37 pages • 1 hour read
Louise FitzhughHarriet the Spy
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1964A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book 2, Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 2, Chapter 7 Summary
In the days following Ole Golly’s departure, Harriet finds herself in a grumpy mood with her friends and family. When she returns home from school, the house seems particularly empty: “That was one thing about Ole Golly, thought Harriet; even if she didn’t say anything, you were aware of her. She made herself felt in the house” (136).
The next day at school, Harriet’s class is told that they must prepare a themed dance performance for the Christmas pageant. After much debate, someone suggests that they all dress up as items of food from a Christmas dinner. Over her strenuous objections, Harriet’s teacher assigns her the role of an onion. Janie will be a squash, and Sport will be one quarter of a turkey. All the students go get measured for costumes. While there, the dance instructor tells them that they should invent their own dance steps and practice them at home.
Book 2, Chapter 8 Summary
During her spy rounds the next day, Harriet goes to the Robinson house first. She observes a huge crate being carried through the front door. Inside the crate is a giant sculpture: […] an enormous, but enormous—perhaps six feet high—wooden sculpture of a fat, petulant, rather unattractive baby” (157). The Robinsons think the sculptor is a genius because she posed the baby holding a tiny mother figure. They are excited to show this latest acquisition to all their friends.
Harriet moves on to the Dei Santis’ grocery store next. Nothing much is going on, and Little Joe is stuffing his face with food in the back storeroom. Then, Mrs. Dei Santi starts screaming when she learns that her son Fabio was in an accident while driving the family’s truck. He returns to the store with barely a scratch, but he confesses that he took the truck because he needs it for his new job as a salesman. The family is pleased that he’s working, but they also discover Little Joe filching food and fire him on the spot. Harriet makes a note in her journal to check on the situation another day. At her next stop, she discovers that Harrison Withers is alone in his workshop. The Health Department confiscated his cats, and he looks terribly sad and lost.
Book 2, Chapter 9 Summary
By that evening, Harriet’s grumpy mood hasn’t diminished. After dinner, she tries rolling around her bedroom floor to choreograph her onion performance. The noise she is making attracts the attention of her parents, who are amused by her antics. Her father, who is a television executive, gets down on the floor to try it himself. He advises Harriet to feel like an onion if she wants her performance to be convincing, so she tries: “She found herself screwing her eyes up tight, wrapping her arms around her body, then buckling her knees […] Harriet rolled round and round the room. It wasn’t bad at all, this being an onion” (169).
Afterward, she notes the experience in her journal, which alarms her parents. They had no idea she was keeping a notebook and vow to pay more attention to what she is doing now that Ole Golly is gone.
The next day after school, Harriet hides in Mrs. Plumber’s dumbwaiter. She overhears a conversation between the lady and her maid. Apparently, Mrs. Plumber’s doctor ordered her to stay in bed permanently. Harriet thinks ruefully that it’s best not to get what you wish for. The two women hear a noise from the dumbwaiter and discover Harriet lurking there. The maid pitches her out the door and warns her never to return. That night, Harriet has a nightmare in which Ole Golly chases her in the form of a frightening bird. Harriet believes this is an evil omen and that something terrible is about to happen.
Book 2, Chapters 7-9 Analysis
This segment is the beginning of Book 2, and Harriet is struggling with the loss of Ole Golly. She describes herself as grumpy but fails to understand the reason for her attitude. Harriet is applying the same method to herself that she does to her spy targets: She observes behavior in a detached fashion without understanding or appreciating the reason for it. The theme of Observation Versus Understanding is initially foregrounded in these chapters as Harriet goes through her usual routine. She makes her regular spy rounds, noting activity and professing herself baffled by people’s behavior.
She doesn’t understand the simultaneous tears and laughter of the Dei Santi family when they learn that Fabio crashed the truck because he got a job. Similarly, Harriet is puzzled at Mr. Withers’s depression after his cats are confiscated. She dutifully reports her own fits of bad temper without recognizing that the cause is her longing for Ole Golly.
One of the earliest appearances of the theme of Developing Empathy derives from the most unlikely of circumstances. Harriet is trying to act like an onion for the Christmas pageant by mimicking how she thinks an onion would move. She is focused on externals until her father wisely suggests that she start to feel like an onion instead of just looking like one. This approach works much better, and Harriet easily adapts to feeling like an onion, although she doesn’t make the mental leap from understanding how an onion might feel to understanding the emotions of the people around her.
The segment concludes by foreshadowing disaster. Harriet has a nightmare in which Ole Golly is chasing her, and the child references a previous bad dream that represented an ill omen. Something bad is in pursuit of Harriet, and its connection to Ole Golly suggests it may be related to the nanny’s questions of what will become of Harriet.
