Young Mungo

57 pages • 1 hour read

Young Mungo

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapter 1

Part 2, Chapters 2-6

Part 2, Chapters 7-14

Part 2, Chapters 15-20

Part 2, Chapters 21-28

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 2, Chapters 21-28Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “The January Before”

Part 2, Chapter 21 Summary

Mungo searches for his mother around the pawnbrokers’ shops where Jocky works. He meets Jocky, who catches him waiting and looking around. Jocky explains that he broke up with Mo-Maw when he found out she has kids because she hadn’t told him for weeks about them, which he found wrong. Jocky also reveals that he doesn’t love Mo-Maw—love is a nuisance and what he wants is company. Jocky doesn’t like how much Mo-Maw drinks.

Mungo visits James in the doocot, but they can’t touch or kiss because James’s father is still around. Ever since James has been hanging out with Ashley, his father has been kind and generous to him. His father even offered to find him a job working oil rigs with him. James invites Mungo to come over on Saturday, but Mungo tells him about the fight with the Catholics that Hamish demands he participate in. James tells Mungo that if he fights the Catholics, James’s own people, he won’t speak to Mungo again.

Part 2, Chapter 22 Summary

The narrative flashes forward to Mungo in the countryside with Gallowgate. After the third night at the camp, Gallowgate agrees they can return to Glasgow. Mungo has been pretending to enjoy Gallowgate’s sexual advances, pumping Gallowgate’s ego. Gallowgate discovers that St. Christopher isn’t in the single tent and goes looking for him. Mungo has an awe-inspiring moment with a young buck in the woods. Gallowgate discovers Christopher’s body near the river, where strong currents have pulled him out of the cave in which Mungo hid him.

Part 2, Chapter 23 Summary

The narrative flashes back to the months before the camping trip.

On the night of the big fight, Mo-Maw turns into Tattie-bogle and Mungo tries to stay home to look after her. He knows that Mo-Maw’s drunkenness won’t excuse Mungo from the fight in Hamish’s eyes. Mo-Maw drunkenly propositions a widowed neighbor, who tries to get rid of Mungo by giving him money for the movies. Mungo kicks the widower out before heading to the fight.

40 boys and men gather for the fight, bringing knives and picking up bricks and rocks along the way. The first confrontation occurs when a teenage mother out for a walk with her baby curses the Prods. Someone throws a bottle at her, so she tears into one of the boys and beats him up. This distracts Hamish’s gang from the arrival of the Fenians.

The fight begins and it is brutally violent. Mungo, frozen in fear, is hit in the head and brought to the ground in blinding pain. A Catholic boy stands over him and kicks him in the head several times before Hamish brings the boy down with his axe. Mungo lies on the ground until he gathers the strength to stand again. When he sees that a 12-year-old boy from Hamish’s gang is dead, Mungo knows Hamish will consider the fight a loss and gather the gang to fight again soon.

Mungo returns home desperate for affection, but finds the neighbor in bed with his mother. Mungo drags the man out of the apartment in a fit of rage. As he goes to bed, Mungo regrets going to the fight instead of to James’s apartment. He knows that Hamish will still hurt James even though Mungo attended the fight.

Part 2, Chapter 24 Summary

The morning after the fight, Mungo tends his wounds and packs his things. He wants to leave with James immediately. Because he didn’t hurt any Catholics, he hopes James can forgive him for going to the fight. As Mungo leaves the apartment, he runs into Mr. Calhoun, who warns him that the police are searching for the gang members from the fight. Mr. Calhoun invites Mungo in for something to eat, tends Mungo’s wounds, and encourages him to cry. He asks Mungo about James, and Mungo admits that they’re together, but that Mungo may have ruined it. Mungo looks through Mr. Calhoun’s diary and finds two pictures of Mr. Calhoun when he was younger. In one of the photos, Mr. Calhoun is with a group of other young men. One is a former boyfriend who had asked him to emigrate to Australia. Mr. Calhoun didn’t go then because his mother wasn’t well, so he stayed behind to take care of her. Mr. Calhoun still regrets not going.

Mungo meets James in the doocot and begs him to run away together. James is angry that Mungo went to the fight and calls him a bigot, but when he sees Mungo’s wounds, James softens. James packs his things and they make plans to leave. James wants to wait one more day so he can sell the doocot and make more money for their escape. As they pack, James tells Mungo a realization: James had called the gay hotline before his mother’s death, so his mother must have been receiving the bills and keeping his secret. James and Mungo understand that once they leave together, they can never return.

James and Mungo are lying under the sun. Hamish finds them and immediately understands the truth of their relationship. He decides to blame James, accusing him of molesting Mungo. Hamish beats James severely and drags Mungo away.

