The Butterfly Lion

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2016

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-7

Chapters 8-11

Chapters 12-14

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 12-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 12 Summary: “The Butterfly Lion”

Millie and Bertie never have children. The White Lion roams free in the estate’s massive garden, though he never hunts on his own. They give the lion a good life.

Bertie’s leg never recovers from his war injury, so he often leans on the lion for support. They walk to Wood Hill, where Millie flies her kite as Bertie and The White Prince sit on the grass and watch. The lion stays by Bertie’s side, just as they did in their childhood. Eventually, the lion loses his eyesight and his health fades. He dies in the kitchen, sitting at Bertie’s feet. They bury him in the garden, at the bottom of the hill, where they can see him from the kitchen window.

Bertie’s heart is broken after the lion’s death, and he grows distant. One day he rushes toward the kitchen waving for Millie. Bertie wants to carve The White Prince in the hillside, giving him immortality. Bertie’s project raises his spirits. Together, they spend the next 20 years cutting into the hillside to form the shape of the lion.

After the lion is finished, the butterflies come. Adonis Blues drink from the chalk in the hillside, and their fluttering wings give life to the white lion memorialized there.

Illustrations show the lion sleeping, Bertie with his cane walking along the hillside and waving at Millie, and the shape of the lion cut into the hillside.

Chapter 13 Summary: “And the Lion Shall Lie Down With the Lamb”

The narrative returns to the present. The elderly Millie explains that Bertie died of old age, and that she is quite lonely. Bertie is buried by The White Prince on the hill, and that she will be buried there too.

She says that Michael must get back to school now, repeating what she told Bertie when she found him in her yard so many years ago. She offers to sneak him back into the school. Michael asks if he can come again, to which Millie agrees. She drives him back to school and he promises to return.

The boy’s escape has not been discovered, and Millie returns him to school safely without detection. The boy thinks of The White Lion, Bertie, and Millie. Suddenly, he recalls that Bertie once attended the school, imagining him sitting in the same dining hall where Michael eats.

Michael’s history teacher asks him who he has been looking for among the student names in the great hall. When Michael names Bertie, his teacher says there was once an Albert Andrews who won the Victoria Cross. He directs him to the chapel where a memorial plaque sits. The teacher adds that Bertie’s widow died a few months after her husband of a broken heart. Their house has stood empty and abandoned ever since.

Shocked, Michael runs to the chapel where he reads the plaque dedicated to Bertie. He does not understand who he could have talked to at the abandoned house.

Illustrations depict a framed photo of Bertie in his uniform and Millie in the car dropping Michael off at school.

Chapter 14 Summary: “Adonis Blues”

The next day Michael rushes back to the house where he saw The Butterfly Lion and talked to the old woman. He finds the box kite sitting on the kitchen table, but no Jack or Millie.

He finds no one but the white lion on the hillside. He climbs the hill, sits above the lion’s mane, and looks at the abandoned house. There is no one there. As butterflies land on the white lion and give it life, he hears Millie whisper their name—Adonis Blues. She asks the boy to keep the lion white for them and to remember her story. The boy yells that he will. He hears the roar of a lion.

Illustrations show Michael looking for answers, the massive abandoned house, and the white lion in the hillside with the Adonis Blue butterflies taking flight.

Chapters 12-14 Analysis

The white lion in The Butterfly Lion first appears in the novel as a desperate, filth-covered orphan destined to die in the Transvaal. By the novel’s end, he is a mighty representation of hope and fortitude. This symbolic transformation is possible because Bertie, as a young boy, intervenes and saves the cub from a pack of hyenas, putting himself at great risk. The lion once again becomes a quasi-child figure for the adult. When Bertie’s mother saved the lion cub and brought him home, the cub became a consolation for the fact that she could not have more children after Bertie. Now, the childless Bertie and Millie care for the lion as more than a pet.

However, the novel asks whether the domestication of this animal has robbed it of something essential. Bertie and his mother act with the best of intentions for the orphaned cub, protecting it only to later realize that their intervention has transformed its inherent nature. Through their intervention, Bertie and his mother inadvertently changed the lion, removing the cub’s ability to survive in the wild. This makes it impossible for Bertie to free the cub before being sold to a circus. Later, when the white lion is at last reunited with Bertie in France, Bertie plans to bring the animal back to England with him. The lion cannot be set free in Africa and does not deserve to live in a cage. In domesticating the animal, he has created a conundrum. How can he give the animal a good life without dooming it to death in the wild or confining it in a cage in civilization? In the end, the lion has only a facsimile of a normal life: “He roamed free in the park just as we had planned he would, and chased the deer and the rabbits whenever he felt like it; but he never did learn how to kill for himself” (112). The lion has ample space, is provided with food and comfort, and lives out his life in peace. This is the best possible outcome for this lion, but clearly not what should happen to lions in the wild.

After death, both Bertie and the lion are immortalized: Bertie via the plaque in the school, and the lion via the monument in chalk and grass on the hillside above his grave. These memorials are bittersweet reminders of their lives, as only the magical element of the novel—the fact that young Michael somehow gets to interact with Millie and thus learn their story—brings them to the attention of the living. Although the blue butterflies on the hillside infuse the image of the lion with seeming life, the estate stays abandoned, implying that no one comes to view this moving sculpture. Likewise, Bertie’s plaque captures the importance of his achievement, but few of the school’s students encounter it or read it. The novel points out the importance of not only Immortalizing the Dead via static memorials but also of retelling and learning from their stories.