Pet

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2019

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapter 9-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

Jam, a 15-year-old Black transgender girl, lives with her family in the town of Lucille sometime in the future. Decades before the start of the novel, angels defeated monsters in a revolution that began in Lucille and created a utopia. Neither monsters nor angels are supernatural beings; these terms refer to good and evil humans. The angels banned guns, abolished prisons, prosecuted corrupt and murderous police offers, and rebuilt institutions. The first chapter of Pet details the accomplishments of the revolution and pays homage to the countless people who died because of societal inequity or cruelty before the revolution: the people without access to health care, people killed in wars or natural disasters.

Jam signs to her teachers while at school. She asks about traditional religious understandings of angels. When the teachers encourage Jam to look up answers at the library, she is irritated by their lack of an answer. Jam takes out books from the library on religious interpretations of angels on her way home.

Jam’s mother, Bitter, is an artist and one of the only people that Jam speaks to verbally. Jam asks her mother about the angels and monsters of yore. Bitter tells Jam that both angels and monsters often look nothing like how they seem. When Aloe, Jam’s father, returns home, he tells Jam to forget about the monsters. Aloe worries about Jam, considering how Jam would have been treated as a transgender girl prior to the revolution. Bitter and Aloe supported Jam lovingly through her transition, aiding her with her hormone therapy and surgery. The chapter ends with Jam unsure if she should try and forget the whole incident.

Chapter 2 Summary

After three weeks of non-stop work, Bitter leaves her studio, struggling with her latest painting. Jam sneaks a look at the painting, which scares her. The painting features a creature with goat legs and a bloody furred body “twisted all the way around” with “iridescent” gold-feathered arms that “[end] in obscenely human hands” (26), based on Bitter’s own hands but with gold metal claws. The creature in the painting also has ram’s horns and “an interlocked geometric mess of metallic feathers” for a face (26). The razor blades embedded in the painting make Jam feel ill and she stumbles into the canvas. Jam cuts her hand on the razors and bleeds onto the painting. That night, Jam feels her wound pulsing in rhythm with sounds that come from the studio.

Later, Jam finds the creature coming to life in the studio. The creature is clumsy as it tries to emerge from the painting and Jam offers to help. The creature telepathically communicates with Jam but refuses to tell her what it is or where it comes from, saying “I wish […] that I had the time to explain the intricacies of cross-dimensional portals to you, little girl, but I don’t. Hurry up!” (32). Jam’s annoyance with the creature overrides her fear and she helps it unsnag its horn from the canvas. Jam thinks it is ironic that Bitter is reluctant to keep a pet and yet she created a monster. The creature, hurt by these thoughts, insists that it is not a monster. It reminds Jam that things are not always as they appear. Sensing Jam’s fear, the creature tells Jam to call it Pet. Pet says that it is there to hunt but means no harm to Jam and her family.

Chapter 3 Summary

Pet carefully picks razor blades out of its chest. Jam asks why the razor blades aren’t a part of it, and Pet explains, “They were not made of paint […] They were not part of the door” (37). Despite Jam’s attempts to keep Pet from waking her parents, Pet leaves the studio and wakes Bitter and Aloe to apologize for the intrusion. Bitter is shocked and Aloe is furious, but neither is surprised by Pet’s existence. Not noticing Jam in the room behind Pet, Bitter and Aloe argue. Aloe says that he never should have let Bitter continue painting Pet. Bitter dismisses the idea that Aloe decides what she can or cannot paint. Bitter has brought another piece of art to life before, but she insists that although she painted the “door,” she did not provide Pet with a “key,” meaning blood, to escape the canvas.

