59 pages • 1 hour read
Jeff ZentnerThe Serpent King
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 14-21
Chapter 14 Summary: “Lydia”
After Lydia comes back home, she finds her dad watching TV, and he tells her he likes her friends. He tries to explain to Lydia that growing up in Forrestville was not as bad as she feels, and that many of her ideas were born because she grew up there. He also warns her, “You’re being very haughty and unkind about their lives. People live quiet lives and that’s okay.” (117). He tells her Travis’s dad is abusive.
Lydia receives a handwritten note from Vivian Winter, confirming she will write her a recommendation letter.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Dill”
Travis, Dill, and Lydia are at Riverbank Books, a bookstore owned by Mr. Burson, buying a birthday present for Dill’s mom. Mr. Burson is especially fond of Travis because they like the same books. They choose a book with a Christian theme, as that is all Dill’s mom will read.
After making their purchase, they go to Bertram Park to watch the trains. As the train passes by, Dill remembers a moment when he was 13 and playing guitar in front of his father’s church, in the praise band. The congregation is “caught up in the Holy Spirit” (129), speaking in tongues and drinking strychnine. Two men bring out the snakes for the worshippers to handle, and Dill’s father approaches him with one, which Dill attempts to handle, although he is afraid of snakes. Dill Sr. “gives him a slight, sad smile and turns away, holding the snake above his head, triumphant” (130).
Chapter 16 Summary: “Travis”
Travis’s mom agrees to make a cake for Dill, to surprise his mother. As Travis helps her, making her laugh, his dad comes in drunk and starts making fun of Travis. He ruins the cake, so Travis’s mom starts baking another one. In his room, Travis asks himself bitterly, “Why aren’t you braver? At least for your mom’s sake?” (136). He messages Amelia and starts to feel better.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Dill”
Dill surprises his mom with the cake and the book. He broaches the subject of going to college, but his mother reacts badly, saying, “You’d learn that you’re too good for God. That we came from monkeys” (141). She accuses him of wanting to abandon his family and his obligations. Dill feels “a sort of dull ache mixed with anger” (144), and directs it towards Lydia because he feels too guilty to be angry at his mother.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Lydia”
An excerpt from Lydia’s blog, about autumn and everything she enjoys about it. She also answers Frequently Asked Questions: She spells the name of her hometown “Forestville,” with a single “r,” because it bears the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. She also writes about her college hopes and her inspirations.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Dill”
Dill works on bagging duty at the grocery store. He stops to help a little girl who has fallen off a plastic pony ride, and her mother comes running, screaming at Dill, “Stay away. I know who you are. You’re Dillard Early’s son. You don’t touch my child” (152). The store manager, Mr. McGowan, tries to calm the woman down in vain, and Dill answers back tersely. The manager admonishes him and lets him off early.
Dill goes to the library, where Lydia is trying to read Travis’s texts with Amelia. Resentful, Dill reads Lydia’s posts, where she says, “I don’t have a single friend. At least no one worth mentioning. No one I’m not embarrassed to mention” (155). He accosts Lydia about it, and as they leave the library, Travis goes home alone while Lydia and Dill talk in her car. He believes she treats him like a fashion accessory. Lydia wonders why he looks at everything she does in a negative way, and Dill answers with sarcasm. She drives him home, and they part angrily.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Travis”
Lydia has gone to visit colleges, and Dill gets in touch with Travis after a while, asking for his help to fix his mother’s car. Travis tells him he should apologize to Lydia, and that he is being hard on her. At the auto parts store, the owner tells Dill he knew his grandfather and that “he was a good man” (167).
Travis tells Dill about Amelia Cooper, and that he really likes her, indicating that Dill might want to pursue Lydia as well. Dill tries to deny it, but admits that he does not want to wreck things with Lydia. As they repair the car, Travis asks Dill if his dad ever hit him, indicating that his own dad beats him.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Dill”
Dill walks to Lydia’s house to apologize. As he walks into her room, which “always made him feel wistful and envious for the abundance in which she dwelled—a stark contrast with his even starker room” (176), she ignores him at first but then forgives him, asking him to be more tolerant. As they hug, Dill feels emotional. He tells Lydia about his talk with his mom, and she demands that he prioritize his own feelings over his mother’s. She gifts him her old Mac laptop, which thrills him.
