Stamps.
Stamps urges Renata and the villagers to evacuate with him, but she refuses; she does not believe anywhere is safe. She considers her sexual attraction to the American soldiers, deciding she likes Stamps best. Renata asks Stamps how Black Americans are different from white Americans, which leads Bishop to jokingly compare her to Black activist Mary McLeod Bethune.
Stamps fantasizes about a future in America with Renata, though this fantasy quickly becomes intertwined with the cachet of being a Black man with a white girlfriend before shifting to recognition of the racist violence he would face if he was seen with a white woman in Virginia. He chides himself for reckless dreaming, then tells Renata there’s no difference between white and Black people in America, which Bishop describes as “giving out free Uncle Tom lessons” (226).
Stamps mistrusts Rodolfo despite Bishop and Renata’s opinion that he is being too suspicious. Hector reports Angelo’s exhortation to flee, but Stamps is dismissive of intelligence from the child. Hector privately worries that Nokes’s interest in the German prisoner indicates something big is coming. He goes to attend to the German prisoner with Rodolfo, who stabs him; Hector only survives because the German knocks Rodolfo off balance. Rodolfo fatally stabs the German prisoner.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Betrayal”
Peppi sits on the ridge above Bornacchi, fretting over the German’s words to Angelo, which revealed that he had seen Rodolfo before. He thinks to his band’s movements before the massacre at St. Anna, when a German patrol almost killed him on a trail that should have been known only to partisans. He cannot recall if Rodolfo was surprised to see him return alive, as Peppi had become immediately distracted by a party Rodolfo had financed with money he stole from Germans; Peppi had ended the party, calling the funds “blood money.” He and Rodolfo argued over this, leading to a schism between them.
Peppi wonders why Rodolfo would betray him, given their history together, and wonders if the price on his head (bags of salt, priceless in Italian wartime) has tempted his friend. He reflects on Rodolfo’s increased cruelty following the death of his brother, Marco, and how Rodolfo wanted to kill the German prisoner immediately upon encountering him, without questioning him. He left the prisoner with Rodolfo and the Americans as a “test,” considering that if Rodolfo is a traitor (as he now suspects), and Rodolfo kills the German, the Americans will kill Rodolfo, sparing Peppi from having to kill his friend. He concludes that even those who survive the war will not have a true life after the trauma they have suffered.
Rodolfo arrives and (falsely) reports that the Americans plan to evacuate with the German prisoner. Peppi counters that he wishes to join the four soldiers, despite Rodolfo’s protests that they need to continue searching for the traitor. Peppi reveals he knows Rodolfo is the traitor who has betrayed him in revenge for causing Marco’s death. Rodolfo admits this, though claims he did not intend for the people of St. Anna to die, only Peppi. Weeping, Rodolfo flees. Peppi doesn’t chase him, knowing the guilt of causing so many deaths is worse than dying himself.
Chapters 14-18 Analysis
This portion of the novel discusses what different characters consider as constituting “fairness” among white soldiers, illustrated largely through Driscoll in Chapter 16. Driscoll, a white colonel, considers himself not racist, particularly when he compares himself to men like Allman, their commander, and Nokes, the inept white captain meant to supervise Stamps’s squad. The Black characters in the novel, to some extent, support this self-assessment, occasionally describing Driscoll as “fair.” The novel itself, however, establishes this assessment as limited at best. In Chapter 16, Driscoll puts forth a lengthy mental defense of Allman, despite the man’s intensely racist views and frequent use of slurs, including the n-word. Driscoll counters this by considering that Allman is kind to those whom he considers “good” Black soldiers while lacking tolerance for inept white soldiers.
Driscoll, however, is himself limited, the novel shows. Despite his recognition of the tolls of racist Army policies, Driscoll is unwilling to put forth any effort into making a change in these policies; he goes so far as to hide Nokes’ ineptitude from Allman (thus undermining the potential “fairness” he finds so commendable in Allman), justifying this choice with the logic that the next white man promoted to take Nokes’ place might be worse. Driscoll sees no “point” in fighting individual racists when racism itself is so endemic in the Army and American society itself.
The novel ultimately projects this viewpoint as naive, a white man’s consideration of the material effects of racism on a Black person. While Nokes’s negligence may seem pointless to combat to Driscoll, it is directly relevant to the novel’s protagonists, three of whom die in part due to Nokes’s failures. Driscoll may find Allman “fair” despite his racism, but the novel casts doubt on this assessment by highlighting that this determination comes from a man who does not suffer the effects of personal racism affecting broader decisions of policy. Driscoll is thus not predominantly “fair,” the novel contends, but rather naive—and this naiveté is endemic to any white person who thinks individual fairness can exist under systematic oppression, or, if it can exist, could make a material difference.
Chapter 17 builds upon this depiction of the far-reaching effects of racism and the realities of Being Black in America and Abroad when Stamps attempts to fantasize about a future with Renata. His fantasy quickly emerges as not about Renata herself but rather about the social cachet he would feel as a Black man in a romantic relationship with a white woman. He contrasts how it would feel to be seen with a white woman with the moments in which he has taken blows to his pride, such as when he is looked over for a job in favor of a less qualified white person. Even thinking this, however, strikes Stamps as dangerous; his fantasy quickly devolves into a fear of lynching. The mental effects of racism are thus portrayed as so pervasive that even the thought of transgressing the social boundaries erected between white women and Black men (which build upon a racist stereotype that frames Black men as sexual aggressors out to diminish the “purity” of white women) puts Stamps in fear for his life.
This section further addresses one of the mysteries of the novel, as Rodolfo’s treachery is revealed. The revelation that the St. Anna massacre happened because of a personal vendetta between former friends is an anticlimax; Marco’s death, the massacre, and Rodolfo’s plotting all happen off-page, and the conversation about Rodolfo’s duplicity is masked with suggestion and assumption on Peppi’s part. The massacre’s relegation to subplot despite its magnitude and cruelty implies that the war, as a whole, is so full of cruelty that events can be easily lost. To tell “the story” of the war is thus impossible.
One can instead only tell “the story” of an individual character or small group within that war. The next chapter’s title, “The Massacre Revealed,” emphasizes the difficulty of encompassing the true magnitude of The Brutality of War. Though the novel has already conveyed how the massacre came to be, the novel’s protagonists do not learn the truth of what happened at St. Anna until the next chapter. In this way, the novel suggests that it is the latter revelation that ultimately matters because a selection has to be made in order to tell any part of the story at all.
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