Jam, scared and guilty, begins to disassociate. Pet comforts Jam by wrapping its arms around her. Bitter calls Pet a monster and Pet growls, drawing Bitter and Aloe’s attention. Bitter and Aloe panic at the sight of Pet holding Jam, but Pet chides them for failing to notice their daughter. Jam admits that she bled on the canvas on accident, but her parents say that she has nothing to apologize for. Bitter and Aloe hold Jam as Pet explains that it is there to hunt a monster. Aloe insists that there are no more monsters in Lucille and Pet calls him a liar. Aloe worries that Pet will hurt Jam, but Bitter says that Pet cannot hurt Jam because Jam is the one who let Pet into their world. Pet touches Jam’s hair like Bitter does and tells Jam telepathically that they must go to “the house of Redemption” (47). Redemption is Jam’s best friend.

Chapter 4 Summary

Bitter and Aloe force Jam to go to bed. Through the vibrations and creaks of the house, Jam senses her parents’ exhaustion and Pet’s impatience as it waits in the studio. The next morning, Jam is greeted by her parents at breakfast. Aloe tells Jam that Bitter once summoned a creature out of a painting before, when monsters still existed, and many people were hurt as a result. Bitter and Aloe are convinced that Pet is in the wrong time, and that there are no monsters left in Lucille for Pet to hunt. When Jam tells her parents about the possible monster at Redemption’s house, they say that Pet is wrong. Bitter and Aloe tell Jam that because her blood called Pet from the painting, Jam can also tell Pet to return to the painting. Bitter and Aloe are worried that Jam calls the creature “Pet” and insist that Jam send Pet back to wherever it came from. Jam does not argue; Bitter and Aloe have come to a decision together and she feels isolated from them. However, Jam ignores her parents and tells Pet that she wants it to stay.

Chapters 1-4 Analysis

The first line of Pet encapsulates many of the themes that will continue throughout the rest of the work: “There shouldn’t be any monsters left in Lucille” (9). This first line of Pet is an example of how past, present, and future are collapsed in the novel. In this moment, the reader understands that not everything is as it seems and that things are unbalanced in this unknown town. The conditional “shouldn’t” in the first line of the novel promises the reader a history of what happened in Lucille, what state it is in now, and leaves the future of Lucille and its monsters as an unanswered question. The collapse of time in Pet is a key genre trope that is often used in speculative genres such as science fiction and fantasy. By playing with the reader’s perception of time and refusing to pinpoint a specific year and location, Emezi emphasizes that the events that take place in Lucille can belong anywhere and at any time. The story unfolds in a third-person perspective primarily from Jam’s point of view, but maintains psychic distance from Jam, occasionally revealing the thoughts and feelings of other characters. Through this strategy, the narration provides insight to Jam’s thoughts and actions while also providing distance that allows for the narration of present and past events.

The ambiguous setting allows Pet to critique both the political past and the present. The first section of the book lists societal injustices and cruelties that continue to happen in the real world:

In the meantime, the angels banned ﬁrearms, not just because of the school shootings but also because of the kids who shot themselves and their families at home; the civilians who thought they could shoot people who didn’t look like them, just because they got mad or scared or whatever, and nothing would happen to them because the old law liked them better than the dead. The angels took the laws and changed them, tore down those horrible statues of rich men who’d owned people and fought to keep owning people (9).

By keeping its spatial and temporal locations obscure, Emezi simultaneously critiques present-day conditions in America while also providing hope for a future beyond these injustices. While Jam and the other inhabitants of Lucille are aware that angels and monsters are only humans, many are still eager to believe the lie that monsters no longer exist. Even Bitter, who warns Jam that things aren’t always as they seem, denies the possibility of a monster at Redemption’s house when confronted by Pet. Emezi attempts to convey the fallibility of humans, and the difficulty of maintaining utopia, writing of the revolution prior to the events of the novel, “Many people thought it wasn’t enough; but the angels were only human, and it’s hard to build a new world without making people angry. […] No revolution is perfect” (9). Emezi continues to highlight the fallibility of humans and the necessity of constant striving for ideals throughout the entirety of the text. Instead of portraying fallibility as a hopeless drawback, Emezi focuses on humanity’s ability to learn, to try its best, and grow. Jam’s character arc mirrors this theme as well, as she tries her best to do the right thing despite her overwhelming desire to believe that Lucille is a safe place.