Part 2, Chapter 25 Summary

The narrative flashes forward to Mungo and Gallowgate in the countryside. Gallowgate and Mungo drag St. Christopher’s body to the campsite. Gallowgate feels sad about his death: St. Christopher and Gallowgate met in the sex criminals ward of the prison and Christopher had always been kind to him. St. Christopher had had a successful butcher business before he went to prison for sexually abusing an 11-year-old boy. Gallowgate goes over the version of the story he wants Mungo to tell others when they get back to Glasgow. He is worried about someone finding St. Christopher’s body, not because anyone will miss him, but because the police will want to know who was with the child molester before his death.

Gallowgate drags St. Christopher’s body into the lake. They fill St. Christopher’s pockets with stones so he’ll sink below the surface. Gallowgate hugs Mungo, kissing him and telling him that he had lied about Mo-Maw saying bad things about Mungo. But suddenly Mungo is in the lake—Gallowgate is trying to drown him. Mungo remembers that he still has Hamish’s knife in his pocket. Mungo stabs Gallowgate and gets away from him. Gallowgate bleeds to death in the water. Mungo tentatively approaches him and finds his wallet with enough money for Mungo to get back home.

Part 2, Chapter 26 Summary

The narrative flashes back to before the camping trip. Mungo accompanies his mother to an AA meeting. After Hamish assaulted James, he brought Mungo back home and told their family that James had been molesting Mungo. This starts a resurgence of resentments that the rest of the family have for one another, and Mungo slips out. He searches the doocot for James, but sees nothing but blood and dead pigeons. Someone has wrung their necks. Mungo sees a wounded pigeon and wants to comfort it, but the only thing he can do is kill it to put it out of its misery. He cries as he wrings its neck.

Back at home, Jodie tends to Mungo’s wounds and admonishes him for getting together with James and being gay. She’s worried Mungo will get AIDS.

At the AA meeting, Mungo watches his mother mingling with the new attendees. Mo-Maw meets two men, one older and one younger, and tells them that her son has been shamed by a Fenian. The two men offer to take Mungo out to the countryside to teach him manly things.

Part 2, Chapter 27 Summary

The narrative flashes forward to Mungo in the countryside. Mungo drags Gallowgate into the water and tries to submerge him with stones, but Gallowgate is hard to move. Mungo packs as much as he can and leaves. He wonders what it is about him that men recognize as vulnerable and a target for abuse.

On the road, Mungo hitchhikes with an older, well-dressed man and his two dogs. Mungo looks a mess, and the man, Calum, asks him what he’s going alone in the countryside and why he has plastered himself against the door, scared. Mungo says he was camping alone and fell down a hill. Calum starts telling Mungo about his four sons, but focuses on his youngest son, whom he calls “arty”—another euphemism for gay. Calum is worried about his son, but loves him no matter what.

Part 2, Chapter 28 Summary

It takes eight hours and several buses to get back to Glasgow. As Mungo walks from the bus station to his home in the East End, he passes his mother working her snack stand. Hamish and Jodie are also there. They’re shocked to see him and have been worried about him, but Mungo brushes off their concerns. He knows that he’s a different person now and that he can’t trust in the love of his family. They want to move on from what happened with James, and from whatever happened to Mungo in the countryside. Mungo realizes that if he stays, he’ll have to become the kind of man Hamish wants him to be, like any other man in East End. Then, he sees James, injured but packed up, waiting for a bus. Mungo has a renewal of hope. Police officers pull up because when Mungo called his mother, she had called the police. The police were shocked that she would give her child away to strangers. Now, the police want to talk to Mungo about a stabbed body that was found floating in the lake. Hamish volunteers himself as Mungo.

Mungo looks at James, who beckons Mungo to join him.

Part 2, Chapters 21-28 Analysis

The battle between the Catholic and Protestant gangs is a manifestation of the senseless violence that informs the male experience in this novel. There is no reason to fight, and the fight is so violent that young boys die. Mungo is himself nearly killed. The fight is meant to be a demonstration of pride, masculinity, and ruthlessness—the only way for neighborhood boys to prove their worth and take out their frustrations. Moreover, Mungo knows that the gang battle won’t end with one fight—no matter how brutal, the fight doesn’t prove or fix anything, nor does it have clear rules. In this case, the death of one of his gang members means that Hamish has lost—but Mungo knows that Hamish will only register this loss as a pretext for fighting again in the near future. It is clear that to Hamish, fighting is a lifestyle. Hamish has performed his violent masculinity so much that violence comes naturally, and everything in his life is about winning the next fight. If Mungo doesn’t figure out a way to leave, this will be his life too because there is no escaping Hamish’s wrath or the cycles of violence that characterize life in the East End.