Lydia’s dad shows Dill a guitar he has just bought and lets Dill play it. He offers Dill a ride to Nashville when Dill next visits Dillard Sr. in prison.
Chapters 14-21 Analysis
In Chapter 14, Lydia and her father have a disagreement about growing up in Forrestville. Lydia is confrontational; as an intelligent person, she believes she knows best about everything, as shown by her attempts to get Dill to do what she thinks is best for him. Her father, Dr. Blankenship, is a wise, levelheaded, and patient man. He allows his daughter to develop in her own way, but in this scene, he realizes he has to correct Lydia’s viewpoint regarding her position in life. When Lydia tells him, “It sucks here. People are dumb and racist and homophobic” (115), he acknowledges the truth of this by sharing that his own growing-up experiences were similar. He reminds her that whatever Forrestville is like, it helped to shape her and develop her ambition.
Dr. Blankenship reiterates that Dill and Travis are a rare type of friend: those who offer support through good times and bad. His sharp tone in telling off his daughter both for being arrogant and not analyzing her friends’ situations realistically puts him briefly in the role of antagonist. Unlike Dill’s mother, who works to squash her son’s ambition, or Travis’s father, who wants his son to be a different person altogether, Dr. Blankenship wants his daughter to become more fully herself. He wants to help Lydia understand the situation from an adult point of view, and he knows her intelligence and compassion will aid her in comprehending his point. He is a supportive parent, kind most of the time but not afraid of strict parenting when a firm stance is required.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, in Chapter 15, Dill remembers a moment in church when his father wanted him to handle a snake. Being young and sensitive, he prayed to God for strength. The powerful scene gives a detailed yet neutral description of the religious rituals the church practices, including drinking poison, and illustrates 13-year-old Dill’s struggle with both his fear and his devotion to his father. When his father refused to hand him the snake and “gives him a slight, sad smile and turns away” (130), Dill finally understood that his father had no faith in him; Dillard Sr. rejected him both as a son and as a devotee. A week later, Dillard Sr. was arrested, and Dill never repaired the rift with his father. Dill was also blamed by many in the congregation for Dillard Sr.’s situation because he offered truthful testimony about his father.
The repercussions of what Dill Sr. did show in Chapters 17 and 19. Dill’s attempt to surprise his mother for her birthday does not succeed, both because she claims “There isn’t anything I want” (140), and because she views Dill’s desire to go to college as a betrayal of both his faith and his parents. When she tells him, “You don’t need options in life. You need Jesus” (141), she does not allow Dill to respond, thus efficiently and manipulatively taking his voice away from him. Furthermore, she wishes for him to believe the biblical exhortation that “the sins of the father are visited upon the sons,” a statement that feels confirmed by Dill’s confrontation with an angry mother at the grocery store. Her manipulation feeds Dill’s constant feelings of guilt and shame—feelings that he often projects onto Lydia, both because he can’t tolerate the anger he feels for his parents and because Lydia insists on change, and he loves her and wishes to please her. Dill’s desire to leave the Early legacy behind will contribute to for his decision to leave for college where he can start a new life, free of his burden of shame.
The author positions Travis’s experiences in the family home as a parallel to Dill’s and a counterpoint to Lydia’s. As Zentner depicts Travis’s budding relationship with Amelia, he places Travis somewhere in between Dill and Lydia. Although generally timid, Travis actively searches for a way to overcome his shyness and connect with the girl he likes, whereas both Lydia and Dill refuse to acknowledge their emotions even to themselves. Travis’s father is an alcoholic bully, and although the author shows that deep down he carries terrible grief over the death of his older son, he is unable to show any loving emotion to Travis. Travis’s mother must balance the two men in her life as best she can, but in Chapter 16, when she makes a cake for Dill’s mom shows, her husband’s behavior shows that the bully will always have the upper hand because he cannot be reasoned with. Both Travis and his mother feel they have no alternative but to accept his father’s rude and mean behavior; the only alternative is to become as violent as he is.
In Chapter 20, Travis tries to tell Dill what is happening in his home, but falters. In such small communities, people tend to keep family secrets, especially if they are unsavory; Dill has spoken openly about his family’s secret, violating this unwritten code. Travis does share his news about Amelia and nudges Dill to express his feelings for Lydia, which Travis, quiet and observant, has already noticed.
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