45 pages • 1 hour read
Joseph BruchacSkeleton Man
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | 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 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Footsteps on the Stair”
Molly, a sixth grader and the first-person narrator, begins by stating that she does not know how to start her story, nor does she know her role in the story. She wonders if she hears footsteps on the stairs but realizes that the noise is only the old house creaking. She also wonders if the story she is about to tell is a product of her imagination.
Molly remembers a story that her father, who grew up in Canada on the Akwesasne Mohawk Reserve, once told her about a skeleton monster who started life as a greedy great-great-uncle. The great-uncle ended up devouring his own flesh to satisfy his hunger, leaving only his skeleton behind. He then began eating the other members of his family as they returned home. The last to return was his niece, who recognized that something was very wrong. When the great-uncle tried to entice her to come into the house, she ran away. She also found a helpful rabbit who taught her how to trick her great-uncle.
Molly returns to her own story, revealing that her parents have disappeared. For several days, she takes care of herself and hides her parents’ absence, telling her parents’ employers and her school that the whole family is sick. However, she grows increasingly lonely and afraid. When she finally returns to school with a forged note from her parents to excuse her absence, she behaves strangely in class, and her teacher notices.
Eventually, a social worker and two policemen come to her home, bringing an old man who claims to be her great-uncle. Molly is surprised because her parents have always told her that they have no living relatives. Shey tries to resist going with him and asks her teacher, Ms. Shabbas, if she can stay with her instead. Although the teacher is willing, the social worker will not allow it. When Molly protests that the man is not her great-uncle, the social worker shows her photos of her parents from the old man’s wallet. The social worker insists that Molly go with the man, and he takes her to a creepy old house.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Knock on the Door”
On the seventh night in the old house, Molly describes her great-uncle’s routine as he climbs the stairs. Every night, she counts the thumps on the stairs until he reaches the landing. The last stairs are silent, but the floor creaks when he steps on the floor. Then he knocks on the door loudly and asks if she is all right. She tells him that she is fine but is in bed and is ready to sleep. Every night, he locks her door so that she cannot leave the bedroom.
Frightened, Molly wonders what the lock is supposed to protect her from and questions why there are bars on her window. The room is filled with old, dark furniture and is dimly lit. There is also a new, cream-colored rug on the floor. When Molly looks out the window, thunder and lightning startle her.
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Dream”
Although startled by the lightning, she remembers the Indigenous stories that her parents have told her to ensure that she would not be afraid of storms. She also thinks about a padlocked, windowless shed that is located near the house. She does not know if she is in actual danger, but she is frightened. As she tries to fall asleep, she thinks about the song “Tomorrow” from Annie, a song that Ms. Shabbas often sings to her class.
That night, Molly has an “aware dream,” a dream in which she knows that she is dreaming. In the dream, she runs and then finds herself in a cave where she lives with her great-uncle. He wants her to check the rabbit traps so that she will have more to eat and grow fat. In the dream, Molly becomes aware that she is dressed in deerskin. As she checks her snares, an entrapped rabbit speaks to her and promises to help save her life if she will help him. When she frees the rabbit, he tells her that her great-uncle is not human.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Dark Cedars”
When Molly awakens, she still remembers the dream. She finds a sign in the room that reads “Dark Cedars Bed and Breakfast,” and assumes that her great-uncle took down the sign when he bought the house (30). In the bathroom, she looks in the mirror and notes her dark hair, thick eyebrows and lips, and gappy teeth. She thinks about wanting short, blond hair. She also has a lovely smile that people seem to like, except for her great-uncle, who will not smile back at her. The best thing about her appearance is that she does not look like a frightened child.
Her great-uncle speaks in a whisper at the bottom of the stairs, telling her to come to breakfast. He thinks she looks too thin and urges her to eat. Alone in the breakfast room, Molly pretends to eat but sneaks the food into a plastic container that she carries in her backpack. On her way to the school bus stop, she dumps the food down the storm drain. (After her first meal at the house, she felt strange, “like some kind of zombie” [34]. Since then, she has not eaten anything that her great-uncle sets out.)
Once at school, she finally feels safe. She loves school. In class, Ms. Shabbas is singing songs from Man of La Mancha. Molly responds with inappropriately loud laughter, and everyone wonders what is wrong with her. Almost in tears, she puts her head down on her desk and tries to attribute the strangeness of her situation to her imagination. Later, when Ms. Shabbas takes her aside for a chat, she tells her teacher about her situation. Ms. Shabbas gives Molly her cell phone number with instructions to call at any time. After school, Molly walks to her great-uncle’s house, stopping to get some food at a fast-food place. She doesn’t want to go back to the place she calls “the house of doom” (38).
