43 pages • 1 hour read
Natalie Savage CarlsonThe Family Under The Bridge
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1958A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Angrily, Armand leaves the bridge. As he walks, he comes upon a man fishing; the man is pulling in his fishing line, hoping to find a big fish, but instead finds a single shoe. Armand says, “Ah, that’s the way our hopes go, monsieur” (50), but he is quickly delighted to realize that the newly caught shoe is the match to one he’s been carrying around just in case he found the other someday. The man gives him the shoe and Armand comments that “[…] that just goes to show we should never give up hope” (50).
Armand finds a new bridge to sleep beneath but does not rest well. He worries about the children and whether they will be too cold and lonely. He tries to convince himself that he’s not worried by talking about how the family had no right to take over the spot he considered home. When he wakes up in the morning, he discovers that it has snowed. He worries about what the children will do and thinks that, without supervision, they will probably play in the snow, get sick, and die. He resolves to go back, claiming it’s because he wants to “show them” they’d mistreated him (51).
As he nears the Calcet family’s shelter, he sees two women in fur coats walking away. When he passes them, one calls him a “[p]oor, wretched creature” and the other suggests, “Perhaps we could save him” (52). At the shelter, he finds the children crying. They tell him that the women have gone to get officials to collect them and take them away from their mother. They beg Armand to save them. Armand thinks of Mireli, the Roma woman who invited him to spend the winter with her people. They pack up the family’s few belongings and walk to the Halles, a “big central market where all the food comes into Paris” (55). The children are astounded by the abundance of food they see around them in the market: “Boxes of fruit and vegetables made walls around them. There were long alleys with endless rows of beef, sheep and hog carcasses hanging on hooks” (56). They run into a man, Louis, who Armand knows; the man is working as a “pusher,” moving the carts around the market. He tells Armand that he can get him a job too. Armand dismisses this because he does not want a job.
Armand leads the children down an alley toward what he calls the “Court of Miracles”—a place where, in the “old days of Paris,” “beggars” used to shelter without interference (58). He explains that the “miracles” label came from the way the “beggars” would shed their costumes, like crutches and other signs of infirmity, that they wore to evoke sympathy for money. They find the Roma camp and are welcomed by the people. Mireli says they will take care of the small family. Armand gives her some food he picked up as they walked through the market earlier.
Suzy, Evelyne, and their mother will stay with the family of a Roma girl named Tinka. Paul will stay in a tent with several other boys. Armand will share a tent with a man named Pedro. Tinka’s home is a tiny house on wheels that is pulled from place to place by an automobile. The Calcet children are delighted and decide that this is the kind of house that Father Christmas could bring to them because his donkey could pull it. They decide that Armand should tell Father Christmas about their new request.
Chapter 6 Summary
Armand knows that no one will bring the Calcet family a house, so he tries to temper their hopes. Tinka tells the children stories of the Roma group’s travels. Paul says he’d like to travel with them. Tinka invites the family along, but Suzy says they can’t travel with the Roma people because they have to go to school instead. As night falls, Armand returns to the bridge to get Madame Calcet and bring her to the Roma camp. Madame Calcet cries when she hears about the women who tried to take the children; she wonders why she can’t be left alone when she is trying to keep her family together. Armand tells her that he found a better place for the family to live, and Madame Calcet apologizes for misjudging him. She says he is a “good man” (69).
As they walk, she stays behind him so that no one will know they are together. Armand “[does] not let that bother him. He had lost his pride long ago” (70). When they arrive at the camp, Madame Calcet is angry to discover that the people are Roma. She says, “To think we have fallen so low [...] My children at home with gypsies” (71). Armand challenges her, calling the Roma people kind and generous. Madame Calcet says that the Roma people are not honest, but Armand defends them. Madame Calcet says she knows she must accept the hospitality.
The Roma people accept the Calcet family into their midst, feeding them and giving them warm, dry places to sleep. Madame Calcet says that she must pay for these things, but Mireli refuses. She proudly says, “We do not take money from our friends [...] Only from strangers” (73).
