Beautiful Ruins

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-13

Chapters 14-17

Chapters 18-21

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary: “Eating Human Flesh”

The narrative jumps to Shane pitching his film. Called Donner!, it depicts the struggles of carriage-maker William Eddy, whom Shane describes as a “good family man, handsome, honest, but uneducated” (123). Donner! begins with William Eddy, his family, and the Donner Party heading out toward California. Along the way to their destination, the Donner Party experiences hardships such as bad weather, wagon wheels breaking, and the loss of cattle. Shane paints a picture of “everyone turning feral except William Eddy, who retains his human dignity to help the rest of the party get across” (124).

Once the Donner Party reaches the Sierra Nevada Range, they become trapped in snow. The party breaks down and begins to starve until William Eddy kills a bear for its meat. Soon, the abundance of bear meat begins to dwindle, and William Eddy’s wife convinces her husband to make the trek to California to bring back help. When he protests, she tells him to do it for their children who will otherwise die.

William Eddy and a party of 15 set out to look for assistance amidst a terrible blizzard. As they make the journey, they become weaker and more famished. A man named Foster concocts a plan to keep the party fed; he states that the members of the group should all draw lots to determine who will be eaten. The party does not get a chance to draw lots though since two members die of natural causes. William Eddy’s crew eat the bodies.

They walk for 18 days, and William Eddy finally begins to deteriorate. He leaves the party behind and arrives in Yerba Buena and recruits 40 men to go back into the mountains and help retrieve the rest of the Donner Party. William Eddy and Foster travel back to the original camp, which is now a hellish site since many of the children left behind have been eaten. Foster’s son is alive, but William Eddy’s is dead. William Eddy suspects that a German immigrant named Keseberg is responsible for the carnage and the loss of his son, but he cannot bring himself to kill Keseberg “because Eddy knows that this evil lives in all of us” (129).

Chapter 8 Summary: “The Grand Hotel”

Pasquale arrives in Rome in April 1962 and enters the Grand Hotel, where Cleopatra’s producers and actors stay. After asking the desk clerk for Michael Deane’s location, Pasquale winds up in a line of people waiting to audition to be an extra in Cleopatra. He asks the casting crew for Michael Deane, but the crew assumes he is auditioning. The members of the casting crew approve of him; they hand him a card reading “5410” (134) and point him toward a bus bound for a costuming building, where he is told to wait in a line to be measured and fitted for a centurion costume.

A man in a tweed suit questions Pasquale and offers him a role as a slave for “a little more pay” (135). Pasquale rejects the role and asks to see Michael Deane. The man sends him back to the Grand Hotel, and he meets with Michael Deane in the lobby and punches him in the chest.

The two men go to the Spanish Steps and discuss why Michael Deane lied to Dee about having cancer. Michael Deane admits that fabricating the lie was his idea rather than Dr. Crane’s. He points out a statue in a fountain known as the Fontana della Baraccia and waxes poetic about the randomness and chaos it symbolizes. He hands Pasquale an envelope full of money to split between himself and Dee and asserts that Dee must go to Switzerland to have an abortion. In addition to the money, Michael Deane gives Pasquale photos of Dee and asks him to give them to Dee as an apology.

Michael Deane’s treatment of Dee infuriates Pasquale, who still believes that Deane is Dee’s lover and the biological father of her child. He grows ashamed, however, when he realizes that he would be a hypocrite to harbor a grudge against a man who abandons a pregnant woman since he did the exact same thing with Amedea. A woman approaches him and tells him that someone wants to see him.

Chapter 9 Summary: “The Room”

Chapter 9 begins with an excerpt from Michael Deane’s book entitled The Deane’s Way: How I Pitched Modern Hollywood to America and How You Can Pitch Success into Your Life. In the excerpt, Deane talks about “The Room” (145), which is the environment in which one delivers their pitch. He asserts that “if your story improves Truth, you will sell it in The Room” (146) and win not just The Deal but the whole world.

The narrative then jumps to Universal City, California in the 2010s, where Shane waits for Michael Deane’s evaluation of his Donner! pitch. Claire laughs at Shane’s idea, but Michael Deane expresses interest in making the film and says that he will take the idea to the studio. He offers to buy the rights to Shane’s idea for $10,000 dollars; Shane accepts the offer. Michael Deane’s approval of Donner! bewilders Claire, who feels as though “she doesn’t even understand the rules of the world” (148).

Michael Deane orders Shane to ask Pasquale if Dee went through with the abortion or kept the baby. Pasquale pulls out an old postcard from Dee that announces the birth of a boy she named Pat after Pasquale. Claire and Michael Deane discuss Donner!, and Michael Deane says that he knows Claire wants to quit. He asks her to stay on in order to find Dee before making her decision. Claire wants to know if Michael Deane is Pat’s biological father, and Michael Deane replies by saying that Pat “might be the only child [he] ever had” (151).

Chapters 7-9 Analysis

In Chapter 7, Shane lays out the premise and structure of Donner! in the form of a casual film pitch. He demonstrates a relaxed demeanor befitting his newfound confidence by opening his pitch with the conversational phrase “So there’s this guy” (1846). Shane follows film pitch conventions and shows awareness of the filmmaking process by clarifying what the camera focuses on in specific scenes and making an intertextual reference to the Spielberg film Jaws, which he uses as a reference point for his film. As the pitch continues, Shane switches his tone from conversational to melodramatic and places Donner! within the historical drama, blockbuster action, and psychological thriller movie genres. He frequently utilizes ellipses for the sake of dramatic pauses and spouts oversentimental cliches such as “What if the only way to save the ones you love…is to leave them behind?” (126). These techniques create an emotional atmosphere of cinematic suspense, which is a crucial element for all three genres.

Shane bases Donner!’s protagonist, William, on the historical figure William Henry Eddy but portrays him as an unrealistically competent and strong frontiersman action hero. A “good hunter and tracker, humble to a fault” (123), Shane’s William shows unwavering determination and morality, and he can beat a bear “to death with his bare hands” (126). William’s character in Donner! fits the rugged cowboy archetype found in dime novels and Western movies and serves as a foil to Shane himself. Shane takes interest in William because he admires William’s strength, which runs counter to Shane’s weakness.

In Chapter 8, Walter exposes the dehumanization and anonymity inherent in being a film extra. The casting crew at the Grand Hotel mistakes Pasquale for an extra and gives him an ID card that reads 5410. The crew sees Pasquale as just a number and not a person with a name. He is one of several nameless centurions mingling in the background while stars with names like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton command the spotlight. The film industry has a hierarchy, and it renders Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton as gods and extras as almost inhuman. This disregard for extras speaks to the brutal strata of Hollywood Walter highlights throughout the novel.

Chapter 9 opens with an excerpt from Michael Deane’s book, which is one of Shane’s favorite books. In the excerpt, Michael Deane states,

Great fiction tells unknown truths. Great film goes further. Great film improves Truth. After all, what Truth ever made $40 million in its first weekend of wide release? What Truth sold in forty foreign territories in six hours? Who’s lining up to see a sequel to Truth? If your story improves Truth, you will sell it in the Room (145).

Here, Michael Deane exposes his own feelings regarding truth; he believes that films should bend the truth and present a world more fantastic than the real world since those kinds of films sell. Donner! is a historical drama loosely based on a true story; it tells a skewed or “improved” form of the truth about the Donner Party. It is, in theory, the kind of film Michael Deane says will sell in “the Room” (145), which is why Walter places that passage from Michael Deane’s book in the chapter.