60 pages • 2 hours read
Sandra BenitezThe Weight of All Things
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapters 16-18
Chapter 16 Summary
Once Nicolás is well he places Basilio Fermin’s carvings of a lamb and a lion next to his statue. Nicolás tells Tata about the letter that he sent to his mother and hopes she will return to fetch him along with Basilio Fermin. After a long day of fanning flies away from Chema’s festering wound, Nicolás and Tata are resting in the cave. Nicolás thinks about his temperature and how he asked Felix repeatedly to take it. Felix told him that his temperature was 37 centigrade which calmed Nicolás’s anxiety. Samuel’s fever, on the other hand, continues to rise. Felix determines that Samuels leg must be amputated.
Dr. Eddy would prefer to use a saw rather than a machete to perform the amputation. Dolores asks Nicolás to walk to El Retorno in the morning to retrieve a saw. Nicolás thinks about his journey and wonders what will happen if he and Tata are separated. He wakes Tata and shares his fear; they decide that if they are ever separated, they will meet at the church in El Retorno. Nicolás tells him that La Virgen speaks to him and tells him not to be afraid. He is relieved when Tata believes him.
Nicolás arrives at Ursula’s shop but the saw is gone. Gerardo and Elias have accompanied Nicolás and they help him look through the bombed village for another saw. As the two men look through the rubble Nicolás walks up to the church to find Emilio. He reaches the top of the hill and looks down at the destroyed town. Suddenly he hears the sound of automatic weapons. He runs to the school and hides inside. When the gunfire stops Nicolás peers through a window and sees Elias standing in the middle of the street with a dead Guardia in the road and a second kneeling in front of him. The Guardia reaches “an open hand imploringly toward Elias” (103) before Elias shoots him. Nicolás is terrified and waits in the school room until he calms down. Eventually he makes his way to Elias and asks what he is doing. Elias tells him that they will take everything valuable off the Guardias. He tells Nicolás that these Guardias killed Gerardo. Nicolás is loaded down with boots, backpacks, rifles, and a machete. They struggle back to the rancho under their loads.
Chapter 17 Summary
While they were searching for a saw, Samuel suffered a blood clot to his heart and died. Gerardo and Samuel are buried together at the rancho. After the funeral, Nicolás is struggling. He is despondent and wishes for guidance from La Virgen. He plans to find Gerardo’s mother in the future and tell her what a good man he was. Mario finds him on the riverbank and tells him to come quickly because Lidia is having a baby. Nicolás witnesses Lydia give birth to a baby boy and discovers that Elias is the father of her child.
Chapter 18 Summary
That evening they have a party to celebrate the birth of Lydia and Elias’s son, whom they have named Noe. They are also honoring the deaths of Samuel and Gerardo and saying goodbye to Dr. Eddy, who will leave in the morning. They sit around a fire, smoking cigarettes and enjoying sardines that Elias confiscated from the dead Guardias. Dolores expounds on the history of their land and the way it was destroyed by colonizers who wanted indigo dye. She says that now they cannot grow crops on their land, and this is part of the reason they must fight for a revolution. They discuss how far they have come but acknowledge that the enemy has had much longer to train and strategize. Dolores reminds them to keep their spirits up and focus on changing their country for the next generation. They finish the evening singing songs and telling jokes around the fire. Back in the cave Nicolás asks Tata if he is part of the revolution, and Tata replies that they are simply caught in the middle.
Chapters 16-18 Analysis
Nicolás returns to El Retorno in search of a saw to help amputate Samuel’s leg so that he will not die from an infection. Ironically, Gerardo dies as a result of this effort at the same time that Samuel dies of a blood clot. The trip to El Retorno, which proves to be a suicide mission and gives away the rancho to the Guardia, ends up costing more lives than it saves. The theme of irony runs through this novel: “with him, they buried the blatant irony that his death occurred on a mission to save the life of his grave mate” (105). Simultaneously, the theme of the miracle is reinforced, as yet again Nicolás is saved by La Virgen. Because he was up in the rubble of the church, he was clear of the gunfire and remained unharmed. When he returns to the rancho, traumatized and despairing “what am I to do? What am I to do when there is death all around me?” (106), he prays to “María, my mother. My protection and guide” (107). His prayer is met almost immediately with news of a birth, just the antidote to feeling surrounded by death. The miracle of life amidst death gives Nicolás hope and reaffirms his belief that Our Lady is watching and protecting him.
Chapter 18 offers an explanation to Nicolás (and the reader) as to why there is so much violence and death in this war. Dolores’s character becomes a mouthpiece for the history of El Salvador, offering knowledge and a perspective on why she must fight the oligarchic powers. She explains that the history of colonial rule and exploitation left their land as “nothing but silt and rocks. It’s good for nothing but stumbles. There’s no topsoil here. No nutrients…It’s no wonder we have come to revolution” (111). She is speaking literally (they cannot grow their own food and maintain independence because the colonists destroyed the land) and metaphorically. The land represents the people, and the lack of topsoil or nutrients represents the oligarchs. There is no leadership at the top of the country to nourish the people on the land or provide them with care and infrastructure. Like the colonists who exploited El Salvador, those in power continue to exploit El Salvadoran people and resources. Dolores insists that the people of El Salvador have been pushed into such dire circumstances that they have no choice but to revolt: “Use your heads, comrades, use your heads. Revolution. It means turning around. We are turning our lives around, the lives of all the people” (112).
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By Sandra Benitez