When Mungo accepts Mr. Calhoun’s compassion and kindness after the fight, Stuart reveals that Mr. Calhoun is a cautionary example for Mungo in a very different way than previously shown. His story is almost identical to Mungo’s. Mr. Calhoun also had a boyfriend, but he didn’t follow his boyfriend when he moved to Australia. Mr. Calhoun stayed in the East End instead, to look after his mother. This is one possible version of Mungo’s future: Letting James escape to freedom while remaining stuck in East End, taking care of Mo-Maw. Though Mr. Calhoun is at peace, he regrets not going to Australia with his boyfriend. Mungo realizes that the story is a warning: If Mungo doesn’t disentangle himself from his family, he could end up longing for a decades-old love, constantly assaulted by anti-gay bias.

The beating James receives from Hamish is a turning point in the novel and in Mungo’s character development. This is the first time that someone he holds very dear is nearly killed by senseless violence. This event’s aftermath changes the nature of Mungo’s relationship with Jodie. Although Mungo expected that Hamish would hurt James, Mungo did not predict that Jodie would also reject him for being gay, worried about AIDS (which was a rampant epidemic at the time) and the violation of social norms. Jodie has violated social norms herself, throwing off the confines of expectations of women to go to university and stop taking care of her siblings and mother, but there is a limit to her tolerance and her imagination of what love can be and who people can be.

Mungo’s namesake, the patron saint of Glasgow, is famous for bringing a dead bird back to life after kids killed the bird. In a dramatic reversal, Stuart presents a tableau where Mungo is forced to do the opposite. When Mungo discover the doocot full of dead and injured pigeons—symbolizing the destruction of the idyllic, innocent relationship James and Mungo briefly enjoyed—Mungo is unable to help the still living bird he finds. Knowing that the pigeon’s injury will only lead to a slow death, he shows the pigeon mercy by wringing its neck, though killing the pigeon is a violation of Mungo’s moral code and a meaningful transformation of the story of his namesake. This is symbolic of Mungo’s reality, which is not miraculous and full of blessings, but is instead characterized by so much brutality that merciful killing is sometimes the only way to show kindness.

The horrific events in the Scottish countryside culminate in Gallowgate’s murder, a necessary gesture of self-defense. Interestingly, Gallowgate is sad about Christopher’s death. His empathy for Christopher’s lifelong struggle with pedophiliac urges demonstrates that Gallowgate is capable of compassion, which heightens our sense of his cruelty: Gallowgate purposely avoids viewing younger boys as people even though he’s capable of seeing humanity in others. As soon as he realizes that Mungo might turn him in, Gallowgate attempts to drown Mungo—the boy is simply a means to an end for the predator. Significantly, Mungo uses the knife Hamish gave him to kill Gallowgate. This demonstrates that Hamish has Mungo’s best interests at heart in the only way he knows how: Hamish recognizes that the world will be cruel to Mungo, and want to give him the tools to defend himself.

Killing Gallowgate is a tragically victorious moment. Mungo saves his own life, which is a rare moment of empowerment. Mungo has taken two human lives, becoming the deadliest of the East End residents we meet in this novel. Ironically, Mo-Maw wanted to send Mungo to the countryside to make him into what the East Side views as a man, and that’s exactly what happened. In the countryside, Mungo surpasses the bravado of Hamish: Mungo has been forced to kill, which is an experience Hamish fantasizes about but doesn’t understand.

However traumatic, the weekend in the country forces Mungo to come of age through important lessons. First, Mungo has proven that he is not weak, and second, he learns that it’s not safe to trust anyone—for example, Calum, the friendly man who helps Mungo reach the town center—except James, the only person who has never betrayed Mungo. Second, Mungo develops a new understanding of his family: He finally learns that his mother will never, and has never, truly care about him, that Jodie also has limitations to her love, and that Hamish is his protector only up to a point. Mungo has been irrevocably changed. He represses his trauma and resolves to live a tougher life, to fulfill the expectations society has for him—a depressing conclusion to his maturation.

But just as soon as Mungo makes this resolution, his life opens up again. In one final act of brotherly protection, Hamish tells the police that he is Mungo, saving his brother from consequences of having murdered two men—the legal system of the time would not have accepted these killings as self-defense. This moment is poignant because it demonstrates that Hamish does love Mungo, feeling a loyalty that motivates him to put himself in harm’s way to save his brother. This gives Mungo a new chance at life. In a dramatic moment of optimism, Mungo sees James, battered but packed and waiting for the bus. James is on the brink of a new life, and he gestures to Mungo to join him.

Stuart ends his novel without revealing if Mungo joins James, though it is implied that he does: James “beckoned [Mungo] only once. Once was enough” (390). Mungo no longer needs to fight with himself over leaving his family for James. This novel thus ends on a hopeful note, without dealing with the conflict that might arise out of Mungo’s escape. Mungo is ready for a new beginning with James.