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
In Skeleton Man, Bruchac structures his story by adapting an old Mohawk folktale about a cannibalistic monster, and because the novel begins with a brief synopsis of the original tale, these details foreshadow the events to come and add an ominous tone as Molly gradually realizes that something is seriously amiss in her world. As the story is told from Molly’s first-person perspective, her efforts to make sense of her parents’ absence and escape her worsening predicament illustrate The Courage and Resilience of Young People.
As the story opens, Molly speaks directly to readers, and through this device, Bruchac immediately creates an immersive approach that requires readers to view the novel’s fantastical events through the lens of Molly’s feelings, intuitions, and observations. Additionally, Bruchac uses this narrative technique to reveal Molly’s character in her own words. For example, Molly describes herself as being “melodramatic” and highly imaginative, and this admission opens the possibility that her perception of her great-uncle and of the events surrounding her parents’ disappearance might be faulty. The fact that she considers this possibility suggests that she is a clear-thinking, logical girl who remains open to diverse ideas, and her candor also indicates that she is a trustworthy narrator who will use her wits to solve her problems.
Throughout the novel, Molly’s preoccupation with the legend of the Skeleton Man emphasizes The Importance of Cultural Heritage and Traditional Wisdom, for her parents have taught her to consider information and evidence from many different sources, some of which are highly intuitive in nature. Although Molly appreciates the value of mainstream sources of wisdom, such as her classes at school, she also understands that the traditional stories of her Mohawk culture contain a wealth of valuable information. Historically, the Mohawks are an Indigenous, Iroquoian-speaking tribe that populated what is now northern New York State and southeastern Canada (See: Background). Even these early chapters indicate that Molly’s parents have taught her many valuable stories from the Mohawk tradition—stories that are designed to teach vital lessons. For example, her rendition of the story of the Skeleton Man emphasizes the true danger that her supposed great-great-uncle poses, and she will also draw upon the traditional wisdom of her ancestors to solve the mystery of her parents’ disappearance.
Molly has also learned to value the process of Gaining Insight Through Dreams and Intuition, and this dynamic is most aptly demonstrated through her experiences of “aware dreams.” This term refers to a phenomenon also known as “lucid dreaming,” in which the dreamer is fully aware that they are experiencing a dream and can consciously participate. Bruchac suggests that dreams such as these carry messages from the universe. Thus, when Molly encounters a talking rabbit in her dream, she knows that the rabbit’s role is to deliver an important message. Rather than dismissing her dreams as a mere fantasy, she takes the message seriously and realizes that her parents are alive and that her great-uncle is not human. This information clashes sharply with the mainstream understanding of the world that governs her school, and her unique sense of knowing separates her from conventional sources of help, for well-meaning social workers and even her teacher have no conceptual basis that will allow them to understand the true nature of her predicament. This pointed lack of adult assistance is also a common trope of middle grade and young adult (YA) literature, both of which often create scenarios that require the young protagonist to act decisively without any help from traditional authority figures.
Confronted with the knowledge that she is on her own, Molly relies on her intuition to solve her problem. Intuition is defined as the ability to understand key information about people or events without using conscious reasoning. Instead, this knowledge arises from feelings and instincts. Because Molly’s parents have taught her to trust her feelings and to act upon them rather than dismissing them, Molly gains the ability to accept information from unlikely sources such as dreams, using unconventional insights to her advantage. However, Bruchac is careful to emphasize that Molly does not accept how she feels as the only way of knowing. Instead, Molly tempers her intuitive leaps by admitting her own tendency to take an overly imaginative approach. In this way, her perceptions are balanced between creative intuition and a pragmatic view of the world around her. Ultimately, her intuition interacts with the everyday world to guide her toward the resolution of the mystery, and she actively gathers facts and data to support her instinctive sense about the dangers of her situation.
Bruchac’s frequent use of cliffhangers imbues the narrative with an additional sense of urgency to compel readers to plunge into the next chapter. A cliffhanger can entail any potentially disastrous or tension-filled situation in which the outcome is unknown at the close of the chapter. For example, the third chapter closes with the line, “The whole world explodes in a great burst of light and sound” (23). Because the previous lines have revealed that Molly has a bad feeling about going to the window, the explosion is designed to raise a multitude of questions that can only be answered by continuing on to the next chapter immediately. In this way, Bruchac develops a narrative rhythm that results in a dynamic plot filled with urgency.
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