56 pages • 1 hour read
Jane HamiltonThe Book of Ruth
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1988A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary
It is the middle of January when Ruth is discharged from the hospital. Ruth has been diagnosed with toxemia, which she looks up to learn that it means “arrow poison.” Ruth stays with her Aunt Sid, waiting for her baby to be born in May. Aunt Sid goes to school to conduct the choir every day, but she has rented Ruth a hospital bed and equipped her room with records and audiobooks for her. She finally gets to see Justy, who begins to attend daycare in a home across the street. Ruth notices that Justy is quiet but that he cries at night. She wonders whether she will ever be able to heal his trauma left by the violence he witnessed.
Matt calls Ruth regularly, and Aunt Sid encourages Ruth to be receptive and agreeable. One day, when Aunt Sid is away at choir rehearsal, Ruth finds a letter addressed to Aunt Sid from Matt, postmarked the day after her wedding. The letter reveals that Matt and Aunt Sid both disapprove of Ruth's marriage to Ruby. Matt also admits that he has taken pains to distance himself from both his overly attentive mother and his abusive sister. The letter makes Ruth feel conspired against and betrayed. Ruth confronts Aunt Sid, finally asking what happened to May and Ruby since the incident. Aunt Sid explains that Ruby confessed to having murdered May, explaining that the devil was inside of her.
Aunt Sid describes the funeral service for May, which was well attended by churchgoers, and also by Matt. May was buried next to Willard Jensen. As for Ruby, Aunt Sid avers that he is very sick, and, if he is let out of prison after trial, he will go to a mental institution. Ruth knows that she will never see him again, and questions whether May wasn’t comparatively fortunate for having lost Willard in the war, while Ruby continues to occupy the earth.
Ruth begins to see a social worker named Sue, since DeKalb is too far for Ruby’s former social worker to travel. Ruth receives correspondence from Daisy, who is running for Miss Illinois, as well as from Diane Crawford, Ruth’s high school peer. In Diane’s letter is the heirloom pin that Ruth misplaced during the spelling bee. Ruth admits that the greatest gift she received is that she no longer has her mother telling her what to do. Ruth knows in her heart that Ruby killed May for Ruth’s sake; however, she admits that she is empty without May, and scared, but curious of what the future holds.
Chapter 22 Analysis
The novel’s closing chapter is in some ways more tragic than the incident itself. Now that Ruth is no longer concerned with survival alone, she must grapple with the aftermath. Ruth characteristically vacillates between taking comfort in religion and finding fault in it. She looks up the name “Ruth” to learn that it means “pity” and “compassion,” which she finds apt, because she still finds herself pitying Ruby.
Ruth’s discovery of the prescient correspondence between Matt and Aunt Sid makes her feel betrayed, but, though she considers lashing out at Aunt Sid, she instead reconciles herself to committing to know more about her about the aftermath of the tragedy at her Honey Creek home.
Ruth retains her ever-present sense of humor, claiming to want to be a social worker so that she merely had to ask people about their parents and glibly attribute their shortcomings to their upbringing. As a narrator, Ruth is especially forthright at this point in the novel. She admits to feeling liberated from May, whose absence is the single most comforting aspect of the tragedy. Ruth further admits occasionally to imagining May telling Ruth to “stop looking so sad” (342).
Finally, Ruth professes her wish to be a writer, like Charles Dickens, in which capacity she can fabricate an alternate ending to her memoir wherein she and Ruby go on a cruise and May marries a widowed Reverend. This playful forecast subverts the entire narration in a way that allows Ruth’s readership to imagine an alternate, more sanguine, series of events that those it has just read.
