76 pages • 2 hours read
Roland SmithPeak
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Assignment”
The chapter introduces the main character, Peak. He is in Tibet, writing from the back of a truck.
The chapter is addressed to Peak’s English Literature teacher and mentor, a man named Vincent. Vincent has two novels that are out of print and is presented as an influential presence in Peak’s life. Peak writes that that morning they encountered a boulder in the road. Chinese prisoners surrounded it, chipping away at it with pickaxes and hammers. He writes that Vince tells him every story needs to have a hook: the irresistible thing that draws a reader into the story.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Hook”
Peak recounts a dangerous climb when he was stuck against a cliff face near the top of a summit. His cheek is frozen to the ice, and the sleet above him is starting to slide. He takes a stencil out of his bag and sticks it to the mountain, then fills it in with blue spray paint. Just as he pulls his face off, leaving bits of it stuck to the ice, a helicopter zooms in. Through a bullhorn, a voice announces that he is under arrest.
Chapter 3 Summary: “A Couple of Stitches & The Slammer”
Peak reveals that he was climbing a skyscraper, not a mountain. He is a tagger who spray paints a small blue mountain onto buildings in places that will be difficult to reach. After a doctor treats his face, he speaks with a detective, who tells him that he will be going into a juvenile detention facility (JDC) until a judge decides what to do with him. Vincent visits and brings him several books to read and notebooks to write in.
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Peak goes to a special school for gifted children and prodigies. His talent is writing. Vincent says he will be allowed to finish the year of school from within JDC, as long as he completes a long piece of writing in one of the notebooks.
Soon after, Peak’s mom visits with bad news: A boy who was imitating Peak fell from a building the night before and died. The city intends to make an example of Peak. The District Attorney will try to hold Peak responsible for the other boy’s death.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Circling the Drain”
Peak is taken to the courtroom. Sitting together are his six-year-old twin sisters, Patrice and Paula; his stepfather, Rolf; his mother, Teri; and his father, Josh Wood, who is arguably the best mountaineer in the world.
Peak pleads not guilty. His attorney feels that they will win in court. Six other people have been arrested for climbing skyscrapers, and most of them served no time. It is arranged that Peak will leave the country to live in Thailand with his father, Josh. This will help the story of his arrest disappear in America. Josh says that they have not spent much time together in the past few years, but he is prepared to take responsibility. Josh is rich and has no problem paying the $150,000 in bail money.
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Twins”
Peak says goodbye to the twins, who were born on his eighth birthday. They tell him that they learned he was their half-brother by reading the news about him. Peak liked his mother’s last name and kept it—Marcello—when she married Rolf. Rolf has always been good to him, but they have never been close. His mother gives him a credit card and says that he can come back whenever he decides he wants to.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
These early chapters set up the family dynamic and foreshadow much of the coming tension between Peak and his father, introducing the theme of Fatherhood’s Meaning.
The opening chapters operate as metafiction, a form in which a piece of fiction exists within another piece of fiction. The premise of Peak writing in his journal for his English class assignment in Chapter 1 sets up the novel’s tone and narrative approach. Vincent’s instructions about “the hook” of a story apply to Chapters 1-5. They are the hook that will propel readers through the remaining pages. As Chapter 5 ends, every significant question the book will tackle has been raised.
The first chapters also establish Peak’s life in New York and his mindset before his journey to the Himalayas. Peak is unhappy with the situation. He does not have any natural mountains to climb as he did in Wyoming, and he has not yet made peace with his father’s absence. He does not see Rolf as his father, secretly reserving that space for Josh. This is symbolized by Peak keeping his mother’s last name rather than taking Rolf’s.
A final motif that is established in these chapters is Peak’s privilege. Though he could go to juvenile detention, his family has the financial resources to make sure that does not happen. Josh easily pays the $150,000 bond, and Teri gives Peak a credit card to take on his trip with no mention of a spending limit. At this point in the novel, Peak is unaware of this privilege, though his perspective will shift through his interactions with his Sherpa, Zopa, and Zopa’s grandson, Sun-jo, during the climb.
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