Suzy is shocked to learn that the Roma children do not attend school and do not know how to read and write. She decides to teach them the alphabet herself. She writes it on the wall with her piece of charcoal and then instructs Tinka to copy it. Instead, Tinka begins drawing Roma symbols—one that means “the people who live inside are good and generous” and another that means “beggars will be badly received. Perhaps the people will even set the dog on them” (76). Suzy realizes that there is more knowledge in the world than what she’s been taught in school. Suzy asks Armand to go back to the Louvre store and tell Father Christmas where to bring their new, tiny house on wheels.
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
This section opens with the interaction between Armand and the fishing man, who finds the match to Armand’s spare shoe. This unlikely event serves two purposes. First, it uses a whimsical occurrence as an example of the unexpected, unlikely occurrences that happen throughout the book, just like Armand finding a new family in his usual spot shortly after claiming he doesn’t want one. Second, and more importantly, this exchange reveals Armand’s mindset and adds depth to his character. When the fishing man fails to catch a fish, Armand is disappointed for him but ultimately shrugs it off. When he realizes that the shoe is the match to his, he is delighted, commenting, “[T]hat just goes to show we should never give up hope” (50). This message is carried across the story—it applies not only to the man trying to catch a fish but also to the Calcets, who want to stay together and find a home, and to Armand, who wants to make sure the Calcet family is safe and well over the winter.
Armand’s attitude toward “hope” can also be seen in the way he handles the children’s discussions of the home Father Christmas will bring them. Though he knows Father Christmas is merely a man in a suit at a store and that no one will be bringing the Calcet children a home, he still works to maintain their hopes and their belief in Father Christmas. He wants to make sure they still believe but also wants to manage their sadness and disappointment so that it won’t crush them. This adds a sense of pragmatism to his earlier comment about never giving up hope, and his interactions with the children build on the theme of Found Families.
The theme of Social Stigma and Discrimination continues to develop through these chapters. Armand comes across two women, and although they do not treat him with derision and scorn like the floor manager from the previous chapters, they clearly do not view him as a person, either. They call him “poor” and “wretched” and talk about rescuing him, the way someone might describe rescuing an abandoned puppy. They don’t even speak to him directly, and Armand clearly takes offense at their attitude.
The theme of discrimination is shown most clearly through Madame Calcet’s reactions to Armand and the Roma people. Madame Calcet, having made some peace with her family’s temporarily unhoused status, is again brought low by their interactions with the Roma people. Madame Calcet obviously believes in the derogatory things she’s heard about the Roma people and assumes they are dishonest people who steal. She is devastated by the idea that she and her family have hit such a point where they must accept charity from the very people she looks down upon.
The Calcet children are immediately enamored by the Roma lifestyle, and they have no qualms with associating with the Roma people because they have not internalized the same prejudices as their mother. In contrast, Madame Calcet must go through a change of heart to accept a place among them, which occurs as the Roma people graciously welcome her and provide hospitality. This furthers the novel’s theme of Change as a Catalyst for Growth. Madame Calcet begins the novel very confident in her beliefs about the right and wrong ways to live, and she holds onto this even when she and the children first relocate under the bridge. At first, she insists on maintaining the idea that they are outsiders, only temporarily seeking shelter until they can go back to their normal life. The stakes rise when she and the children are at risk of being separated, which forces them to find shelter with the Roma people. Despite her prejudices, Madame Calcet knows she has no other options, and she admits this to Armand—for her, this is the first step toward change. As the end of the book approaches, Madame Calcet grows more open-minded and willing to see the humanity in the marginalized people with whom she is forced into proximity.
Early interactions with the Roma people also develop Suzy’s character and the novel’s use of education as an important signifier of social value. Suzy speaks repeatedly of the importance of education, but she has a specific understanding of what that entails, which does not encompass the wisdom acquired through other ways of living. In the scene where she tries to hold “school” for the Roma children, she is confronted with proof that there are valuable forms of knowledge and language not taught in school. This helps to expand the narrow definition of “education” beyond official school curricula and to something that can happen in many places and in many forms, which reflects both the Roma people’s unconventional lifestyle and Carlson’s own experiences with various cultures and their differing priorities. Suzy’s easy acceptance of this shows that she is an open-minded and tolerant person.
